Nieman Lab.
Predictions for
Journalism, 2024.
Publishers are more skeptical than ever, and they should be. After a particularly harsh year of being burned by Big Tech, publishers will be forced to develop strategies to reduce their reliance on tech companies. They will finally see open source software as a competitive advantage, and the cheapest way to keep up with the pace of innovation. They’ll explore ways to use open source technology to combat disinformation, personalize content, and reach new audiences by tapping into global expertise.
Publishers have always been slow to adopt technology and are often ill-equipped to embrace emerging ideas. There have been some honorable attempts by publishers to build and license their own newsroom technologies, but most have ultimately discovered that they can’t compete with fast-moving tech companies. Earlier this year Vox Media announced that they were sunsetting Chorus, their homebrewed CMS, and would no longer license it to newsrooms. (See also: Gawker’s Kinja and WaPo’s Zeus).
Open source as a concept is not new; it’s been around in some form since the 1950s. Other industries have built massive businesses on open source code, like NASA, Microsoft, and Amazon’s AWS. By making software open source, you allow anyone to make their own version of it. When engineers can leverage code that already has the kinks worked out, they can focus on imagining something far better than the original. For example, Firefox is built by thousands of people around the world, and WordPress has more than 60,000 open-source plugins created by a 20-year-old community of developers.
It’s not just the big companies — third party vendors will face the same scrutiny. In 2024, we’ll see more publishers drop closed systems in favor of products that aren’t at the whim of Silicon Valley execs. Thankfully, the rise of open-source platforms like Mastodon has helped demystify the potential of collaborative technology in the newsroom. There’s a lot to be learned from projects like OpenNews, a network of developers, designers and journalists that collaborate on open journalism technologies. And, best of all, publishers will no longer need to restrict innovation to a small group of employees and hope for the best.
Dana Lacey is an independent consultant to publishers and tech companies.
Publishers are more skeptical than ever, and they should be. After a particularly harsh year of being burned by Big Tech, publishers will be forced to develop strategies to reduce their reliance on tech companies. They will finally see open source software as a competitive advantage, and the cheapest way to keep up with the pace of innovation. They’ll explore ways to use open source technology to combat disinformation, personalize content, and reach new audiences by tapping into global expertise.
Publishers have always been slow to adopt technology and are often ill-equipped to embrace emerging ideas. There have been some honorable attempts by publishers to build and license their own newsroom technologies, but most have ultimately discovered that they can’t compete with fast-moving tech companies. Earlier this year Vox Media announced that they were sunsetting Chorus, their homebrewed CMS, and would no longer license it to newsrooms. (See also: Gawker’s Kinja and WaPo’s Zeus).
Open source as a concept is not new; it’s been around in some form since the 1950s. Other industries have built massive businesses on open source code, like NASA, Microsoft, and Amazon’s AWS. By making software open source, you allow anyone to make their own version of it. When engineers can leverage code that already has the kinks worked out, they can focus on imagining something far better than the original. For example, Firefox is built by thousands of people around the world, and WordPress has more than 60,000 open-source plugins created by a 20-year-old community of developers.
It’s not just the big companies — third party vendors will face the same scrutiny. In 2024, we’ll see more publishers drop closed systems in favor of products that aren’t at the whim of Silicon Valley execs. Thankfully, the rise of open-source platforms like Mastodon has helped demystify the potential of collaborative technology in the newsroom. There’s a lot to be learned from projects like OpenNews, a network of developers, designers and journalists that collaborate on open journalism technologies. And, best of all, publishers will no longer need to restrict innovation to a small group of employees and hope for the best.
Dana Lacey is an independent consultant to publishers and tech companies.
