In 2023, media outlets large and small will have to deeply consider how their editorial strategy lines up with the reasons their readers and communities turn to them for journalism.
It’s tempting to lump this in with the fact that trust in journalism and journalists is at an all-time low, even when compared to the social media platforms where those news outlets are clamoring for eyeballs. But rebuilding community trust and re-examining editorial priorities are two very different things.
While it’s clear that journalism desperately needs to reckon with itself over why public trust in the institution is so low (something that many journalists, especially younger journalists and journalists of color have been trying to explain to their mastheads for years), that’s a different conversation. What 2023 will bring, with all of its “difficult economic headwinds” and the knock-on effects of 2022’s media layoffs, is acute pressure from readers and audiences that their perspectives and views be more truthfully, honestly, and intelligently engaged by the publications they still turn to for news and information.
They’ll ask why consistently wrong, highly paid columnists continue to dominate newsroom mastheads, and where the writers who live in, lived in, or at least understand their communities are. They’ll ask those news organizations for real change. And if they don’t get it, they’ll start leaving in numbers significant enough to warrant concern.
Today, many of those same outlets are struggling with internal conflicts between wealthy owners, publishers, and mastheads versus their younger, more diverse journalists, on-the-ground writers and editors, and idealistic fellows and early career reporters eager to write true things and speak truth to power. In the coming year, there’s every reason to believe that ideological disconnect will extend to our communities and our readers, all of whom will demand more from us in our coverage and in our interactions with our readers.
But it’s not just more reporting or smarter editing that they want: It’s more intellectual honesty in our reporting on topics that matter to people or have the potential to cause harm. It’s more empathy when it comes to the real-world impact that our journalism has on those same communities. It’s an acute understanding of whether our reporting is punching up at those in power and with authority or punching down to maintain the status quo and pit neighbors against one another.
Our readers want us to help them live better lives and thrive in the world they have to navigate. They’ll trust us when we make that our priority over re-writing offensive celebrity tweets or wringing our hands over calling lies what they are.
When I worked at The New York Times, I had the opportunity to look over some interesting audience data. We’d asked readers around the country what kinds of coverage they looked to the Times for, and what they knew they could rely on the institution to cover. The answers were pretty typical: People definitely trusted the Times’ on-the-ground reporting, especially when they could tell the reporter understood the communities and issues they were reporting on. They didn’t terribly appreciate the op-ed pages, and wanted more stories that openly and honestly explained why the latest breaking news matters to them.
Now, at Wired, I see the same trends. Our readers love our coverage of a variety of topics, but they want more practical advice on how to improve their own lives and their relationship with technology. They want to know how to advocate for and protect their privacy. They want their data to be safer, their kids to be safer online, and to be able to engage with online communities without fear of harassment, discrimination, or hatred. They also want, predictably, to know why the big banner stories we write actually matter to them, beyond being engaging and fun to read.
I’m a service journalist. My entire career is based on taking complicated and important topics and distilling them into the need-to-knows for my reader. And too often the way large media organizations approach journalism implies that their audience is actually the Pulitzer Board, as opposed to their subscribers and the general public. I often hypothetically other editors: If your journalism doesn’t serve your reader, who are you writing for? What exactly are you trying to do?
I’ve found this question — or some version of it — is earning fewer confused glances than it used to and more honest, deep thought. More newsroom leaders are eager to realign their own editorial missions with the needs of the communities they serve, whether on a local or national level. And as more media companies are either managed or consumed by private equity firms and local news outlets shutter and leave news deserts in their wake, one way to remind your readers that you’re important and worth paying attention to is to, well, actually serve them in a meaningful way. We will all have to answer to our readers as to why our work matters, and why our readers should pay for us to keep doing it.
We’ll have to stop assuming that prizes and book deals make the case on our behalf, and stop clapping ourselves on the back and eating venture capital money to start more outlets that say the same things as the old outlets do except in a different font or color, while local newsrooms don’t have reporters to send to city hall or sit in on school board meetings.
And as a society, we’ll be better off when we do. I can’t wait to get started on that work.
Alan Henry is special projects editor at Wired and author of Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized.
In 2023, media outlets large and small will have to deeply consider how their editorial strategy lines up with the reasons their readers and communities turn to them for journalism.
It’s tempting to lump this in with the fact that trust in journalism and journalists is at an all-time low, even when compared to the social media platforms where those news outlets are clamoring for eyeballs. But rebuilding community trust and re-examining editorial priorities are two very different things.
While it’s clear that journalism desperately needs to reckon with itself over why public trust in the institution is so low (something that many journalists, especially younger journalists and journalists of color have been trying to explain to their mastheads for years), that’s a different conversation. What 2023 will bring, with all of its “difficult economic headwinds” and the knock-on effects of 2022’s media layoffs, is acute pressure from readers and audiences that their perspectives and views be more truthfully, honestly, and intelligently engaged by the publications they still turn to for news and information.
They’ll ask why consistently wrong, highly paid columnists continue to dominate newsroom mastheads, and where the writers who live in, lived in, or at least understand their communities are. They’ll ask those news organizations for real change. And if they don’t get it, they’ll start leaving in numbers significant enough to warrant concern.
Today, many of those same outlets are struggling with internal conflicts between wealthy owners, publishers, and mastheads versus their younger, more diverse journalists, on-the-ground writers and editors, and idealistic fellows and early career reporters eager to write true things and speak truth to power. In the coming year, there’s every reason to believe that ideological disconnect will extend to our communities and our readers, all of whom will demand more from us in our coverage and in our interactions with our readers.
But it’s not just more reporting or smarter editing that they want: It’s more intellectual honesty in our reporting on topics that matter to people or have the potential to cause harm. It’s more empathy when it comes to the real-world impact that our journalism has on those same communities. It’s an acute understanding of whether our reporting is punching up at those in power and with authority or punching down to maintain the status quo and pit neighbors against one another.
Our readers want us to help them live better lives and thrive in the world they have to navigate. They’ll trust us when we make that our priority over re-writing offensive celebrity tweets or wringing our hands over calling lies what they are.
When I worked at The New York Times, I had the opportunity to look over some interesting audience data. We’d asked readers around the country what kinds of coverage they looked to the Times for, and what they knew they could rely on the institution to cover. The answers were pretty typical: People definitely trusted the Times’ on-the-ground reporting, especially when they could tell the reporter understood the communities and issues they were reporting on. They didn’t terribly appreciate the op-ed pages, and wanted more stories that openly and honestly explained why the latest breaking news matters to them.
Now, at Wired, I see the same trends. Our readers love our coverage of a variety of topics, but they want more practical advice on how to improve their own lives and their relationship with technology. They want to know how to advocate for and protect their privacy. They want their data to be safer, their kids to be safer online, and to be able to engage with online communities without fear of harassment, discrimination, or hatred. They also want, predictably, to know why the big banner stories we write actually matter to them, beyond being engaging and fun to read.
I’m a service journalist. My entire career is based on taking complicated and important topics and distilling them into the need-to-knows for my reader. And too often the way large media organizations approach journalism implies that their audience is actually the Pulitzer Board, as opposed to their subscribers and the general public. I often hypothetically other editors: If your journalism doesn’t serve your reader, who are you writing for? What exactly are you trying to do?
I’ve found this question — or some version of it — is earning fewer confused glances than it used to and more honest, deep thought. More newsroom leaders are eager to realign their own editorial missions with the needs of the communities they serve, whether on a local or national level. And as more media companies are either managed or consumed by private equity firms and local news outlets shutter and leave news deserts in their wake, one way to remind your readers that you’re important and worth paying attention to is to, well, actually serve them in a meaningful way. We will all have to answer to our readers as to why our work matters, and why our readers should pay for us to keep doing it.
We’ll have to stop assuming that prizes and book deals make the case on our behalf, and stop clapping ourselves on the back and eating venture capital money to start more outlets that say the same things as the old outlets do except in a different font or color, while local newsrooms don’t have reporters to send to city hall or sit in on school board meetings.
And as a society, we’ll be better off when we do. I can’t wait to get started on that work.
Alan Henry is special projects editor at Wired and author of Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized.
Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
Nikki Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
Anna Nirmala News organizations get new structures
Jennifer Brandel AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more.
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Kavya Sukumar Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale
Mario García More newsrooms go mobile-first
Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets
Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Moreno Cruz Osório Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action
Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
Wilson Liévano Diaspora journalism takes the next step
Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.
Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
AX Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability
Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation
Nicholas Jackson There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work
Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low
Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where it’s due
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence
James Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction
Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world
Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale
Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again
Ståle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Susan Chira Equipping local journalism
Laura E. Davis The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Basile Simon Towards supporting criminal accountability
Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders
Kirstin McCudden We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism
Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
Jesse Holcomb Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled
Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news
Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
Eric Nuzum A focus on people instead of power
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
Amy Schmitz Weiss Journalism education faces a crossroads
Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers
Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over
Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists
Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
Johannes Klingebiel The innovation team, R.I.P.
Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news
Ariel Zirulnick Journalism doubles down on user needs
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the “free speech” frame
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
Mauricio Cabrera It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession
Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Ayala Panievsky It’s time for PR for journalism
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Bill Grueskin Local news will come to rely on AI
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Cassandra Etienne Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities
Raney Aronson-Rath Journalists will band together to fight intimidation
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
Ryan Nave Citizen journalism, but make it equitable
Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning
Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local
Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism
Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are
John Davidow A year of intergenerational learning
Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies
Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
David Cohn AI made this prediction
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same
Shanté Cosme The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Nicholas Diakopoulos Journalists productively harness generative AI tools
Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Elite Truong In platform collapse, an opportunity for community
Priyanjana Bengani Partisan local news networks will collaborate
Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)