In 2018, journalists faced accusations of all manner of malfeasance, from having an agenda to fabricating stories. Taking shots at the press isn’t new, but now it’s more than just harmless talk. Governments have imprisoned a record number of journalists around the world for publishing “fake news.” Self-censorship is on the rise. Reporters weather attacks, online and in their newsrooms.
To tell important stories, journalists risk their lives. The criticisms are often undeserved and unwarranted. But sometimes we make honest mistakes.
These errors, big and small, have always been part of the very human, very imperfect pursuits of news gathering and storytelling. But now they’re held up as evidence of bias — or, worse, a nefarious plot to undermine the communities and countries we cover. Journalists seek the truth, not a slant, but errors chip away at our credibility and get in the way of our mission.
In 2019, news organizations will get better at avoiding — and correcting — mistakes, with technology on their side.
We’ve never had better tools to avoid missteps, and, in the face of rising authoritarianism across the globe, it’s never been more important to safeguard our believability. In the months ahead, reporters will use emerging technologies, new workflows, and input from their audiences to catch mistakes before they hit the web.
Editors will employ algorithmic fact-checking to scan stories for potential inaccuracies. They’ll get guidance on the basics first — names, dates, titles. But advice on more contextual information will come as the technology advances.
The wire stories that appear on news sites around the world will no longer sport mere static text. Updates, clarifications, and corrections will appear automatically, ensuring misinformation doesn’t persist on hundreds or thousands of publications months after the fact.
Valuable reader feedback in comments and across social media will reach the right people instantly, providing insights that guide followups and further reporting. Newsrooms will go back to basics, creating processes and workflows that put verification at the heart of their work.
Journalism will never be perfect. But when we get better at dodging the avoidable mistakes and fixing the unavoidable ones, we’ll bolster our credibility, stay more faithful to our mission and do justice to all the stories we tell. We owe it to ourselves, and our audiences, to use all the tools available to us to err less often.
Salem Solomon is a digital journalist at the Voice of America’s Africa division.
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Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
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Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
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Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
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Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
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Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
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Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
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Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
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Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
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Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
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Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
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Greg Emerson Power to the user
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists