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