Holistic medicine for journalism

“A holistic approach means bringing different voices into newsrooms. It means taking on a more innovative approach to product development. It means thinking about how the operations and goals of different departments work together.”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines holistic as “characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.”

In news, holistic means we can’t think about our audience without first thinking about how our journalism determines who our audience is. We can’t think about our journalism without thinking about the context we find ourselves in. And we can’t think about the products we create without thinking about who and what they impact.

The past year has forced the urgent movement toward this type of thinking in 2021.

The incorporation of emerging technology into our newsrooms requires a holistic approach, for instance. When building an editorial algorithm, you need to consider the data being used. Where did it come from? What might be missing from the dataset, given its history and context? How are you training (and re-training) the algorithm? How will it be used? Thinking holistically can help you avoid incorporating bias into your work and ensure you end up with something useful and usable.

The continued proliferation of formats has also forced the onset of holistic thinking. When creating a change on an article page, you need to consider the CMS workflow, and whether it will work in an app, on AMP, on Apple News, and so on. You might think to promote a particular story across channels, but neglect the average performance across your site. With holistic thinking, you will be more able to improve your user’s experience and your company’s bottom line.

Our industry’s coverage of the many difficult circumstances people are experiencing again highlights this need. In journalism pedagogy, we learn the refrain “if it bleeds, it leads.” But we don’t learn about how that idea affects the stories we tell and who is likely to engage with them. It doesn’t help us learn about the intersectionality of stories in an increasingly complex world. With holistic thinking, you might be more likely to dig more deeply and support diverse stories and perspectives often missing across the news industry.

Holistic also implies a medical or health-oriented way of thinking. Holistic medicine, again according to the OED, is “characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the symptoms of a disease.”

This year — with a global pandemic, issues of mental health, and more — has proven how important it is to think about the whole health of our organizations. Our newsrooms are organisms where every team works together to create a sum larger than their individual parts. A holistic approach allows us to iterate on the systems and processes we have in consideration of their knock-on effects on the individual and of the individual on the company.

A holistic approach means bringing different voices into newsrooms. It means taking on a more innovative approach to product development. It means thinking about how the operations and goals of different departments work together.

Over the past 10 years, we have moved quickly from broadcast to engagement thinking. But the next phase of this evolution is to take a holistic approach and to think in terms of ecosystems. A holistic understanding and management of our ecosystems will help us — our industry, our newsrooms, ourselves — be more resilient and faster to adapt in 2021 and beyond.

Alyssa Zeisler is R&D chief and senior product manager for The Wall Street Journal.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines holistic as “characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.”

In news, holistic means we can’t think about our audience without first thinking about how our journalism determines who our audience is. We can’t think about our journalism without thinking about the context we find ourselves in. And we can’t think about the products we create without thinking about who and what they impact.

The past year has forced the urgent movement toward this type of thinking in 2021.

The incorporation of emerging technology into our newsrooms requires a holistic approach, for instance. When building an editorial algorithm, you need to consider the data being used. Where did it come from? What might be missing from the dataset, given its history and context? How are you training (and re-training) the algorithm? How will it be used? Thinking holistically can help you avoid incorporating bias into your work and ensure you end up with something useful and usable.

The continued proliferation of formats has also forced the onset of holistic thinking. When creating a change on an article page, you need to consider the CMS workflow, and whether it will work in an app, on AMP, on Apple News, and so on. You might think to promote a particular story across channels, but neglect the average performance across your site. With holistic thinking, you will be more able to improve your user’s experience and your company’s bottom line.

Our industry’s coverage of the many difficult circumstances people are experiencing again highlights this need. In journalism pedagogy, we learn the refrain “if it bleeds, it leads.” But we don’t learn about how that idea affects the stories we tell and who is likely to engage with them. It doesn’t help us learn about the intersectionality of stories in an increasingly complex world. With holistic thinking, you might be more likely to dig more deeply and support diverse stories and perspectives often missing across the news industry.

Holistic also implies a medical or health-oriented way of thinking. Holistic medicine, again according to the OED, is “characterized by the treatment of the whole person, taking into account mental and social factors, rather than just the symptoms of a disease.”

This year — with a global pandemic, issues of mental health, and more — has proven how important it is to think about the whole health of our organizations. Our newsrooms are organisms where every team works together to create a sum larger than their individual parts. A holistic approach allows us to iterate on the systems and processes we have in consideration of their knock-on effects on the individual and of the individual on the company.

A holistic approach means bringing different voices into newsrooms. It means taking on a more innovative approach to product development. It means thinking about how the operations and goals of different departments work together.

Over the past 10 years, we have moved quickly from broadcast to engagement thinking. But the next phase of this evolution is to take a holistic approach and to think in terms of ecosystems. A holistic understanding and management of our ecosystems will help us — our industry, our newsrooms, ourselves — be more resilient and faster to adapt in 2021 and beyond.

Alyssa Zeisler is R&D chief and senior product manager for The Wall Street Journal.

Ståle Grut   Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox

Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman   Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation

Tim Carmody   Spotify will make big waves in video

Andrew Donohue   The rise of the democracy beat

Francesco Zaffarano   The year we ask the audience what it needs

Janet Haven and Sam Hinds   Is this an AI newsroom?

Benjamin Toff   Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse

Rachel Schallom   The rise of nonprofit journalism continues

Masuma Ahuja   We’ll remember how interconnected our world is

Candis Callison   Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)

Heidi Tworek   A year of news mocktails

Jennifer Brandel   A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation

Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin   Media reparations now

Charo Henríquez   A new path to leadership

Nico Gendron   Ask your readers to help build your products

Ryan Kellett   The bundle gets bundled

Astead W. Herndon   The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again

Bill Adair   The future of fact-checking is all about structured data

Loretta Chao   Open up the profession

Celeste Headlee   The rise of radical newsroom transparency

Brandy Zadrozny   Misinformation fatigue sets in

Kawandeep Virdee   Goodbye, doomscroll

Matt DeRienzo   Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality

Megan McCarthy   Readers embrace a low-information diet

Sonali Prasad   Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise

Danielle C. Belton   A decimated media rededicates itself to truth

Marcus Mabry   News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)

Ray Soto   The news gets spatial

Alyssa Zeisler   Holistic medicine for journalism

Bo Hee Kim   Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture

Cory Bergman   The year after a thousand earthquakes

Marie Shanahan   Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo

Patrick Butler   Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration

Whitney Phillips   Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods

Sara M. Watson   Return of the RSS reader

Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui   Millennials are ready to run things

Colleen Shalby   The definition of good journalism shifts

Natalie Meade   Journalism enters rehab

Raney Aronson-Rath   To get past information divides, we need to understand them first

Doris Truong   Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage

Nicholas Jackson   Blogging is back, but better

Talmon Joseph Smith   The media rejects deficit hawkery

C.W. Anderson   Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?

Rishad Patel   From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers

Mike Caulfield   2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)

Delia Cai   Subscriptions start working for the middle

Jim Friedlich   A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses

Mark Stenberg   The rise of the journalist-influencer

Cindy Royal   J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability

Mike Ananny   Toward better tech journalism

Burt Herman   Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities

Julia Angwin   Show your (computational) work

Eric Nuzum   Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder

David Chavern   Local video finally gets momentum

Sarah Marshall   The year audiences need extra cheer

Hadjar Benmiloud   Get representative, or die trying

Annie Rudd   Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”

Robert Hernandez   Data and shame

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   Stop pretending publishers are a united front

Jesse Holcomb   Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism

Kristen Muller   Engaged journalism scales

Richard Tofel   Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)

Amara Aguilar   Journalism schools emphasize listening

Cory Haik   Be essential

Joni Deutsch   Local arts and music make journalism more joyous

An Xiao Mina   2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary

Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund   The virus ups data journalism’s game

Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula   Expect to see more translations and non-English content

Linda Solomon Wood   Canada steps up for journalism

John Ketchum   More journalists of color become newsroom founders

Nikki Usher   Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media

John Davidow   Reflect and repent

M. Scott Havens   Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption

Gonzalo del Peon   Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side

Sumi Aggarwal   News literacy programs aren’t child’s play

Nonny de la Pena   News reaches the third dimension

Jeremy Gilbert   Human-centered journalism

Ashton Lattimore   Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry

Nisha Chittal   The year we stop pivoting

J. Siguru Wahutu   Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different

Errin Haines   Let’s normalize women’s leadership

Anna Nirmala   Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots

Jody Brannon   People won’t renew

Christoph Mergerson   Black Americans will demand more from journalism

Juleyka Lantigua   The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned

Rachel Glickhouse   Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves

Ernie Smith   Entrepreneurship on rails

Garance Franke-Ruta   Rebundling content, rebuilding connections

Zizi Papacharissi   The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth

Victor Pickard   The commercial era for local journalism is over

Cherian George   Enter the lamb warriors

Jonas Kaiser   Toward a wehrhafte journalism

Ariel Zirulnick   Local newsrooms question their paywalls

Pia Frey   Building growth through tastemakers and their communities

Gabe Schneider   Another year of empty promises on diversity

Jer Thorp   Fewer pixels, more cardboard

Rick Berke   Virtual events are here to stay

Catalina Albeanu   Publish less, listen more

Laura E. Davis   The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change

Don Day   Business first, journalism second

Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes   A shift from conversation to action

Jacqué Palmer   The rise of the plain-text email newsletter

Kate Myers   My son will join every Zoom call in our industry

Ben Werdmuller   The web blooms again

Edward Roussel   Tech companies get aggressive in local

Tonya Mosley   True equity means ownership

Steve Henn   Has independent podcasting peaked?

Mark S. Luckie   Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy

Ben Collins   We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists

Chicas Poderosas   More voices mean better information

Ariane Bernard   Going solo is still only a path for the few

Tanya Cordrey   Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values

Parker Molloy   The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump

Kevin D. Grant   Parachute journalism goes away for good

Jessica Clark   News becomes plural

Tamar Charney   Public radio has a midlife crisis

Brian Moritz   The year sports journalism changes for good

Aaron Foley   Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news

John Garrett   A surprisingly good year

Francesca Tripodi   Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes

Gordon Crovitz   Common law will finally apply to the Internet

Imaeyen Ibanga   Journalism gets unmasked

Logan Jaffe   History as a reporting tool

Renée Kaplan   Falling in love with your subscription

María Sánchez Díez   Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok

Taylor Lorenz   Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy

Basile Simon   Graphics, unite

Sarah Stonbely   Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity

José Zamora   Walking the talk on diversity

Nabiha Syed   Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships

Joshua P. Darr   Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis

Samantha Ragland   The year of journalists taking initiative

Andrew Ramsammy   Stop being polite and start getting real

A.J. Bauer   The year of MAGAcal thinking

Michael W. Wagner   Fractured democracy, fractured journalism

Mandy Jenkins   You build trust by helping your readers

Rodney Gibbs   Zooming beyond talking heads

Matt Skibinski   Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it

Chase Davis   The year we look beyond The Story

Joanne McNeil   Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism

Mariano Blejman   It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism

Tshepo Tshabalala   Go niche

Hossein Derakhshan   Mass personalization of truth

Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli   Defund the crime beat

Moreno Cruz Osório   In Brazil, a push for pluralism

John Saroff   Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites

Jennifer Choi   What have we done for you lately?

David Skok   A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation

Meredith D. Clark   The year journalism starts paying reparations

Sue Cross   A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save

Zainab Khan   From understanding to feeling

Anthony Nadler   Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy

Pablo Boczkowski   Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?

Beena Raghavendran   Journalism gets fused with art

Sam Ford   We’ll find better ways to archive our work

Marissa Evans   Putting community trauma into context

Kerri Hoffman   Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem