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