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