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