20200
P
1
20100
R  E
2
2070
D   I   C
3
2050
T   I   O   N
4
2040
S   F   O   R   J
5
2030
O  U  R  N  A  L
6
2020
I  S  M  2  0  2  0
7

Speed through technology

“It’s absolutely overwhelming for media companies with limited and declining resources to assess all of the myriad of startups and scale-ups that are offering magical solutions to transform what’s being done.”

[Click here for an interactive transcript of a version of this prediction.]

There will be an increasing appetite among journalists to leverage AI so they can focus more on meaningful content production than on menial tasks. It’s about focusing on real journalism and not content gathering and its technical complications in this multimedia age. That means leveraging artificial intelligence to automate unnecessary processes. And if you think about it, the growth of magazine journalism (or the appetite for magazine journalism) and podcasting are examples of a desire to get back to real, substantive journalism, not just lists of things that amuse and entertain.

Second, there’s real pressure to find new ways to feed the beast. Journalists have to turn stories around fast, and there’s enormous competition from all sorts of user-generated guerilla news channels. Mainstream media or legacy media have to feed so many different platforms at the same time. That means getting content in fast and out fast, while making sure that accuracy is never compromised. And that, again, is going to require finding ways to leverage technology in order to make sure that content is easily accessed, verified, and distributed with minimal effort, but with absolute assurance that there are no mistakes being sent out. In this era of so-called fake news, there’s no room for newsrooms to make mistakes in the name of speed and competitive pressures. You’ve got to know that whatever quote, whatever content you’re sending out is absolutely accurate. And so people are looking for ways to leverage technologies that will help them do that under such intense deadline pressure.

No. 3: We are, as we all know, in the middle of a huge digital transformation in journalism. Media companies have been cautiously testing the waters with tech and digital tools that will enhance their ability to produce content and will open up new markets and new avenues for distribution. The challenge is that it’s absolutely overwhelming for media companies with limited and declining resources to assess all of the myriad of startups and scale-ups that are offering magical solutions to transform what’s being done. That doesn’t mean, though, that you can afford to ignore it and wait for others to lead the way. The amount of effort being put into adopting these new tools will, in many ways, determine which newsrooms are successful in the years ahead and which ones fail.

I think also, finally, No. 4, the rebirth of local journalism. I think that what we’ve seen in the last 20 years is a chronic hemorrhaging of resources in local journalism. We’ve seen local newsrooms fold and contract in ways that really are alarming. It means that politicians and others aren’t being held accountable by journalists in the way that they need to be. And it means that one of the pillars of democracy — this public sense of accountability — is being compromised through the new economic models that have disrupted and undermined community journalism. We have opportunities now, though, with technology and efficiencies, with foundations like Laurene Powell Jobs’, and funds to put focus back on local journalism, to find new models and to support new models — to make sure that community journalism, which is really the foundation of our democracies, can be sustainable and can have an influence on public debate.

Jeff Kofman is CEO and founder of Trint.

[Click here for an interactive transcript of a version of this prediction.]

There will be an increasing appetite among journalists to leverage AI so they can focus more on meaningful content production than on menial tasks. It’s about focusing on real journalism and not content gathering and its technical complications in this multimedia age. That means leveraging artificial intelligence to automate unnecessary processes. And if you think about it, the growth of magazine journalism (or the appetite for magazine journalism) and podcasting are examples of a desire to get back to real, substantive journalism, not just lists of things that amuse and entertain.

Second, there’s real pressure to find new ways to feed the beast. Journalists have to turn stories around fast, and there’s enormous competition from all sorts of user-generated guerilla news channels. Mainstream media or legacy media have to feed so many different platforms at the same time. That means getting content in fast and out fast, while making sure that accuracy is never compromised. And that, again, is going to require finding ways to leverage technology in order to make sure that content is easily accessed, verified, and distributed with minimal effort, but with absolute assurance that there are no mistakes being sent out. In this era of so-called fake news, there’s no room for newsrooms to make mistakes in the name of speed and competitive pressures. You’ve got to know that whatever quote, whatever content you’re sending out is absolutely accurate. And so people are looking for ways to leverage technologies that will help them do that under such intense deadline pressure.

No. 3: We are, as we all know, in the middle of a huge digital transformation in journalism. Media companies have been cautiously testing the waters with tech and digital tools that will enhance their ability to produce content and will open up new markets and new avenues for distribution. The challenge is that it’s absolutely overwhelming for media companies with limited and declining resources to assess all of the myriad of startups and scale-ups that are offering magical solutions to transform what’s being done. That doesn’t mean, though, that you can afford to ignore it and wait for others to lead the way. The amount of effort being put into adopting these new tools will, in many ways, determine which newsrooms are successful in the years ahead and which ones fail.

I think also, finally, No. 4, the rebirth of local journalism. I think that what we’ve seen in the last 20 years is a chronic hemorrhaging of resources in local journalism. We’ve seen local newsrooms fold and contract in ways that really are alarming. It means that politicians and others aren’t being held accountable by journalists in the way that they need to be. And it means that one of the pillars of democracy — this public sense of accountability — is being compromised through the new economic models that have disrupted and undermined community journalism. We have opportunities now, though, with technology and efficiencies, with foundations like Laurene Powell Jobs’, and funds to put focus back on local journalism, to find new models and to support new models — to make sure that community journalism, which is really the foundation of our democracies, can be sustainable and can have an influence on public debate.

Jeff Kofman is CEO and founder of Trint.

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Sarah Alvarez   I’m ready for post-news

Margarita Noriega   The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms

Jim Brady   We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own

Ståle Grut   OSINT journalism goes mainstream

Geneva Overholser   Death to bothsidesism

Steve Henn   The dawning audio web

Dannagal G. Young   Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart

Alice Antheaume   Trade “politics” for “power”

Jakob Moll   A slow-moving tech backlash among young people

Jake Shapiro   Podcasting gets listener relationship management

Millie Tran   Wicked

Barbara Gray   Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement

Pablo Boczkowski   The day after November 4

Joshua P. Darr   All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse

Meg Marco   Everything happens somewhere

Doris Truong   The year of radical salary transparency

Knight Foundation   Five generations of journalists, learning from each other

Alexandra Borchardt   Get out of the office and talk to people

Kristen Muller   The year we operationalize community engagement

Richard Tofel   A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges

Joe Amditis   Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table

Sara K. Baranowski   A big year for little newspapers

Kevin D. Grant   The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth

Stefanie Murray   Charitable giving goes collaborative

Helen Havlak   Platforms shine a light on original reporting

Bill Grueskin   Our ethics codes get an overhaul

Greg Emerson   News apps fall further behind

Jeremy Olshan   All journalism should be service journalism

Mira Lowe   The year of student-powered journalism

Tonya Mosley   The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends

Logan Jaffe   You don’t need fancy tools to listen

Joanne McNeil   A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)

Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young   The promise of nonprofit journalism

Irving Washington   Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job

Cory Haik   We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it

Michael W. Wagner   Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative

Candis Callison   Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change

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Felix Salmon   Spotify launches a news channel

Fiona Spruill   The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves

Jonas Kaiser   Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists

Joni Deutsch   Podcasting unsilences the silent

Colleen Shalby   Journalists become media literacy teachers

Mike Caulfield   Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd

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Talia Stroud   The work of reconnecting starts November 4

Kerri Hoffman   Opening closed systems

Juleyka Lantigua   A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions

Anthony Nadler   Clash of Clans: Election Edition

Jeff Kofman   Speed through technology

M. Scott Havens   First-party data becomes media’s most important currency

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Matthew Pressman   News consumers divide into haves and have-nots

Francesco Zaffarano   TikTok without generational prejudice

Raney Aronson-Rath   News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions

Ernie Smith   The death of the industry fad

Kathleen Searles   Pay more attention to attention

S. Mitra Kalita   The race to 2021

Monica Drake   A renewed focus on misinformation

Peter Bale   Lies get further normalized

Lauren Duca   The rise of the journalistic influencer

Whitney Phillips   A time to question core beliefs

John Keefe   Journalism gets hacked

AX Mina   The Forum we wanted, the forum we got

Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor   Think twice before turning to Twitter

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Annie Rudd   The expanded ambiguity of the news photograph

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Sue Robinson   Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments

Brenda P. Salinas   Treating MP3 files like text

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Alana Levinson   Brand-backed media gets another look

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Simon Galperin   Journalism becomes more democratic

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Sarah Stonbely   More people start caring about news inequality

Catalina Albeanu   Rebuilding journalism, together

Rick Berke   Incoming fire from both left and right

Cristina Kim   Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”

Sonali Prasad   Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional

Heather Bryant   Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving

Elizabeth Dunbar   Frank talk, and then action

Matt DeRienzo   Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers

Eric Nuzum   Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show

Gordon Crovitz   Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms

Adam Thomas   The silver bullet

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Bill Adair   A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song

Jasmine McNealy   A call for context

Christa Scharfenberg   It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women

Sarah Marshall   The year to learn about news moments

Rachel Davis Mersey   The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide

Kourtney Bitterly   Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation

Cindy Royal   Prepare media students for skills, not job titles

Josh Schwartz   Publishers move beyond the metered paywall

Jennifer Brandel   A love letter from the year 2073

Monique Judge   The year to organize, unionize, and fight

Brian Moritz   The end of “stick to sports”

Linda Solomon Wood   Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal

Heidi Tworek   The year of positive pushback

Emily Withrow   The year we kill the news article

Nushin Rashidian   Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?

Craig Newmark   Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation

Beena Raghavendran   The year of the local engagement reporter

Tanya Cordrey   Saying no to more good ideas

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   The business we want, not the business we had

Dan Shanoff   Sports media enters the Bronny era

Don Day   Respect the non-paying audience

Laura E. Davis   Know the context your journalism is operating within

Zizi Papacharissi   A president leads, the press follows, reality fades

J. Siguru Wahutu   Western journalists, learn from your African peers

Tamar Charney   From broadcast to bespoke

John Garrett   It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization

Julia B. Chan   We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏

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Nico Gendron   Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z

Tom Glaisyer   Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful

Marie Gilot   This is fine

Seth C. Lewis   20 questions for 2020

Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker   A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech

Victor Pickard   We reclaim a public good

Nik Usher   All systems down

Masuma Ahuja   Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful

Sarah Schmalbach   Journalist, quantify thyself

Lucas Graves   A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters

Nathalie Malinarich   Betting on loyalty