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