Obvious but newsy: Consolidation is coming. Vice, BuzzFeed, and Vox Media are all looking at their balance sheets and don’t have the numbers they would want to IPO. There’s some chatter that they will attempt to merge, but that just seems like compounding an existing problem of too much overhead and not enough revenue.
There will have to be layoffs in non-core areas. Perhaps BuzzFeed will have to pare back on some of its more ambitious news gathering and coverage. Let’s hope not.
The biggest albatross is that big media companies like Disney (focused on fighting Netflix) and NBCUniversal (not sure what they’re focused on!) aren’t buying. Four years ago, if you were a BuzzFeed or a Vox, you’d just eye NBC as your exit path. Now that story isn’t as attractive.
Even worse is that if the most promising startups are getting passed on, what happens to the small fries? Mic, Refinery29, Mashable — that ilk— will all have to make some hard decisions (and some already have, as we’ve seen).
I know everyone is saying it’s the year of the podcast, and sure, whatever, maybe. I think it won’t be the actual year of the podcast until someone builds the analytics system to give proper ROI tracking to advertisers. Right now, ad dollars going to podcasts are nothing compared to traditional and digital ad spend. Prove to brands you’re delivering customers and high listen-through rates (beyond the existing “enter the promo code for X podcast on our brand website”) and the ad dollars will really come.
Right now, it’s brand advertising. We need someone to create the AdSense of podcasts. Scale works!
Mike Isaac is a technology reporter for The New York Times.
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
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Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
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Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
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Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
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Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
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Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
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Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
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Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
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Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
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Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
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Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
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Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
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Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
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Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
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Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
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Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
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Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
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Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
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Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
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Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
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Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
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Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
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Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
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Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
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Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
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Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
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Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
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