In 2012, Google kicked off Project Aristotle, a study to learn why the best teams were the most effective. They asked questions and looked for patterns across scores of individual dimensions, such as personality, education, and how long members had worked on the team.
When that yielded no patterns, they looked at team dynamics. You should read The New York Times Magazine article I linked above, but I’ll cut to the chase: The groups that overperformed were the ones that created a safe environment to participate and collaborate in.
Journalism has become more collaborative, but our culture, for the most part, has not. While there are pros and cons to the status quo, it’s clear that it’s currently difficult to create the safe space, empathy, and mutual respect that high-functioning teams need.
This might have continued for a long time, except that 2020 changed everything and forced us to work in a different way. The move to remote work made us more intentional in our efforts to communicate with one another, and created space (though not always safe) for more people to communicate what wasn’t working, as many workplaces publicly reckoned with their racial equity and DEI initiatives.
Looking ahead, 2021 will be a year in which we intentionally decide how we work together, building on the new norms that we hacked in 2020. Companies will need to address broader issues with communication, access, and equity within the workplace. Leaders will need to believe that newsroom culture has a bigger impact on the journalism than they understood in previous years — that a strong team dynamic is as important as their sharp and shiny stars. Managers are key to this transition and will need to reset with a new definition of success, followed by support and training to change.
We’ve known this for years, and there isn’t one weird trick to getting it right, but companies will need to invest to build a culture that allows more people to fully contribute to the work, and they’ll need to create accountability if they want to keep it.
Bo Hee Kim is a director of newsroom strategy at The New York Times.
In 2012, Google kicked off Project Aristotle, a study to learn why the best teams were the most effective. They asked questions and looked for patterns across scores of individual dimensions, such as personality, education, and how long members had worked on the team.
When that yielded no patterns, they looked at team dynamics. You should read The New York Times Magazine article I linked above, but I’ll cut to the chase: The groups that overperformed were the ones that created a safe environment to participate and collaborate in.
Journalism has become more collaborative, but our culture, for the most part, has not. While there are pros and cons to the status quo, it’s clear that it’s currently difficult to create the safe space, empathy, and mutual respect that high-functioning teams need.
This might have continued for a long time, except that 2020 changed everything and forced us to work in a different way. The move to remote work made us more intentional in our efforts to communicate with one another, and created space (though not always safe) for more people to communicate what wasn’t working, as many workplaces publicly reckoned with their racial equity and DEI initiatives.
Looking ahead, 2021 will be a year in which we intentionally decide how we work together, building on the new norms that we hacked in 2020. Companies will need to address broader issues with communication, access, and equity within the workplace. Leaders will need to believe that newsroom culture has a bigger impact on the journalism than they understood in previous years — that a strong team dynamic is as important as their sharp and shiny stars. Managers are key to this transition and will need to reset with a new definition of success, followed by support and training to change.
We’ve known this for years, and there isn’t one weird trick to getting it right, but companies will need to invest to build a culture that allows more people to fully contribute to the work, and they’ll need to create accountability if they want to keep it.
Bo Hee Kim is a director of newsroom strategy at The New York Times.
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
J. Siguru Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
Sarah Marshall The year audiences need extra cheer
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
Richard Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
Linda Solomon Wood Canada steps up for journalism
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
Megan McCarthy Readers embrace a low-information diet
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Jennifer Choi What have we done for you lately?
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Juleyka Lantigua The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
Kristen Muller Engaged journalism scales
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
Imaeyen Ibanga Journalism gets unmasked
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
Ariane Bernard Going solo is still only a path for the few
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
Ariel Zirulnick Local newsrooms question their paywalls
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Joshua P. Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Kawandeep Virdee Goodbye, doomscroll
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
AX Mina 2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations