In this environment, the challenge is on publishers to deliver more than (simply) terrific individual stories — to escape what Harvard Business School professor Bharat Anand has called “the content trap” — by identifying and strengthening connections with and between users/readers.
The issue I see is that far too many media companies, lured by hopes of a steady, reliable revenue source from subscriptions, are pivoting to “community” — creating chatty email newsletters, opening Slack channels or “members-only” webinars, and offering free t-shirts or tote bags. These are more branding than community; the value proposition is weak.
In 2019, I think we’ll see successful media companies get much more reflective about why their audiences read them (or why they don’t). What do these many, varied, and highly intimate interactions (clicks) say about the hopes, dreams, and fears of the human beings behind them? How can these insights drive deeper, stronger connections?
It should be that better insights lead to a broader, richer array of options for consumers. The New York Times has done this with Cooking and Running — two examples from my own media diet that enrich my life, make it easier, more joyful. That’s connection.
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau is CEO and publisher of MIT Technology Review.
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice