“I’m a multimedia ninja” is how I used to describe myself and my journalism work. You want video? Done. You want an interactive timeline? Done. How about an illustrated scrollmation that triggers archival audio with some text in between the gif subheads, and then a submission box at the end where people can share their own stories about this topic, etc., etc., etc.?
No more. In 2020, we get less fancy. We’ll innovate less for the sake of creating new things and more on top of what’s already created. Let’s spend less time brainstorming and more time learning from our failures. In 2020, let’s throw the burden of stylish innovation out the window. I’m not just talking about digital presentation, products, or multimedia storytelling, either. I’m talking about how we fundamentally do our jobs — how we listen and engage with people and communities our journalism is in service to.
However you or your newsroom define engagement, there’s a widespread perception that the responsibility of doing journalism informed by community — engaged journalism, a.k.a. journalism — is a new, innovative idea. It is inherently neither. In 2018 and 2019, “listening” became a journalism buzzword, a superpower of community engagement skills with a new flurry of infrastructure, tools, and resources to help journalists maximize their full listening potential.
This is a healthy shift overall. But in 2020, let’s not forget that listening well doesn’t always require innovative tools or strategies. Sometimes it can be as simple as acknowledging, internalizing, and thoughtfully responding to emails, Facebook messages, and tweets from readers and community members. Did you respond to the reader who sent you a story idea, even if you weren’t interested in pursuing it? If we can’t listen to people who are already engaging with us on a basic level, how will we listen to people who aren’t yet — to the communities we’re pursuing new engagement with?
In 2018, a reader wrote to me with some advice: “The more you are there, the more you will find.” In 2020, with seemingly unlimited forms of innovation, let’s prioritize simply paying attention.
Logan Jaffe is the engagement reporter at ProPublica Illinois.
“I’m a multimedia ninja” is how I used to describe myself and my journalism work. You want video? Done. You want an interactive timeline? Done. How about an illustrated scrollmation that triggers archival audio with some text in between the gif subheads, and then a submission box at the end where people can share their own stories about this topic, etc., etc., etc.?
No more. In 2020, we get less fancy. We’ll innovate less for the sake of creating new things and more on top of what’s already created. Let’s spend less time brainstorming and more time learning from our failures. In 2020, let’s throw the burden of stylish innovation out the window. I’m not just talking about digital presentation, products, or multimedia storytelling, either. I’m talking about how we fundamentally do our jobs — how we listen and engage with people and communities our journalism is in service to.
However you or your newsroom define engagement, there’s a widespread perception that the responsibility of doing journalism informed by community — engaged journalism, a.k.a. journalism — is a new, innovative idea. It is inherently neither. In 2018 and 2019, “listening” became a journalism buzzword, a superpower of community engagement skills with a new flurry of infrastructure, tools, and resources to help journalists maximize their full listening potential.
This is a healthy shift overall. But in 2020, let’s not forget that listening well doesn’t always require innovative tools or strategies. Sometimes it can be as simple as acknowledging, internalizing, and thoughtfully responding to emails, Facebook messages, and tweets from readers and community members. Did you respond to the reader who sent you a story idea, even if you weren’t interested in pursuing it? If we can’t listen to people who are already engaging with us on a basic level, how will we listen to people who aren’t yet — to the communities we’re pursuing new engagement with?
In 2018, a reader wrote to me with some advice: “The more you are there, the more you will find.” In 2020, with seemingly unlimited forms of innovation, let’s prioritize simply paying attention.
Logan Jaffe is the engagement reporter at ProPublica Illinois.
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Power to the people (on your audience team)
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Colleen Shalby Journalists become media literacy teachers
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Rachel Davis Mersey The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
Rachel Schallom The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
Mario García Think small (screen)
J. Siguru Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
Nico Gendron Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor Think twice before turning to Twitter
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
Barbara Gray Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Jonas Kaiser Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
Tanya Cordrey Saying no to more good ideas
Seth C. Lewis 20 questions for 2020
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Imaeyen Ibanga Let’s take it slow
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
Logan Jaffe You don’t need fancy tools to listen
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
Nicholas Jackson What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support
Dannagal G. Young Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
Richard Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”
Annie Rudd The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
Sonali Prasad Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional
Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
Pablo Boczkowski The day after November 4
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Joshua P. Darr All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Juleyka Lantigua A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Hossein Derakhshan AI can’t conjure up an Errol Morris
Sarah Alvarez I’m ready for post-news
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
Simon Galperin Journalism becomes more democratic
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
Brenda P. Salinas Treating MP3 files like text
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz News coverage gets geo-fragmented
Ståle Grut OSINT journalism goes mainstream
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
An Xiao Mina The Forum we wanted, the forum we got
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Nushin Rashidian Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Raney Aronson-Rath News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions