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