The media industry realizes that some of the systems we’ve all come to rely on aren’t a win-win situation after all.
For much of the last decade, newsrooms have increasingly turned to infrastructure controlled by tech companies to distribute their work. But those Big Tech companies are under scrutiny by regulators and the public — especially their business model of extracting data from users (and the bad incentives that creates for online interaction).
Additionally, the implementation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation in 2018 and the recently approved California Consumer Privacy Act have broad implications for privacy rights on the web and the media industry at large.
None of this is a recipe for trust, which the media industry needs to foster now more than ever.
When The Markup launched earlier this year, we made a public commitment to collect as little personal information about our readers as possible and to never monetize the data we do collect. We also built tools like Blacklight to reveal the invisible infrastructure of data extraction online — what is taken from you every time you visit a website. Building custom tools like Blacklight is core to our “journalism-as-a-service” approach of bringing tech expertise to tech reporting and helping to lift civic understanding of critical data privacy issues.
In 2021, more newsrooms will make privacy promises to their readers in a bid to avoid regulation and engender reader trust. This will force tricky conversations within legacy outlets operating within ad-supported frameworks and will accelerate the growth of nonprofit newsrooms and outlets relying on membership models, which can more easily live up to privacy promises.
In the end, readers win.
Nabiha Syed is president of The Markup.
The media industry realizes that some of the systems we’ve all come to rely on aren’t a win-win situation after all.
For much of the last decade, newsrooms have increasingly turned to infrastructure controlled by tech companies to distribute their work. But those Big Tech companies are under scrutiny by regulators and the public — especially their business model of extracting data from users (and the bad incentives that creates for online interaction).
Additionally, the implementation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation in 2018 and the recently approved California Consumer Privacy Act have broad implications for privacy rights on the web and the media industry at large.
None of this is a recipe for trust, which the media industry needs to foster now more than ever.
When The Markup launched earlier this year, we made a public commitment to collect as little personal information about our readers as possible and to never monetize the data we do collect. We also built tools like Blacklight to reveal the invisible infrastructure of data extraction online — what is taken from you every time you visit a website. Building custom tools like Blacklight is core to our “journalism-as-a-service” approach of bringing tech expertise to tech reporting and helping to lift civic understanding of critical data privacy issues.
In 2021, more newsrooms will make privacy promises to their readers in a bid to avoid regulation and engender reader trust. This will force tricky conversations within legacy outlets operating within ad-supported frameworks and will accelerate the growth of nonprofit newsrooms and outlets relying on membership models, which can more easily live up to privacy promises.
In the end, readers win.
Nabiha Syed is president of The Markup.
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Imaeyen Ibanga Journalism gets unmasked
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
Juleyka Lantigua The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism
Ariel Zirulnick Local newsrooms question their paywalls
Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
Joshua P. Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Richard Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Kristen Muller Engaged journalism scales
J. Siguru Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Sarah Marshall The year audiences need extra cheer
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Megan McCarthy Readers embrace a low-information diet
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
Jennifer Choi What have we done for you lately?
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
An Xiao Mina 2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary
Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Ariane Bernard Going solo is still only a path for the few
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action