A decade ago, I discovered the word “bespoke” at a meeting in London with the BBC. Until then, that word for “custom-made” wasn’t part of my vocabulary; now it routinely shows up in my presentations and slides. Newsrooms have morphed from a single print edition that was delivered all across town to personalized homepages and even bot-assembled customized articles. And now radio is at the moment where our past as broadcasters is giving way to our future as providers of bespoke listening experiences.
For decades, public radio has broadcast one thing to many people out over the airwaves at the same moment in time. Slowly but surely, that’s been changing. Podcasts allow us to reach subsets of our audience with the topic or talent they are most interested in hearing — whenever they want to listen, freeing listeners from our broadcast clocks.
But the podcast revolution was just the beginning of the transition. Smart speakers and other emerging technologies are ushering in a world where traditional broadcasters are creating audio experiences that are tailor-made for the person listening.
The BBC offers an interactive newscast that can expand and contract to let listeners dive deep into details under each audio headline. This approach means each listener gets a newscast customized to the depth they desire, depending on their level of interest in each story.
NPR, where I work, is using the NPR One systems to create personalized flows of audio content on apps and smart speakers. The content a listener hears is customized and localized depending on when that listener listens, where they live, what they’ve heard before, and how they’ve interacted with our content in the past. Broadcasters across Europe are also working on similar initiatives to create listening experiences that are more handcrafted for the modern listener on the platforms of today.
Pandora and Spotify have taken a competitive bite out of music radio by creating more personalized experiences based on listeners’ tastes in music. Now, Google with its News Assistant and Spotify with Your Daily Drive are looking to nibble into our news and talk formats by applying similar concepts to the spoken word.
While this move to “bespoke” gives journalism organizations powerful ways to delight listeners and readers, it means we have to find new ways to create shared understandings and a common set of facts. It’s one thing for people to adorn themselves with the luxury of a bespoke suit. It is another if our basic understanding of the world is stratified by personalization into information haves with their bespoke news and have-nots with their mass market news. Hopefully, this will be the year we hold ourselves accountable for creating the audience-centered news experiences our listeners and readers want — while still providing all of American society the knowledge and understanding that is needed for our democracy to function.
Tamar Charney is the managing editor of NPR One.
A decade ago, I discovered the word “bespoke” at a meeting in London with the BBC. Until then, that word for “custom-made” wasn’t part of my vocabulary; now it routinely shows up in my presentations and slides. Newsrooms have morphed from a single print edition that was delivered all across town to personalized homepages and even bot-assembled customized articles. And now radio is at the moment where our past as broadcasters is giving way to our future as providers of bespoke listening experiences.
For decades, public radio has broadcast one thing to many people out over the airwaves at the same moment in time. Slowly but surely, that’s been changing. Podcasts allow us to reach subsets of our audience with the topic or talent they are most interested in hearing — whenever they want to listen, freeing listeners from our broadcast clocks.
But the podcast revolution was just the beginning of the transition. Smart speakers and other emerging technologies are ushering in a world where traditional broadcasters are creating audio experiences that are tailor-made for the person listening.
The BBC offers an interactive newscast that can expand and contract to let listeners dive deep into details under each audio headline. This approach means each listener gets a newscast customized to the depth they desire, depending on their level of interest in each story.
NPR, where I work, is using the NPR One systems to create personalized flows of audio content on apps and smart speakers. The content a listener hears is customized and localized depending on when that listener listens, where they live, what they’ve heard before, and how they’ve interacted with our content in the past. Broadcasters across Europe are also working on similar initiatives to create listening experiences that are more handcrafted for the modern listener on the platforms of today.
Pandora and Spotify have taken a competitive bite out of music radio by creating more personalized experiences based on listeners’ tastes in music. Now, Google with its News Assistant and Spotify with Your Daily Drive are looking to nibble into our news and talk formats by applying similar concepts to the spoken word.
While this move to “bespoke” gives journalism organizations powerful ways to delight listeners and readers, it means we have to find new ways to create shared understandings and a common set of facts. It’s one thing for people to adorn themselves with the luxury of a bespoke suit. It is another if our basic understanding of the world is stratified by personalization into information haves with their bespoke news and have-nots with their mass market news. Hopefully, this will be the year we hold ourselves accountable for creating the audience-centered news experiences our listeners and readers want — while still providing all of American society the knowledge and understanding that is needed for our democracy to function.
Tamar Charney is the managing editor of NPR One.
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
Alana Levinson Brand-backed media gets another look
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
L. Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz News coverage gets geo-fragmented
Tanya Cordrey Saying no to more good ideas
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
Pablo Boczkowski The day after November 4
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Richard J. Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor Think twice before turning to Twitter
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
james Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Sonali Prasad Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
Sarah Alvarez I’m ready for post-news
Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
Nico Gendron Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z
Dannagal G. Young Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Power to the people (on your audience team)
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Seth C. Lewis 20 questions for 2020
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Rachel Schallom The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
Tamar Charney From broadcast to bespoke
An Xiao Mina The Forum we wanted, the forum we got
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
Joshua Darr All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
Brenda P. Salinas Treating MP3 files like text
Nushin Rashidian Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?
Imaeyen Ibanga Let’s take it slow
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
Hossein Derakhshan AI can’t conjure up an Errol Morris
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
Ståle Grut OSINT journalism goes mainstream
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Jennifer Brandel A love letter from the year 2073
Nicholas Jackson What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
Barbara Gray Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Annie Rudd The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Colleen Shalby Journalists become media literacy teachers
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
Rachel Davis Mersey The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide
Logan Jaffe You don’t need fancy tools to listen
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Raney Aronson-Rath News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Mario García Think small (screen)
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”