Ideally, journalism clearly and transparently reports the verifiable truth to an audience that trusts the information they consume in such a way that they use it to meaningfully deliberate about the choices they face.
In 2020, I expect journalists to continue to struggle with how to handle issues of truth — when they know the truth, and when they don’t — and citizens to continue to struggle deciding who they can trust across all levels of the information ecology in which they live. These struggles are likely to occur in an increasingly fractured and contentious political environment.
That said, there’s reason to believe, as Talia Stroud noted last year, that journalists’ ability to shed light across lines of difference can continue to play a role in how some citizens deliberate about their political choices.
Living in a contentious political era will continue to seep into people’s everyday lives in ways that it usually doesn’t, fracturing friendships along the way. In 2018, our survey of Wisconsinites found that about half said they’d stopped talking politics with someone over political disagreements, while 20 percent of people literally ended friendships or family relationships due to political disagreements. This is likely to get worse in what will be a very contentious election year.
On the journalism side, I expect journalists to continue highlighting extreme voices, which leads to misperceptions about the nature and extremity of our political divides. I also suspect mainstream outlets will continue to diverge on questions of who to interview, how to recognize what is real (especially on social media), and when to call a lie a lie.
Despite some evidence that many politically minded people live in partisan echo chambers that encourage increased political fracture, there’s strong evidence that encountering information across lines of difference (a) happens and (b) is consequential. In our investigation of how people’s information diet relates to their vote choices, we found that split-ticket votes were mostly likely to be cast by precisely those folks who spend some time with news media that reports from a different ideological perspective than their own. In forthcoming work in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, we show that people who seek news from across lines of difference and talk politics with people across lines of difference have less polarized attitudes about political leaders and groups, even when accounting for their county’s economic resilience, population change, and health outcomes.
Though 2020 will surely exacerbate old challenges while raising new ones, I’m hopeful that the journalism that clearly and transparently reports the verifiable truth will be helpful to citizens seeking to make sense of their world.
Michael W. Wagner is a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin.
Ideally, journalism clearly and transparently reports the verifiable truth to an audience that trusts the information they consume in such a way that they use it to meaningfully deliberate about the choices they face.
In 2020, I expect journalists to continue to struggle with how to handle issues of truth — when they know the truth, and when they don’t — and citizens to continue to struggle deciding who they can trust across all levels of the information ecology in which they live. These struggles are likely to occur in an increasingly fractured and contentious political environment.
That said, there’s reason to believe, as Talia Stroud noted last year, that journalists’ ability to shed light across lines of difference can continue to play a role in how some citizens deliberate about their political choices.
Living in a contentious political era will continue to seep into people’s everyday lives in ways that it usually doesn’t, fracturing friendships along the way. In 2018, our survey of Wisconsinites found that about half said they’d stopped talking politics with someone over political disagreements, while 20 percent of people literally ended friendships or family relationships due to political disagreements. This is likely to get worse in what will be a very contentious election year.
On the journalism side, I expect journalists to continue highlighting extreme voices, which leads to misperceptions about the nature and extremity of our political divides. I also suspect mainstream outlets will continue to diverge on questions of who to interview, how to recognize what is real (especially on social media), and when to call a lie a lie.
Despite some evidence that many politically minded people live in partisan echo chambers that encourage increased political fracture, there’s strong evidence that encountering information across lines of difference (a) happens and (b) is consequential. In our investigation of how people’s information diet relates to their vote choices, we found that split-ticket votes were mostly likely to be cast by precisely those folks who spend some time with news media that reports from a different ideological perspective than their own. In forthcoming work in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, we show that people who seek news from across lines of difference and talk politics with people across lines of difference have less polarized attitudes about political leaders and groups, even when accounting for their county’s economic resilience, population change, and health outcomes.
Though 2020 will surely exacerbate old challenges while raising new ones, I’m hopeful that the journalism that clearly and transparently reports the verifiable truth will be helpful to citizens seeking to make sense of their world.
Michael W. Wagner is a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin.
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”
L. Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
Tanya Cordrey Saying no to more good ideas
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Mario García Think small (screen)
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
Tamar Charney From broadcast to bespoke
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
Ståle Grut OSINT journalism goes mainstream
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Power to the people (on your audience team)
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline
Pablo Boczkowski The day after November 4
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
Rachel Schallom The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor Think twice before turning to Twitter
Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
Dannagal G. Young Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
Nicholas Jackson What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support
Sonali Prasad Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz News coverage gets geo-fragmented
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Nico Gendron Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z
james Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
Richard J. Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Jennifer Brandel A love letter from the year 2073
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
An Xiao Mina The Forum we wanted, the forum we got
Rachel Davis Mersey The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide
Barbara Gray Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement
Joshua Darr All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
Brenda P. Salinas Treating MP3 files like text
Jonas Kaiser Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
Logan Jaffe You don’t need fancy tools to listen
Alana Levinson Brand-backed media gets another look
Seth C. Lewis 20 questions for 2020
Simon Galperin Journalism becomes more democratic
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
Colleen Shalby Journalists become media literacy teachers
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement
Annie Rudd The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Imaeyen Ibanga Let’s take it slow
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
Nushin Rashidian Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
Raney Aronson-Rath News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions