To this day, one of the most meaningful professional compliments I’ve ever received was when a renowned investigative reporter colleague of mine told me, back when I was a young reporter, that I could “really bring it.”
Thanks mostly to luck and privilege, I started my career almost 15 years ago working on investigative teams. In my own self-centered mythology, I was a Serious Journalist who wrote Serious Things. I was about The Story. The Story was all that mattered.
Like a lot of us, it’s taken a long time for me to accept that other things in our business matter just as much. But if anything good has come out of this mess of a year, it might be that all the upheaval is helping more of our industry come to that realization a whole lot faster than I did.
Long-overdue discussions about race and equity are showing newsroom leaders that developing fair and inclusive systems for recruiting, hiring, rewarding, and retaining their people can no longer take a backseat to the needs of the news report.
The growing demands of journalists for things like clear career paths, regular feedback, and consensus-driven leadership are creating more space for conversations about how newsrooms operate as professional workplaces.
The sudden Covid-driven shift to remote work has forced us to reconsider decades-old patterns of how we communicate, collaborate, and coordinate. Some of those things, in turn, are making us better, more efficient organizations.
The New York Times passed the key milestone of collecting the majority of its revenue from digital sources — in large part because their investments in product and technology reflect an understanding that the products we use to deliver the news are as important as the news itself.
And finally, the strain this year has placed on our physical and mental health has helped remind us that how we treat our colleagues matters most of all. It has helped to destigmatize open discussion of stress and mental health and has pierced the myth that showing up to work tired, sick, or overwhelmed is something to be celebrated.
For a long time, I think we’ve hidden behind the fiction that our jobs as journalists are simple: Show up, work hard, tell some good stories — some of which even make a difference — then rinse and repeat. Not a whole lot to it.
That, plus the relentless demands of the daily news cycle, has always made it easy to retreat to the familiar comfort of The Story rather than fully engage in the hard, unglamorous work of building resilient cultures, quality products, or well-managed teams.
I can see why. The fact that my former colleague’s compliment still means so much to me is a constant reminder that my ego will always be partly wrapped up in my identity as a reporter. There’s something about the mission-driven nature of what we do that makes it easy — maybe too easy — to separate what we do into “the journalism” vs. “everything else,” with the latter often wrongly seen as a cost to the former.
The other thing about journalists and mission, though, is that many of us got into this profession out of a desire to improve the world around us. Once we see a problem, it’s hard for us to unsee it.
2020 forced more of us to truly see some of these issues for the first time. That means that in 2021, there will be more of us than ever who will be motivated to do something about them.
Chase Davis is a senior digital editor at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.
To this day, one of the most meaningful professional compliments I’ve ever received was when a renowned investigative reporter colleague of mine told me, back when I was a young reporter, that I could “really bring it.”
Thanks mostly to luck and privilege, I started my career almost 15 years ago working on investigative teams. In my own self-centered mythology, I was a Serious Journalist who wrote Serious Things. I was about The Story. The Story was all that mattered.
Like a lot of us, it’s taken a long time for me to accept that other things in our business matter just as much. But if anything good has come out of this mess of a year, it might be that all the upheaval is helping more of our industry come to that realization a whole lot faster than I did.
Long-overdue discussions about race and equity are showing newsroom leaders that developing fair and inclusive systems for recruiting, hiring, rewarding, and retaining their people can no longer take a backseat to the needs of the news report.
The growing demands of journalists for things like clear career paths, regular feedback, and consensus-driven leadership are creating more space for conversations about how newsrooms operate as professional workplaces.
The sudden Covid-driven shift to remote work has forced us to reconsider decades-old patterns of how we communicate, collaborate, and coordinate. Some of those things, in turn, are making us better, more efficient organizations.
The New York Times passed the key milestone of collecting the majority of its revenue from digital sources — in large part because their investments in product and technology reflect an understanding that the products we use to deliver the news are as important as the news itself.
And finally, the strain this year has placed on our physical and mental health has helped remind us that how we treat our colleagues matters most of all. It has helped to destigmatize open discussion of stress and mental health and has pierced the myth that showing up to work tired, sick, or overwhelmed is something to be celebrated.
For a long time, I think we’ve hidden behind the fiction that our jobs as journalists are simple: Show up, work hard, tell some good stories — some of which even make a difference — then rinse and repeat. Not a whole lot to it.
That, plus the relentless demands of the daily news cycle, has always made it easy to retreat to the familiar comfort of The Story rather than fully engage in the hard, unglamorous work of building resilient cultures, quality products, or well-managed teams.
I can see why. The fact that my former colleague’s compliment still means so much to me is a constant reminder that my ego will always be partly wrapped up in my identity as a reporter. There’s something about the mission-driven nature of what we do that makes it easy — maybe too easy — to separate what we do into “the journalism” vs. “everything else,” with the latter often wrongly seen as a cost to the former.
The other thing about journalists and mission, though, is that many of us got into this profession out of a desire to improve the world around us. Once we see a problem, it’s hard for us to unsee it.
2020 forced more of us to truly see some of these issues for the first time. That means that in 2021, there will be more of us than ever who will be motivated to do something about them.
Chase Davis is a senior digital editor at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.
Doris Truong Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage
Cindy Royal J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability
Jeremy Gilbert Human-centered journalism
Jonas Kaiser Toward a wehrhafte journalism
Ashton Lattimore Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry
Logan Jaffe History as a reporting tool
Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli Defund the crime beat
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves
M. Scott Havens Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Stop pretending publishers are a united front
Cherian George Enter the lamb warriors
John Saroff Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites
Aaron Foley Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news
Jessica Clark News becomes plural
John Davidow Reflect and repent
Gordon Crovitz Common law will finally apply to the Internet
Julia Angwin Show your (computational) work
Ryan Kellett The bundle gets bundled
Talmon Joseph Smith The media rejects deficit hawkery
Francesca Tripodi Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, a push for pluralism
Celeste Headlee The rise of radical newsroom transparency
Jesse Holcomb Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism
Hossein Derakhshan Mass personalization of truth
Sara M. Watson Return of the RSS reader
Michael W. Wagner Fractured democracy, fractured journalism
Loretta Chao Open up the profession
José Zamora Walking the talk on diversity
Nonny de la Pena News reaches the third dimension
Nico Gendron Ask your readers to help build your products
Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula Expect to see more translations and non-English content
Gabe Schneider Another year of empty promises on diversity
Chicas Poderosas More voices mean better information
Jody Brannon People won’t renew
Don Day Business first, journalism second
Eric Nuzum Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder
Andrew Donohue The rise of the democracy beat
Kevin D. Grant Parachute journalism goes away for good
Tim Carmody Spotify will make big waves in video
Juleyka Lantigua The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned
Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation
Masuma Ahuja We’ll remember how interconnected our world is
Nabiha Syed Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships
Amara Aguilar Journalism schools emphasize listening
Pablo Boczkowski Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?
Sue Cross A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save
Jer Thorp Fewer pixels, more cardboard
Brandy Zadrozny Misinformation fatigue sets in
Victor Pickard The commercial era for local journalism is over
Ariane Bernard Going solo is still only a path for the few
Mike Caulfield 2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)
Joanne McNeil Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism
Colleen Shalby The definition of good journalism shifts
Ståle Grut Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox
Chase Davis The year we look beyond The Story
Taylor Lorenz Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy
Joshua P. Darr Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis
Ben Werdmuller The web blooms again
María Sánchez Díez Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok
Alyssa Zeisler Holistic medicine for journalism
Kawandeep Virdee Goodbye, doomscroll
Laura E. Davis The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change
Jennifer Brandel A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation
Anthony Nadler Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy
Meredith D. Clark The year journalism starts paying reparations
Sam Ford We’ll find better ways to archive our work
Bo Hee Kim Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture
Natalie Meade Journalism enters rehab
Steve Henn Has independent podcasting peaked?
Ray Soto The news gets spatial
Ernie Smith Entrepreneurship on rails
Matt DeRienzo Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality
A.J. Bauer The year of MAGAcal thinking
Errin Haines Let’s normalize women’s leadership
Astead W. Herndon The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again
Renée Kaplan Falling in love with your subscription
Janet Haven and Sam Hinds Is this an AI newsroom?
Whitney Phillips Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods
C.W. Anderson Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?
Zainab Khan From understanding to feeling
Marissa Evans Putting community trauma into context
Zizi Papacharissi The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth
Tanya Cordrey Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values
Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund The virus ups data journalism’s game
Sarah Marshall The year audiences need extra cheer
Mandy Jenkins You build trust by helping your readers
Rodney Gibbs Zooming beyond talking heads
Gonzalo del Peon Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side
Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin Media reparations now
Edward Roussel Tech companies get aggressive in local
Sarah Stonbely Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity
John Garrett A surprisingly good year
Richard Tofel Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)
Jacqué Palmer The rise of the plain-text email newsletter
Nicholas Jackson Blogging is back, but better
Mark S. Luckie Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy
Garance Franke-Ruta Rebundling content, rebuilding connections
Tonya Mosley True equity means ownership
Marcus Mabry News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)
Charo Henríquez A new path to leadership
Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes A shift from conversation to action
Ben Collins We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists
Rachel Schallom The rise of nonprofit journalism continues
Bill Adair The future of fact-checking is all about structured data
Anna Nirmala Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots
Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui Millennials are ready to run things
Tamar Charney Public radio has a midlife crisis
Kate Myers My son will join every Zoom call in our industry
Samantha Ragland The year of journalists taking initiative
Matt Skibinski Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it
Hadjar Benmiloud Get representative, or die trying
Jim Friedlich A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses
Robert Hernandez Data and shame
Catalina Albeanu Publish less, listen more
Sumi Aggarwal News literacy programs aren’t child’s play
David Skok A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation
Rishad Patel From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers
Ariel Zirulnick Local newsrooms question their paywalls
Jennifer Choi What have we done for you lately?
Andrew Ramsammy Stop being polite and start getting real
Cory Bergman The year after a thousand earthquakes
Nisha Chittal The year we stop pivoting
Annie Rudd Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”
Patrick Butler Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration
David Chavern Local video finally gets momentum
Mike Ananny Toward better tech journalism
Megan McCarthy Readers embrace a low-information diet
Parker Molloy The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump
Linda Solomon Wood Canada steps up for journalism
Burt Herman Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities
Mark Stenberg The rise of the journalist-influencer
Beena Raghavendran Journalism gets fused with art
Rick Berke Virtual events are here to stay
Nikki Usher Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media
Heidi Tworek A year of news mocktails
John Ketchum More journalists of color become newsroom founders
Sonali Prasad Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise
Pia Frey Building growth through tastemakers and their communities
Candis Callison Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)
Christoph Mergerson Black Americans will demand more from journalism
Kerri Hoffman Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem
Delia Cai Subscriptions start working for the middle
Brian Moritz The year sports journalism changes for good
J. Siguru Wahutu Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different
Imaeyen Ibanga Journalism gets unmasked
Mariano Blejman It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism
An Xiao Mina 2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary
Raney Aronson-Rath To get past information divides, we need to understand them first
Danielle C. Belton A decimated media rededicates itself to truth
Benjamin Toff Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse
Marie Shanahan Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo
Joni Deutsch Local arts and music make journalism more joyous
Francesco Zaffarano The year we ask the audience what it needs