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