In 2021, after publishing their coronavirus coverage outside their paywalls for more than a year, legacy local newsrooms will begin to question both the ethics and the efficacy of having paywalls at all.
The conversation will begin in summer 2021. With most Americans vaccinated, the sense of urgency will decline. Because newsrooms missed the opportunity to expand their relationship with coronavirus-driven readers, cancellations will mount. Newsroom leaders will decide to put all their coverage back behind a paywall, because the emergency is over and doing so might slow the subscription decline.
But this time, some reporters and editors will push back. They got closer to their communities during the pandemic and the 2020 election, and they’re reluctant to wall themselves off once again. They’ll point to successful donation drives at the beginning of the pandemic and the record-breaking reach of their non-paywalled service journalism as evidence that there’s another path to sustainability and impact: one not based on producing journalism for a small segment of the local community and requiring payment to access it.
They’ll highlight the hypocrisy of inviting audience participation in their reporting when so little of the community can actually access their journalism and share it with others.
They’ll raise deep community divisions and the rise of misinformation as evidence that an all-encompassing paywall is no longer a responsible choice for a newsroom that wants to be a part of a healthy community. (Many Americans agree. In the 2020 Digital News Report, 24 percent of Americans expressed concern about the lack of quality information available for free.)
And they’ll point to the success of membership at born-digital local news sites like Berkeleyside and the Richland Source — and members’ “I pay to keep news free for everyone” ethos — as evidence that something else can work.
But the journalists will quickly realize that asking for community-wide support requires a different strategy than selling a product to a narrow audience, and that they need to hear from people other than the local power brokers they’re used to interviewing.
So they’ll convene a new set of local representatives, ones who have long been chipping away at community-level change: small business owners, grassroots organizers, social service providers, restaurateurs, movement lawyers, museum directors, religious leaders, artists, neighborhood association members, music venue owners, and parent-teacher association members. The journalists will ask what their newsroom can do to accelerate the change they’re already working toward.
These community members will describe an alternative future for the city and what stands in the way of that better tomorrow: zoning that creates unaffordable housing, convoluted policies that leave public school students behind, and car-centric planning that thwarts casual interactions between locals with different life experiences.
The community members will share that they fight for the city because they love it and share what made them fall in love with it: the farmer’s market with buskers and local produce, the generations of family members who live a few minutes away, the annual summer block party, the vibrant murals they pass on their way to work.
And as the journalists listen, they’ll process something critical: Most local change happens in inches, not miles. It doesn’t begin when someone decides to run for local office. It begins when someone patronizes a local business instead of Amazon, tends the neighborhood garden, attends a community event on a busy weeknight, or offers their building’s spare wall for a community mural.
The journalists will realize that each time a person chooses community over convenience, it’s a tiny act of civic participation — and that they can design their journalism to help more people take those first steps.
They will establish a new goalpost: connecting locals to one another and equipping them to make their cities places where they can thrive.
They will begin to focus on serving the whole civic space. The lines between “hard news” and “soft news” will fade as they use their voter-guide framework to highlight the arts community and model policy events after neighborhood tours. They’ll do journalism that is useful to swathes of the community who previously found their work irrelevant, and they will help locals find things in the community that bring them joy. They will strengthen their local community by connecting residents with each other and causes they care about.
Much of this community-building work and service journalism will happen in person and through other channels that can’t be paywalled. But what they lose in potential subscription dollars, they’ll make up in underwriting, donations, and sponsorships — community thanks for becoming a part of the solution.
Some newsrooms will go the membership route, inviting community members to co-create with them through financial and non-monetary contributions to their journalism. Some will double down on donations, producing impact reports that highlight their success at activating new civic participants. Others will stick with subscriptions but make major changes to their paywall; a state of emergency will no longer be the only reason that their reporting is made available to all. Editors will be guided by additional questions: Does this help people make better decisions about life here? Does this give locals greater agency?
Journalists will finally understand what Jay Rosen meant when he wrote in 1999 that “empty streets are bad for editors,” because as they help to fill the streets, public meeting rooms, art galleries, and parks, their newsrooms will see a level of public enthusiasm and support they’ve never experienced before.
Ariel Zirulnick is fund director at Membership Puzzle Project and managing editor of the Membership Guide.
In 2021, after publishing their coronavirus coverage outside their paywalls for more than a year, legacy local newsrooms will begin to question both the ethics and the efficacy of having paywalls at all.
The conversation will begin in summer 2021. With most Americans vaccinated, the sense of urgency will decline. Because newsrooms missed the opportunity to expand their relationship with coronavirus-driven readers, cancellations will mount. Newsroom leaders will decide to put all their coverage back behind a paywall, because the emergency is over and doing so might slow the subscription decline.
But this time, some reporters and editors will push back. They got closer to their communities during the pandemic and the 2020 election, and they’re reluctant to wall themselves off once again. They’ll point to successful donation drives at the beginning of the pandemic and the record-breaking reach of their non-paywalled service journalism as evidence that there’s another path to sustainability and impact: one not based on producing journalism for a small segment of the local community and requiring payment to access it.
They’ll highlight the hypocrisy of inviting audience participation in their reporting when so little of the community can actually access their journalism and share it with others.
They’ll raise deep community divisions and the rise of misinformation as evidence that an all-encompassing paywall is no longer a responsible choice for a newsroom that wants to be a part of a healthy community. (Many Americans agree. In the 2020 Digital News Report, 24 percent of Americans expressed concern about the lack of quality information available for free.)
And they’ll point to the success of membership at born-digital local news sites like Berkeleyside and the Richland Source — and members’ “I pay to keep news free for everyone” ethos — as evidence that something else can work.
But the journalists will quickly realize that asking for community-wide support requires a different strategy than selling a product to a narrow audience, and that they need to hear from people other than the local power brokers they’re used to interviewing.
So they’ll convene a new set of local representatives, ones who have long been chipping away at community-level change: small business owners, grassroots organizers, social service providers, restaurateurs, movement lawyers, museum directors, religious leaders, artists, neighborhood association members, music venue owners, and parent-teacher association members. The journalists will ask what their newsroom can do to accelerate the change they’re already working toward.
These community members will describe an alternative future for the city and what stands in the way of that better tomorrow: zoning that creates unaffordable housing, convoluted policies that leave public school students behind, and car-centric planning that thwarts casual interactions between locals with different life experiences.
The community members will share that they fight for the city because they love it and share what made them fall in love with it: the farmer’s market with buskers and local produce, the generations of family members who live a few minutes away, the annual summer block party, the vibrant murals they pass on their way to work.
And as the journalists listen, they’ll process something critical: Most local change happens in inches, not miles. It doesn’t begin when someone decides to run for local office. It begins when someone patronizes a local business instead of Amazon, tends the neighborhood garden, attends a community event on a busy weeknight, or offers their building’s spare wall for a community mural.
The journalists will realize that each time a person chooses community over convenience, it’s a tiny act of civic participation — and that they can design their journalism to help more people take those first steps.
They will establish a new goalpost: connecting locals to one another and equipping them to make their cities places where they can thrive.
They will begin to focus on serving the whole civic space. The lines between “hard news” and “soft news” will fade as they use their voter-guide framework to highlight the arts community and model policy events after neighborhood tours. They’ll do journalism that is useful to swathes of the community who previously found their work irrelevant, and they will help locals find things in the community that bring them joy. They will strengthen their local community by connecting residents with each other and causes they care about.
Much of this community-building work and service journalism will happen in person and through other channels that can’t be paywalled. But what they lose in potential subscription dollars, they’ll make up in underwriting, donations, and sponsorships — community thanks for becoming a part of the solution.
Some newsrooms will go the membership route, inviting community members to co-create with them through financial and non-monetary contributions to their journalism. Some will double down on donations, producing impact reports that highlight their success at activating new civic participants. Others will stick with subscriptions but make major changes to their paywall; a state of emergency will no longer be the only reason that their reporting is made available to all. Editors will be guided by additional questions: Does this help people make better decisions about life here? Does this give locals greater agency?
Journalists will finally understand what Jay Rosen meant when he wrote in 1999 that “empty streets are bad for editors,” because as they help to fill the streets, public meeting rooms, art galleries, and parks, their newsrooms will see a level of public enthusiasm and support they’ve never experienced before.
Ariel Zirulnick is fund director at Membership Puzzle Project and managing editor of the Membership Guide.
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Joshua Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Richard J. Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Linda Solomon Wood Canada steps up for journalism
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Kawandeep Virdee Goodbye, doomscroll
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
Kristen Muller Engaged journalism scales
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations
Ariane Bernard Going solo is still only a path for the few
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
An Xiao Mina 2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Sarah Marshall The year audiences need extra cheer
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Ariel Zirulnick Local newsrooms question their paywalls
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Imaeyen Ibanga Journalism gets unmasked
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
james Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
L. Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying