The speed of news moved faster than ever this year, at times threatening to induce whiplash among traditional and digital audiences alike. But here at Frontline, we’re finding that, despite how swiftly news cycles come and go and how rapid the pace of breaking news has become, the appetite for in-depth journalism and context isn’t shrinking. It’s growing. Even in the face of algorithm shifts at platforms like Facebook, serious investigative stories are being met with an expanding and enthusiastic digital audience.
For some time, many in the journalism space have equated the digital news environment with shortened attention spans. “What works on digital” was assumed to be shorter, quicker hits — and to some degree, we had that assumption at Frontline. But at the same time, we remained committed to our documentaries both on air and online.
I’m a proponent of a “right-form” approach to journalism — the idea of thinking about how to tell stories from the outset in terms of video vs. audio vs. text, short-form vs. long-form, whatever the right form for the journalism may be. Our shorter-form stories have done well digitally — but the big surprise to us over the past year has been just how strongly our longer-form journalism has resonated with digital audiences.
We’ve seen this play out in a big way through our work on The Frontline Transparency Project — our ongoing effort to open up our reporting and make the source material that goes into building our journalism available and easily sharable. What we’ve done is about as in-depth as it gets: publishing dozens of extended video and text interviews digitally. We wanted to do this to build trust with our audience and to offer an antidote to the prevailing skepticism about the media today.
It was an earnest idea. But as it turns out, it also ended up being an audience one: In the past year, digital viewers watched over 100 million minutes of our video interviews drawn from Frontline’s The Putin Files, one of our biggest Transparency Project installments yet. And they weren’t just watching for a minute or two. They average nearly 40 minutes per session.
That interest in our Transparency Project wasn’t an outlier. We’ve seen a 46 percent year-over-year growth in the number of streams for our documentaries themselves. And the first season of our investigative narrative podcast, The Frontline Dispatch, earned over a million downloads.
What this tells me is that, despite the constant flood of tweets, sound bites, and headlines, people are hungry for context and journalism that goes deeper. People are busier than ever and saturated with information. But there’s a real need that is being answered by in-depth reporting and storytelling. We’re seeing this at Frontline, but audiences are also seeking out longer-form stories everywhere from Netflix’s serialized documentaries, to ESPN with OJ: Made in America, to A&E with The Clinton Affair.
Frontline is making a bet that even — especially — in this rapid-fire news ecosystem, in-depth, context-rich journalism will find growing digital audiences. In the coming year, we’ll see more and more news outlets finding success with deeply reported digital stories — and we’ll find that perhaps this is the sort of experience digital has actually been meant for all along.
Raney Aronson-Rath is executive producer of Frontline.
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”