Not long ago, the media woke up and realized that it didn’t own its relationship with its customers, didn’t manage the business deals profiting from its efforts, and couldn’t control the technology needed to produce its products. The media had ceded virtually everything but the storytelling to Big Tech.
There are lots of factors that broke up the historical dominance of ownership and relationship in media, but it was mostly tied to the platforms. The platforms opened up new opportunities in targeted advertising, which moved the industry emphasis from awareness to transactions, not based on context, but based on data. It also allowed content to be created and consumed everywhere, with the platform holding the primary relationship with the customer. The unlimited opportunity of consumption and access shifted the idea of consumer revenue and what a subscriber means. And the tech, well…the technology was built to capitalize on your attention, everywhere.
True partnerships require trust. Trust between the media company and its audience. Trust between advertising partners and media companies. And trust between different parts of our media companies. We need to have trust between the journalists in the newsroom and their colleagues in engineering.
Meaningful cooperation could help create the scale to counter platform power and defray the costs of ever more complex technology. In 2020, we expect to see publishers beginning to create and share the technology they build to solve our common problems. Once we solve basic challenges of publishing — how to publish lightweight articles on common standards and how to create our own advertising platforms — we can let our news stories be our differentiator, not our tech stacks.
At The Washington Post, we’re committed to looking at new ways we can cooperate together internally and also how we can help collaborate with other media companies to try to support each other. In 2020, if we work together the whole media industry will be much stronger.
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker are director of strategic initiatives and vice president of commercial technology and development at The Washington Post.
Not long ago, the media woke up and realized that it didn’t own its relationship with its customers, didn’t manage the business deals profiting from its efforts, and couldn’t control the technology needed to produce its products. The media had ceded virtually everything but the storytelling to Big Tech.
There are lots of factors that broke up the historical dominance of ownership and relationship in media, but it was mostly tied to the platforms. The platforms opened up new opportunities in targeted advertising, which moved the industry emphasis from awareness to transactions, not based on context, but based on data. It also allowed content to be created and consumed everywhere, with the platform holding the primary relationship with the customer. The unlimited opportunity of consumption and access shifted the idea of consumer revenue and what a subscriber means. And the tech, well…the technology was built to capitalize on your attention, everywhere.
True partnerships require trust. Trust between the media company and its audience. Trust between advertising partners and media companies. And trust between different parts of our media companies. We need to have trust between the journalists in the newsroom and their colleagues in engineering.
Meaningful cooperation could help create the scale to counter platform power and defray the costs of ever more complex technology. In 2020, we expect to see publishers beginning to create and share the technology they build to solve our common problems. Once we solve basic challenges of publishing — how to publish lightweight articles on common standards and how to create our own advertising platforms — we can let our news stories be our differentiator, not our tech stacks.
At The Washington Post, we’re committed to looking at new ways we can cooperate together internally and also how we can help collaborate with other media companies to try to support each other. In 2020, if we work together the whole media industry will be much stronger.
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker are director of strategic initiatives and vice president of commercial technology and development at The Washington Post.
Rachel Schallom The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
Nicholas Jackson What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support
Joshua P. Darr All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
Raney Aronson-Rath News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Jonas Kaiser Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists
Logan Jaffe You don’t need fancy tools to listen
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Richard Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Annie Rudd The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph
Dannagal G. Young Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Rachel Davis Mersey The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide
Alana Levinson Brand-backed media gets another look
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Power to the people (on your audience team)
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Sonali Prasad Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional
Nico Gendron Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
Imaeyen Ibanga Let’s take it slow
Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Jennifer Brandel A love letter from the year 2073
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor Think twice before turning to Twitter
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
An Xiao Mina The Forum we wanted, the forum we got
Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Mario García Think small (screen)
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
J. Siguru Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
Simon Galperin Journalism becomes more democratic
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
Hossein Derakhshan AI can’t conjure up an Errol Morris
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Ståle Grut OSINT journalism goes mainstream
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
Brenda P. Salinas Treating MP3 files like text
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
Sarah Alvarez I’m ready for post-news
Tamar Charney From broadcast to bespoke
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Juleyka Lantigua A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
Pablo Boczkowski The day after November 4
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Tanya Cordrey Saying no to more good ideas
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Barbara Gray Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz News coverage gets geo-fragmented
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Nushin Rashidian Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth