Archives: 2019

Community becomes a core newsroom value
“Newsrooms will no longer build community just because it’s nice; newsrooms will lean into the opportunity to connect with the people who are reading and sharing their work in order to have a devoted audience.” Lauren Katz
Smart speakers get smarter
“There might be a dozen great new shows hidden inside your Google Home or lurking in Alexa’s brain — but if you don’t know how to ask a smart speaker for them, by name, you may never find them.” Steve Henn
Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
“Nonprofits, public media, and digital natives are all well versed in collaboration. But newspapers, which still employ a huge chunk of local journalists across the United States, aren’t.” Stefanie Murray
Data journalism goes undercover
“Having basic data skills should be exactly as exciting as being able to send an email or make a phone call. Only then will data journalists lose their unicorn status, allowing the field of data journalism to simply disappear in the field of journalism.” Winny de Jong
Putting the social back in social media
“Social and audience teams share similar goals, but in 2019, I see the two merging in order to accomplish them. And quite frankly, I think it’s long overdue: Social will not just be about running accounts, but reaching audiences.” Mandy Velez
A design system for responsible publishing
“We’ve spent so many years designing for an emotional response. The time to design for responsibility is here.” Rishad Patel
Publishers build a common tech platform together
“From a business standpoint, publishers aren’t competing with each other so much as they are with the big technology platforms — Google, Facebook, Apple, and so on. Yet publishers expend huge amounts of energy optimizing competitively against one another.” Jonathan Gill
You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
“The best news organizations, those working to secure their place in a rapidly shifting journalism world, will not only recruit more people of color but will work hard to get them to stay by intentionally shifting the culture.” Jennifer Dargan
AI finally becomes helpful
“More achievable projects — like feeding reporters story tips, automated tracking of data to uncover fraud, and scripts to keep published stories up-to-date — can make work easier for journalists.” Jeremy Gilbert
The year of iterative journalism
“Iterative journalism is empathetic journalism: It uses audience interviews, surveys, analysis of comments, and observation to learn what readers care about, not just how many of them there are.” Francesco Marconi
In Europe, foundations invest in news
“A tiny fraction of European foundation funding goes to core support for journalism, especially in comparison to the U.S. Yet all of those foundations rely on the enabling environment a robust media provides in order to deliver their programs.” Adam Thomas
The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
“Four years ago, if you were a BuzzFeed or a Vox, you’d just eye NBC as your exit path. Now that story isn’t as attractive.” Mike Isaac
Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
“If the watch can become people’s primary device, it may provide the opportunity to switch the media paradigm from an endless stream to a concentrated dispatch.” Frank Chimero
Fake news wins in Asia
“These democracies will be done in by their own mainstream political parties — including supposedly centrist, secular, democratic ones — who have no real answers for the genuine grievances of citizens.” Cherian George
Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
“If we want people to trust us, we need to recognize that objectivity is complex and that instead of prostrating ourselves blindly at its altar, we need to instead look harder at all of the subtle biases we have, how they affect our work, and how we can be more transparent about them.” Carrie Brown
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