In 2019, journalism will continue to be bad for democracy.
The media has always considered itself a defender of democracy, a critical part of society with rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. But having (and celebrating) a free press isn’t enough to advance democracy.
Protest coverage may include individual voices from the protests as illustrations to the story — but it “balances” that with the stories of property damage and inconvenience to others. We don’t delve into the deeper reasons why people are protesting. The story of the NFL protests has lost any perspective of why Colin Kaepernick chose to take a knee and instead focuses on who else is taking the knee and which owners will react in what way. If we don’t tell the story in a way that puts the reasons people are protesting front and center, we damage our democracy.
To be good for democracy, we have to reframe how we think about the news. Those who decide what is news are primarily white and from an established and privileged class. That may mean we see news from Washington as a higher priority for day-to-day coverage than issues that affect masses of people — environmental justice, education, how economic trends affect more than just those with 401(k)s, the way government serves or fails people, and others. It may be easier to invest in coverage of the White House, especially when it brings ratings, but I would contend it doesn’t actually give people the information they need to participate in a democracy.
We say we aspire to be a more diverse industry. Until we empower people of color, and those with different economic backgrounds and diverse experiences of the world that shape their perspective, we cannot expect those audiences who share those racial or economic backgrounds to trust that the media is there to serve them. If we only allow the voices of white people from established backgrounds who have long held power to shape our news, we will continue to harm our democracy.
Journalism fails at showing the systems that drive our society. Individual events and situations may make a good story, but they only illustrate the consequences of the underlying system. If journalism only shows the visible effects of those systems, the people don’t know how to affect it. I believe journalism fails if it doesn’t place those individual events in the context of the underlying whole. Our audiences need to understand the systems that shape our society, what forces drive that system, and at what points you can use a force to change the system.
Let me show a positive example of coverage that reveals the underlying system and empowers the public to advocate for change. Several news organizations have invested in covering the disparity in infant mortality among black babies. Bad coverage would stop there, with the public having little idea what to do to change that outcome. Some of the great coverage we saw in 2018 dug into the underlying causes and revealed the next level: that poor infant outcomes are driven by stresses on mothers before and during pregnancy. Dig further and we reveal the next: the constant experience of racism causes the stress on black women. When journalism frames the coverage around the source instead of just the outcome of heightened infant mortality, audiences have the information they need to advocate for effective social change.
Finally, journalism isn’t good at empowering people to change society. We all know the media landscape is exhausting; we — and our audiences — are all burned out from the daily scandals that don’t actually change anything. But when we treat the sideshow as the main show, we actually disempower our readers. The world feels out of their hands; they think there’s nothing they can do to change it. Work that is good for democracy has to leave our audiences understanding what they can do.
We may say journalism holds the powerful to account. In reality, journalism reveals what is going on, and our audiences take action to make that a reality. If we don’t empower our audiences to take those actions, we’re damaging our democracy.
I spend a lot of my professional time convincing people to take money out of their own pockets to invest in our work. That makes these problems especially vital to me: I put my personal credibility out there every day telling people what we do is essential to society.
We have long celebrated our vision of how journalism enhances democracy. Until we take the steps to change our industry, though, journalism will continue to be bad for democracy.
Kate Myers is executive director of revenue and operations at First Look Media.
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers