You love to blame a millennial. We spend too much on fancy toast, we’re up to our eyeballs in debt, and we killed cable TV. (R.I.P.) But it’s time to reevaluate your outlook and attitude toward this generation — we’re next in line to lead all the newsrooms (or however many are left).
The oldest millennials — a charmed 3,629,238 of us were born in the United States in 1981 — are celebrating our 40th birthdays in 2021. We’re parents, step-parents, homeowners, renters, career-oriented, gig workers, mostly digital natives, still on Facebook for some reason, and totally lurking on TikTok.
So here’s our prediction: Despite many obstacles, millennials are ready to lead newsrooms — and we’re going to do it our own way.
For years, the imposter syndrome we felt was underscored — as women, as journalists of color, and as digital natives. We were told we weren’t ready, we didn’t have enough experience, we didn’t have the right experience, we weren’t a good culture fit. or we were too radical.
And then 2020 happened. A number of us middle-management, mid-career, extremely online, Slack-loving newsroom leaders saw and seized the opportunity to help entire news organizations figure out how to keep doing journalism and serve our audiences, while the biggest event of our lives played out around us. Media didn’t stop; in fact, much of it was amazing. Platforms chugged on, local TV and radio newscasts persisted, valuable and lifesaving information was collected and relayed.
So we’ll emerge from 2020 having navigated teams, strategies, and newsrooms through an unprecedented election year on top of a global pandemic that infected and upended every aspect of our lives — all from the discomfort of our homes and tiny squares of our computers.
But as awful as this has been, some of the ways we’ve been able to expedite the adoption of more digital workflows, communication channels, and tools have been pretty encouraging to see.
Let’s face it, unless you’re working at a media company that started out digital-first, most newsrooms have had a hard time with digital culture change. Newsrooms that started and stayed behind the digital curve often over-corrected, becoming obsessed with what’s next (pivot to video, anyone?) leaving journalism’s true purpose — to inform the audience and shed light on forgotten truths — in the dust.
With a number of retirements in the uppermost echelons of journalism coming in 2021, the future of many legacy newsrooms, and perhaps the craft itself, is uncertain — and wide open.
On top of that, those coming up in journalism right now are not necessarily millennials, but Gen Z. They’re the ones who are leading the reckoning for inclusive newsrooms and are often the new union shop leaders. They, along with their allies, are demanding better, more representative leadership that truly understands digital and audience — not the kind of leaders who just spout buzzwords but have never practiced the concepts.
We can’t stop thinking about this section from Ben Smith’s New York Times media column:
[Outgoing Los Angeles Times executive editor Norman] Pearlstine, the only one talking openly of his departure, told me that the new “metrics for success might be different as well — issues such as inclusiveness, such as being anti-racist, such as really commanding some new platform, be it podcasts or video or newsletters, in addition to having journalistic credentials.”
And, he said, the old top-down newsroom management is a thing of the past. “Consent of the governed is something you have to take pretty seriously,” he said.
Whether Pearlstine said all this with enthusiastic support or resigned disdain (what was his tone, Ben??), we’re here for it — literally.
Inclusivity and anti-racism are about the product of journalism as much as it is about the newsroom. True inclusion and representation are long-needed and overdue, and power-sharing with audiences is something misfits have been pushing for years.
While we’ve been waiting to take on this mantle, some of us fear we may be set up for failure. To our credit, though, our lived experience and propensity for experimentation help us. Those of us who’ve thrived in the middle — and again, as women and/or JOCs and/or digital natives — have already created change, albeit some of it incremental. Our ideas have helped to improve hiring practices, reevaluate our pipelines, place a critical lens on our sources, and decenter whiteness in our stories, just to name a few.
There’s no one thing that will save journalism but ourselves. This is the year we need to hit reset. Stop looking ahead and take stock of what we’ve got. We need to look at who we have and (hopefully) invest in bringing back or supporting a lost generation of journalists.
Digital media orgs spent the past 5-7 years in multiple rounds of layoffs and reorgs. Legacy media orgs spent the past 5-7 years arguing “digital people” didn’t have the gravitas to run their newsrooms. And now folks are SHOCKED that there’s a shortage of folks for EIC positions.
— stacy-marie ishmael (@s_m_i) December 17, 2020
So come at us, 2021 — and not with your blame, but with your challenges and opportunities.
P.S. We’re still forecasted to spend most of the year surviving a pandemic so as ever: Take 👏 Breaks 👏.
Julia B. Chan is managing editor of digital at KQED in San Francisco. Kim Bui is director of audience innovation at the Arizona Republic.
You love to blame a millennial. We spend too much on fancy toast, we’re up to our eyeballs in debt, and we killed cable TV. (R.I.P.) But it’s time to reevaluate your outlook and attitude toward this generation — we’re next in line to lead all the newsrooms (or however many are left).
The oldest millennials — a charmed 3,629,238 of us were born in the United States in 1981 — are celebrating our 40th birthdays in 2021. We’re parents, step-parents, homeowners, renters, career-oriented, gig workers, mostly digital natives, still on Facebook for some reason, and totally lurking on TikTok.
So here’s our prediction: Despite many obstacles, millennials are ready to lead newsrooms — and we’re going to do it our own way.
For years, the imposter syndrome we felt was underscored — as women, as journalists of color, and as digital natives. We were told we weren’t ready, we didn’t have enough experience, we didn’t have the right experience, we weren’t a good culture fit. or we were too radical.
And then 2020 happened. A number of us middle-management, mid-career, extremely online, Slack-loving newsroom leaders saw and seized the opportunity to help entire news organizations figure out how to keep doing journalism and serve our audiences, while the biggest event of our lives played out around us. Media didn’t stop; in fact, much of it was amazing. Platforms chugged on, local TV and radio newscasts persisted, valuable and lifesaving information was collected and relayed.
So we’ll emerge from 2020 having navigated teams, strategies, and newsrooms through an unprecedented election year on top of a global pandemic that infected and upended every aspect of our lives — all from the discomfort of our homes and tiny squares of our computers.
But as awful as this has been, some of the ways we’ve been able to expedite the adoption of more digital workflows, communication channels, and tools have been pretty encouraging to see.
Let’s face it, unless you’re working at a media company that started out digital-first, most newsrooms have had a hard time with digital culture change. Newsrooms that started and stayed behind the digital curve often over-corrected, becoming obsessed with what’s next (pivot to video, anyone?) leaving journalism’s true purpose — to inform the audience and shed light on forgotten truths — in the dust.
With a number of retirements in the uppermost echelons of journalism coming in 2021, the future of many legacy newsrooms, and perhaps the craft itself, is uncertain — and wide open.
On top of that, those coming up in journalism right now are not necessarily millennials, but Gen Z. They’re the ones who are leading the reckoning for inclusive newsrooms and are often the new union shop leaders. They, along with their allies, are demanding better, more representative leadership that truly understands digital and audience — not the kind of leaders who just spout buzzwords but have never practiced the concepts.
We can’t stop thinking about this section from Ben Smith’s New York Times media column:
[Outgoing Los Angeles Times executive editor Norman] Pearlstine, the only one talking openly of his departure, told me that the new “metrics for success might be different as well — issues such as inclusiveness, such as being anti-racist, such as really commanding some new platform, be it podcasts or video or newsletters, in addition to having journalistic credentials.”
And, he said, the old top-down newsroom management is a thing of the past. “Consent of the governed is something you have to take pretty seriously,” he said.
Whether Pearlstine said all this with enthusiastic support or resigned disdain (what was his tone, Ben??), we’re here for it — literally.
Inclusivity and anti-racism are about the product of journalism as much as it is about the newsroom. True inclusion and representation are long-needed and overdue, and power-sharing with audiences is something misfits have been pushing for years.
While we’ve been waiting to take on this mantle, some of us fear we may be set up for failure. To our credit, though, our lived experience and propensity for experimentation help us. Those of us who’ve thrived in the middle — and again, as women and/or JOCs and/or digital natives — have already created change, albeit some of it incremental. Our ideas have helped to improve hiring practices, reevaluate our pipelines, place a critical lens on our sources, and decenter whiteness in our stories, just to name a few.
There’s no one thing that will save journalism but ourselves. This is the year we need to hit reset. Stop looking ahead and take stock of what we’ve got. We need to look at who we have and (hopefully) invest in bringing back or supporting a lost generation of journalists.
Digital media orgs spent the past 5-7 years in multiple rounds of layoffs and reorgs. Legacy media orgs spent the past 5-7 years arguing “digital people” didn’t have the gravitas to run their newsrooms. And now folks are SHOCKED that there’s a shortage of folks for EIC positions.
— stacy-marie ishmael (@s_m_i) December 17, 2020
So come at us, 2021 — and not with your blame, but with your challenges and opportunities.
P.S. We’re still forecasted to spend most of the year surviving a pandemic so as ever: Take 👏 Breaks 👏.
Julia B. Chan is managing editor of digital at KQED in San Francisco. Kim Bui is director of audience innovation at the Arizona Republic.
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
Kawandeep Virdee Goodbye, doomscroll
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
AX Mina 2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
Juleyka Lantigua The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Ariel Zirulnick Local newsrooms question their paywalls
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
Ariane Bernard Going solo is still only a path for the few
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
Imaeyen Ibanga Journalism gets unmasked
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Joshua P. Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Linda Solomon Wood Canada steps up for journalism
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Jennifer Choi What have we done for you lately?
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
Kristen Muller Engaged journalism scales
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Sarah Marshall The year audiences need extra cheer
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
J. Siguru Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
Megan McCarthy Readers embrace a low-information diet
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Richard Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality