Most people who spend their days thinking about or doing journalism have strong opinions about how to cover President Trump and his administration. Few of them seem to believe the answer is “objectively.” Objective reporting, the argument goes, simply wasn’t designed for a president who lies compulsively and shows a reckless disregard for democratic norms.
And yet many of the nation’s most influential news outlets continue to apply standards of objectivity that were designed for more normal times. They turn presidential statements, even if patently false, into credulous headlines. They respond earnestly to promises to abrogate the Constitution through executive action. They remind the audience that “both sides” engage in unsavory political behavior, even when the two sides’ actions are far from equivalent.
Each time this happens, there’s a furious reaction from journo-Twitter, and the offending news outlet often scrambles to make amends. For editors and reporters who remained wedded to pre-Trump ideas of objectivity, these dustups must have a cumulative effect: Either you become a convert to the notion that normalizing Trump is a grave journalistic sin, or you become even more determined to fight those who would undermine a cherished principle (and with it, perhaps, the press’ remaining credibility).
In 2019, with the Mueller investigation potentially wrapping up, the Democrats empowered by their takeover of the House, and the next presidential election coming into view, the antipathy between objectivity’s proponents and detractors is likely to rise.
In many ways, this battle mirrors what was happening in American journalism 50 years ago. Faced with the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration’s onslaught on the press, many journalists believed it was time to drop objectivity in favor of a more honest, transparent approach to coverage. But that viewpoint never prevailed at the country’s leading newspapers and networks, who fought off the challenge to objectivity by the late 1970s.
Of course, newspapers and networks don’t hold the same sway today as they did in 1969. Still, I doubt 2019 will mark the death of objectivity in American journalism. The real test will come in 2021 or 2025, when Trump is out office and journalists must decide whether it’s still an option to “normalize” the president.
Matthew Pressman is an assistant professor of journalism at Seton Hall University.
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
james Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Joshua Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness