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