2019 will be the year when both journalists and their audiences will finally understand that most numbers we see in the media aren’t precise, but often come surrounded by a fuzzy cloud of uncertainty. We’ll all accept that this is just the way the world works. We may even come up with good ways to visualize this cloud.
In 2019, readers won’t feel anxious when seeing a needle that swings based on random jittering. Also, journalists will stop reporting tiny variations of indicators that aren’t very accurate to begin with without putting them in their historical context.
In 2019, we’ll all grasp that a 15 percent chance of something happening isn’t 0 percent, as any seasoned Dungeons & Dragons fan can tell you. It’s roughly the equivalent of rolling a 1 — or any other single number — on a six-sided die. A 30 percent chance is the chance of scoring 5 or 6 when rolling for damage with a short sword, enough to kill a goblin before it strikes back.
In 2019, most people will finally be able to read the National Hurricane Center’s cone of uncertainty as a range of possible paths of the center of a storm, and not as an area under threat.
In 2019, opinion editors will chastise columnists who still think that “error” in statistics is synonymous with “mistake,” or that the fact that all forecast models are uncertain means that all models are wrong. These editors will grasp that statistical uncertainty is always connected to a confidence level, and that the fact that many independent and uncertain models point in a similar direction should increase the confidence we have in them.
In 2019, we’ll all learn to be less certain about our beliefs. We may even pay attention to cognitive psychologists who explain that the best way to become aware of our knowledge gaps is to try to explain our opinions to others without taking logical leaps or relying on arguments from authority. We’ll be humbled by our many failures at these attempts.
Needless to say, I don’t have full confidence in any of these predictions, but I do hope they’ll become true.
Alberto Cairo is the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the University of Miami.
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Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
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Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
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Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
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Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
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Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
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Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
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Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
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An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
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Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
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Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
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Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
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Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
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Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
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Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
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Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
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A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
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Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
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Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
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Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
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