Tech companies get aggressive in local
1. 2021 will be a turning point for local journalism — but not as we’ve known it. The relentless shuttering of local newspapers will continue, but in parallel a handful of tech-savvy mobile apps — Citizen, Nextdoor, News Break, SmartNews — will raise substantial funding and aggressively close out a process of creative destruction sweeping the industry, opening across all major American cities and encroaching on new overseas markets.
2. YouTube and Spotify will find themselves on a collision course as podcasting and video converge. Spotify will encourage its stars to follow Joe Rogan’s lead in shooting videos of popular podcasts but providing them exclusively to Spotify. YouTube will push podcast versions of its creators’ videos. Apple will start to flex its muscle, too, engaging more aggressively in the podcast-plus-video space, getting stars from Apple TV+ to spin off audio shows and creating a premium tier for podcasts.
3. Apple, Facebook, and Google will push the boundaries of news innovation, building on the launches of Apple News+, Facebook News, and Google News Showcase. This will force all major publishers to assess their relationships with the tech behemoths, and seek to negotiate deals that both safeguard and benefit their brands. The platforms will target audio, local news, and frictionless subscriptions as areas ripe for innovation.
Edward Roussel is the chief innovation officer for Dow Jones.
1. 2021 will be a turning point for local journalism — but not as we’ve known it. The relentless shuttering of local newspapers will continue, but in parallel a handful of tech-savvy mobile apps — Citizen, Nextdoor, News Break, SmartNews — will raise substantial funding and aggressively close out a process of creative destruction sweeping the industry, opening across all major American cities and encroaching on new overseas markets.
2. YouTube and Spotify will find themselves on a collision course as podcasting and video converge. Spotify will encourage its stars to follow Joe Rogan’s lead in shooting videos of popular podcasts but providing them exclusively to Spotify. YouTube will push podcast versions of its creators’ videos. Apple will start to flex its muscle, too, engaging more aggressively in the podcast-plus-video space, getting stars from Apple TV+ to spin off audio shows and creating a premium tier for podcasts.
3. Apple, Facebook, and Google will push the boundaries of news innovation, building on the launches of Apple News+, Facebook News, and Google News Showcase. This will force all major publishers to assess their relationships with the tech behemoths, and seek to negotiate deals that both safeguard and benefit their brands. The platforms will target audio, local news, and frictionless subscriptions as areas ripe for innovation.
Edward Roussel is the chief innovation officer for Dow Jones.
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Ariel Zirulnick Local newsrooms question their paywalls
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
Megan McCarthy Readers embrace a low-information diet
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
Linda Solomon Wood Canada steps up for journalism
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Joshua Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
L. Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Richard J. Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
An Xiao Mina 2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Imaeyen Ibanga Journalism gets unmasked
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Kawandeep Virdee Goodbye, doomscroll
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
james Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
Kristen Muller Engaged journalism scales
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Jennifer Choi What have we done for you lately?
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs
