Community will be a core value for newsrooms in 2019. What does the audience get out of its relationship with the newsroom? That’s the question journalists will keep at the center of their work next year.
Comments on articles, crowdsourced reporting, and Facebook groups aren’t new ideas in journalism. What’s different now is an understanding of why paying attention to community spaces is crucial to the health of the industry: cultivating trust and loyalty. When it comes to their values, newsrooms will make the people who consume their content a priority in order to reach those goals.
The audience matters. It sounds obvious, but it’s still an afterthought in many newsrooms. Up until now, community has been on the backburner for many publishers, often a huge driver of loyalty that’s been largely ignored. That’s about to change. Building connections between reporters and audiences before, during, and after the reporting process will benefit journalism in the long run, and that realization will become a focus throughout newsrooms next year.
Weaving community organically into the newsroom takes time, especially when the daily news cycle requires so much of our attention. So how will this value shift happen? By proving over and over that emphasizing community benefits everyone involved — the journalists, the audiences, and the news organizations. By sharing with our peers what’s working and what’s not. By defining a common language for community work, and developing solid loyalty metrics.
Vox’s ER billing database project, for example, has collected more than 1,700 ER bills over the last year in an effort to bring transparency to American health care prices. We’ve written stories that can only be told because of experiences people have shared with us. And we’re seeing the impact of the work — Senator Maggie Hassan introduced a bill in October to end surprise emergency room bills. She says her bill was inspired by our reporting. The community is a central part of this reporting, and we periodically email them with questions and updates.
Newsrooms will no longer build community just because it’s nice; newsrooms will lean into the opportunity to connect with the people who are reading and sharing their work in order to have a devoted audience. People who interact with our newsrooms in engaging, meaningful ways will see more value in our work. So no matter where our traffic is coming from on any given month in any given year one thing will remain consistent: People will be invested.
Lauren Katz is senior engagement manager at Vox.
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness