I filed my first story about the coronavirus 10 months ago — before we knew that a global pandemic would dominate our year; before we knew that marginalized communities would be those most hit; before we knew that protests over systemic racism would erupt across the country; before we knew that a winter surge in COVID-19 cases would arrive before Thanksgiving; before we knew all that we didn’t know.
Sitting here now, nearly a year later, it’s clear that 2020 upended our plans and forced us to construct a haphazard playbook. The year also made it impossible for us, as journalists and informers, to remain separate from the story when we were intrinsically woven within its thread.
The people whose lives were flipped upside down included our neighbors, our friends, and our families; the industries shaken by furloughs and layoffs didn’t exclude our own; the relationships altered by a dependency on virtual connection were personal; the outrage on the streets also spilled from newsroom Slack channels to the news pages. Our world changed this year.
In 2021, there’s no going back. We no longer have the luxury to be sideline observers to history.
That isn’t to say that our role as witnesses to time and guardians of fact should give way to bias or self-interest. It means that the definition of good journalism has changed, concretely.
To be a good journalist is no longer solely a matter of being a good editor, wordsmith, reporter, or maven of digital media. To be a good journalist now is also tied to a willingness to stand up and speak out on the behalf of those who haven’t yet found their voice, to sit down and shut up when it’s time to listen.
The only way we can commit to better covering the communities we serve — and often under-serve — is by fighting to deviate from the status quo. We can’t afford to let our reckonings go to waste.
Colleen Shalby is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and secretary of Media Guild of the West.
I filed my first story about the coronavirus 10 months ago — before we knew that a global pandemic would dominate our year; before we knew that marginalized communities would be those most hit; before we knew that protests over systemic racism would erupt across the country; before we knew that a winter surge in COVID-19 cases would arrive before Thanksgiving; before we knew all that we didn’t know.
Sitting here now, nearly a year later, it’s clear that 2020 upended our plans and forced us to construct a haphazard playbook. The year also made it impossible for us, as journalists and informers, to remain separate from the story when we were intrinsically woven within its thread.
The people whose lives were flipped upside down included our neighbors, our friends, and our families; the industries shaken by furloughs and layoffs didn’t exclude our own; the relationships altered by a dependency on virtual connection were personal; the outrage on the streets also spilled from newsroom Slack channels to the news pages. Our world changed this year.
In 2021, there’s no going back. We no longer have the luxury to be sideline observers to history.
That isn’t to say that our role as witnesses to time and guardians of fact should give way to bias or self-interest. It means that the definition of good journalism has changed, concretely.
To be a good journalist is no longer solely a matter of being a good editor, wordsmith, reporter, or maven of digital media. To be a good journalist now is also tied to a willingness to stand up and speak out on the behalf of those who haven’t yet found their voice, to sit down and shut up when it’s time to listen.
The only way we can commit to better covering the communities we serve — and often under-serve — is by fighting to deviate from the status quo. We can’t afford to let our reckonings go to waste.
Colleen Shalby is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and secretary of Media Guild of the West.
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Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
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Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
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Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
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Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
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Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
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Jody Brannon People won’t renew
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Jennifer Choi What have we done for you lately?
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Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
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Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
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Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
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Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
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Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
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Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
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Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
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Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
J. Siguru Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
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Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
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Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
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Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
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Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
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Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
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Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
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Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
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Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
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Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
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Richard Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
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Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
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John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
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Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
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John Garrett A surprisingly good year
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
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Joshua P. Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
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