The biggest story of 2020 — probably the biggest story of our lifetimes — was a global one, and covering it effectively required global collaboration among journalists and news organizations.
Media in the United States needed to have eyes and ears in China, Italy, Iran, and other hot spots in order to know what was coming. They needed reporting from all over — from Taiwan and Senegal to Brazil and the U.K. — to know which strategies were succeeding and which ones were failing. And as the race for a vaccine heated up, they needed to tell their audiences what was happening in Asia and Europe, and how progress there would impact the health of Americans.
In 2021, we have a chance to learn from a crisis we were largely unprepared to cover. That means ensuring that we have journalists who are well trained in health and science, but also ensuring that we are networking journalists across the world to share information and reporting. Beyond reporting, we need to share tactics for combating the disinformation that spreads across borders, and strategies for financial sustainability in a worsening economic crisis.
Many organizations have launched efforts to increase global collaboration as the need has become urgent. Investigative journalism groups are joining forces as never before to expose pandemic-related abuses. African women journalists are collaborating across borders on data-driven stories on how Covid-19 is affecting the most vulnerable. Others are teaming up to cover pressing global issues such as climate change and cross-border corruption.
We’ve focused on a global response at my organization, the International Center for Journalists. Early in 2020, we launched the Global Health Crisis Reporting initiative, including an English-language Facebook forum that brings journalists together with everyone from epidemiologists to data journalism experts. We then added fora in four more languages: Arabic, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. We now have more than 10,000 journalists participating across all five groups, and they’re collaborating across borders to boot.
Some examples: One writer found experts in Africa for an article in The New Yorker on what we can learn from that continent’s experience fighting pandemics. Latin American journalists got advice from those in Spain about the stories they needed to write to prepare their audiences for the coming disaster. Arab journalists joined together to produce stories about how different countries were dealing with the spread of the disease.
Investigative journalism groups are teaming up in the Covid-19 era. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) brought together investigative journalists from 37 countries to examine Covid-related spending contracts across Europe — and to uncover massive disparities in the amounts paid, along with which companies got rich as a result.
At the same time, the recently launched Africa Women’s Journalism Project is bringing together journalists and data analysts in five African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda) to produce data-driven coverage on topics such as Covid-19’s impact on health and family finances.
These cross-border reporting projects aren’t limited to the pandemic. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting recently announced the Rainforest Investigations Network, bringing together reporters around the world to dig into the intersection of climate change, corruption, and governance in the rainforests of South America, Africa, and Asia. And the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists brings together top reporters from about 100 countries to cover cross-border corruption, including its best-known collaboration, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Panama Papers project.
U.S. media organizations have often been reluctant to join these efforts. Large ones don’t believe they need any help and might not trust reporting that isn’t produced by their own staffers or long-time contributors. Smaller ones don’t believe they need anything more than wire service reports from outside the places where their audiences live.
But 2020 should serve as a wake-up call. We need the best reporting to cope with the devastating impact of Covid-19. We need to learn what’s working and what’s not in the effort to provide trustworthy information that helps to stem this killer disease. Now is the time to forge the partnerships that will prepare us to cover the biggest stories of 2021 — and beyond.
Patrick Butler is vice president of content and community at the International Center for Journalists.
The biggest story of 2020 — probably the biggest story of our lifetimes — was a global one, and covering it effectively required global collaboration among journalists and news organizations.
Media in the United States needed to have eyes and ears in China, Italy, Iran, and other hot spots in order to know what was coming. They needed reporting from all over — from Taiwan and Senegal to Brazil and the U.K. — to know which strategies were succeeding and which ones were failing. And as the race for a vaccine heated up, they needed to tell their audiences what was happening in Asia and Europe, and how progress there would impact the health of Americans.
In 2021, we have a chance to learn from a crisis we were largely unprepared to cover. That means ensuring that we have journalists who are well trained in health and science, but also ensuring that we are networking journalists across the world to share information and reporting. Beyond reporting, we need to share tactics for combating the disinformation that spreads across borders, and strategies for financial sustainability in a worsening economic crisis.
Many organizations have launched efforts to increase global collaboration as the need has become urgent. Investigative journalism groups are joining forces as never before to expose pandemic-related abuses. African women journalists are collaborating across borders on data-driven stories on how Covid-19 is affecting the most vulnerable. Others are teaming up to cover pressing global issues such as climate change and cross-border corruption.
We’ve focused on a global response at my organization, the International Center for Journalists. Early in 2020, we launched the Global Health Crisis Reporting initiative, including an English-language Facebook forum that brings journalists together with everyone from epidemiologists to data journalism experts. We then added fora in four more languages: Arabic, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. We now have more than 10,000 journalists participating across all five groups, and they’re collaborating across borders to boot.
Some examples: One writer found experts in Africa for an article in The New Yorker on what we can learn from that continent’s experience fighting pandemics. Latin American journalists got advice from those in Spain about the stories they needed to write to prepare their audiences for the coming disaster. Arab journalists joined together to produce stories about how different countries were dealing with the spread of the disease.
Investigative journalism groups are teaming up in the Covid-19 era. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) brought together investigative journalists from 37 countries to examine Covid-related spending contracts across Europe — and to uncover massive disparities in the amounts paid, along with which companies got rich as a result.
At the same time, the recently launched Africa Women’s Journalism Project is bringing together journalists and data analysts in five African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda) to produce data-driven coverage on topics such as Covid-19’s impact on health and family finances.
These cross-border reporting projects aren’t limited to the pandemic. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting recently announced the Rainforest Investigations Network, bringing together reporters around the world to dig into the intersection of climate change, corruption, and governance in the rainforests of South America, Africa, and Asia. And the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists brings together top reporters from about 100 countries to cover cross-border corruption, including its best-known collaboration, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Panama Papers project.
U.S. media organizations have often been reluctant to join these efforts. Large ones don’t believe they need any help and might not trust reporting that isn’t produced by their own staffers or long-time contributors. Smaller ones don’t believe they need anything more than wire service reports from outside the places where their audiences live.
But 2020 should serve as a wake-up call. We need the best reporting to cope with the devastating impact of Covid-19. We need to learn what’s working and what’s not in the effort to provide trustworthy information that helps to stem this killer disease. Now is the time to forge the partnerships that will prepare us to cover the biggest stories of 2021 — and beyond.
Patrick Butler is vice president of content and community at the International Center for Journalists.
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
Megan McCarthy Readers embrace a low-information diet
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
Linda Solomon Wood Canada steps up for journalism
Kawandeep Virdee Goodbye, doomscroll
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
Jennifer Choi What have we done for you lately?
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
Kristen Muller Engaged journalism scales
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Joshua P. Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”
Imaeyen Ibanga Journalism gets unmasked
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Ariel Zirulnick Local newsrooms question their paywalls
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
Sarah Marshall The year audiences need extra cheer
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
Juleyka Lantigua The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
J. Siguru Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
Ariane Bernard Going solo is still only a path for the few
Richard Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration