For almost 100 years, news on the radio has been the constant companion of billions when their eyes and hands are busy and their minds are curious. 2019 will be the year radio — at least on smart speakers — begins to change in profound ways. Soon, we’ll be able to ask our smart speakers questions and have them answered not in a robot’s voice, but by connecting us with beautifully told stories. Broadcasts will begin on our schedule, when we’re ready to listen. They’ll speak to our unique interests and answer our questions. 2019 will be the year when Google and news partners all over the world will create a new interactive “radio.” Together, we’re building a new format that can listen to questions and connect listeners with answers.
For decades, starting a radio show was hard — there were gatekeepers and new shows were expensive to launch. Today those barriers to entry have collapsed, and newsrooms around the world are reaching new audiences and giving their work a powerful new voice.
The number of great audio journalism programs is exploding, and the line between newspapers and broadcasters is blurring. In less than two years, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, Axios, Gannett, and The Guardian have all launched new daily news podcasts. NPR, ABC, and the CBC have expanded their digital-first work as well.
While podcasting has created a wealth of new programs, radio journalism is not dead. It’s thriving. And smart speakers still face some big challenges. There might be a dozen great new shows hidden inside your Google Home or lurking in Alexa’s brain — but if you don’t know how to ask a smart speaker for them, by name, you may never find them.
Unlike conventional radios, smart speakers don’t have dials you can flip through to find something new. There is no “Discover Weekly” for news or podcasts. Spotify’s suggested playlists don’t really exist this world…yet. In 2019, the Google News Initiative is funding 40 smart-speaker projects in 10 languages with publishers and broadcasters from 19 countries. And we’re prototyping a new way to listen to the news on smart speakers and using artificial intelligence to make the experience better every time you tune in.
We believe that together, we can build a new kind of experience will allow listeners to explore the expanding world of audio journalism — and help publishers and broadcasters discover new devoted fans.
Steve Henn is news content lead for Google Assistant.
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions