The news out of the platforms has been bleak as of late. Mass layoffs, entire departments gutted, the latest at Twitter. It once seemed like these spaces were places where journalism would thrive. Well, they were and they weren’t. And it doesn’t really matter now because journalism is surely taking a smaller role in whatever future direction these companies take.
That’s good news — for our focus.
It was easy to be intoxicated during the early days of social. We were reaching audience heights we never imagined. Our journalism was spreading across the globe. We had live dialogues with our readers. But the audience sizes didn’t always translate to engagement or revenue. And we didn’t always develop the kinds of authentic relationships with our readers that we need to build strong businesses. Now, we have an opportunity to build something better.
Even with all of those advertising headwinds, plenty of industry forces are blowing our way these days. Consumers have become more literate in data visualization (thanks, years of poring over the Covid case charts!), providing a long-awaited mainstreaming of one of journalism’s most differentiated assets. Audio journalism is thriving — finding new and innovative ways to engage listeners. Video is hitting its stride as an explanatory medium in both short and long form. We may or may not be at peak newsletter, but it’s a place I’m happy to plateau on for a while since these products have given us a more reliable way to become part of our users’ daily habits and a great way to play with authentic voice that connects with our customers. The eventual death of the third-party cookie presents an opening for publishers to reclaim our rightful place as the way for advertisers to reach premium audiences that we, uniquely, know very well. News fatigue and subscription fatigue are both very real, but they point to a clear path forward:
Every day, and in every department, we need to focus on the value we provide our users.
We must learn everything we can about who they are and what they need. And then we provide it through journalism that helps them navigate their world. We provide it through product experiences that don’t ask our users to work too hard to understand what we have to say. We deliver this news to them through their medium of choice (email, text, video, push) and provide experiences that load quickly, eliminate clutter and get straight to the point.
Once, and only if, we get that user service right, our business models fall into place. We’ll find it easier to convert and retain subscribers if we consistently bring this kind of value every day. Our events will become meaningful connection points for our communities offline. And the more we know about the audiences we serve, the more insightful a partner we can be to our advertising clients once the third-party cookie finally bites the dust.
This kind of growth may not feel as exhilarating as the social growth roller coaster we’ve been on for the last decade. But it’s authentic. Showing up every day and putting in the work speaks to the mission that led us all to this business in the first place. Let’s make 2023 the year we recommit.
Julia Beizer is the chief digital officer of Bloomberg Media.
The news out of the platforms has been bleak as of late. Mass layoffs, entire departments gutted, the latest at Twitter. It once seemed like these spaces were places where journalism would thrive. Well, they were and they weren’t. And it doesn’t really matter now because journalism is surely taking a smaller role in whatever future direction these companies take.
That’s good news — for our focus.
It was easy to be intoxicated during the early days of social. We were reaching audience heights we never imagined. Our journalism was spreading across the globe. We had live dialogues with our readers. But the audience sizes didn’t always translate to engagement or revenue. And we didn’t always develop the kinds of authentic relationships with our readers that we need to build strong businesses. Now, we have an opportunity to build something better.
Even with all of those advertising headwinds, plenty of industry forces are blowing our way these days. Consumers have become more literate in data visualization (thanks, years of poring over the Covid case charts!), providing a long-awaited mainstreaming of one of journalism’s most differentiated assets. Audio journalism is thriving — finding new and innovative ways to engage listeners. Video is hitting its stride as an explanatory medium in both short and long form. We may or may not be at peak newsletter, but it’s a place I’m happy to plateau on for a while since these products have given us a more reliable way to become part of our users’ daily habits and a great way to play with authentic voice that connects with our customers. The eventual death of the third-party cookie presents an opening for publishers to reclaim our rightful place as the way for advertisers to reach premium audiences that we, uniquely, know very well. News fatigue and subscription fatigue are both very real, but they point to a clear path forward:
Every day, and in every department, we need to focus on the value we provide our users.
We must learn everything we can about who they are and what they need. And then we provide it through journalism that helps them navigate their world. We provide it through product experiences that don’t ask our users to work too hard to understand what we have to say. We deliver this news to them through their medium of choice (email, text, video, push) and provide experiences that load quickly, eliminate clutter and get straight to the point.
Once, and only if, we get that user service right, our business models fall into place. We’ll find it easier to convert and retain subscribers if we consistently bring this kind of value every day. Our events will become meaningful connection points for our communities offline. And the more we know about the audiences we serve, the more insightful a partner we can be to our advertising clients once the third-party cookie finally bites the dust.
This kind of growth may not feel as exhilarating as the social growth roller coaster we’ve been on for the last decade. But it’s authentic. Showing up every day and putting in the work speaks to the mission that led us all to this business in the first place. Let’s make 2023 the year we recommit.
Julia Beizer is the chief digital officer of Bloomberg Media.
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Laura E. Davis The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves
Wilson Liévano Diaspora journalism takes the next step
Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies
Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale
Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities
Raney Aronson-Rath Journalists will band together to fight intimidation
Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks
Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the “free speech” frame
Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Jesse Holcomb Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world
Ståle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Susan Chira Equipping local journalism
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
Nicholas Jackson There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work
Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
Bill Grueskin Local news will come to rely on AI
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
David Cohn AI made this prediction
Amy Schmitz Weiss Journalism education faces a crossroads
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Mauricio Cabrera It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Priyanjana Bengani Partisan local news networks will collaborate
Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public
Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas
Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are
Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers
John Davidow A year of intergenerational learning
Basile Simon Towards supporting criminal accountability
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
Ryan Nave Citizen journalism, but make it equitable
Nikki Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Kirstin McCudden We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering
Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders
Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star
Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence
Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism
Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity
Shanté Cosme The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy
Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
Nicholas Diakopoulos Journalists productively harness generative AI tools
Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth
AX Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis
Jennifer Brandel AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more.
Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Janelle Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction
Kavya Sukumar Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale
Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
Ayala Panievsky It’s time for PR for journalism
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Mario García More newsrooms go mobile-first
Eric Nuzum A focus on people instead of power
Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Cassandra Etienne Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities
Elite Truong In platform collapse, an opportunity for community
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)
Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where it’s due
Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local
Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low
Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again
Ariel Zirulnick Journalism doubles down on user needs
Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over
Anna Nirmala News organizations get new structures
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media
Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists
Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard
Moreno Cruz Osório Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action
Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same
Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism