Nieman Lab.
Predictions for
Journalism, 2025.
Rather than focus on authenticity, media organizations will double down on journalists’ humanness in its many forms.
Theorists have long lamented the lionization of an authentic self, decrying authenticity as a mirage, an illusive social construct, a pursuit of expectations rather than genuineness, and a trap of stereotypes that, when chased, can promote an individualistic approach and a loss of shared meaning.
Authenticity — as journalists seek to perform their authentic selves — has been tagged as a journalistic necessity for audience engagement and market-driven goals, a means for journalists to set themselves apart from content driven by artificial intelligence, and a way of reckoning with distrust in the news. But authenticity is rarely clearly defined. Instead, it’s offered as a mystical salve to many of journalism’s recent challenges. Just as audiences have begun turning away from some social media influencers because of their lack of genuine connections, so do journalists risk losing their audiences through enactments of authenticity that, at their core, may be perceived less as genuine humanness and more as illusory performance.
As we look ahead to 2025, we see journalism shaking off the problematic nature of authenticity and leaning more into humanness. This means going beyond data trends and providing a nuanced picture of people’s motivations and emotions while embracing, if not promoting, deeper forms of self-expression. While not a static concept, humanness as a value allows journalists to address audience calls for deeper connections while helping media organizations acknowledge and promote the human side of their journalists.
As journalists wrestle with calls to perform more authentically in digital spaces, they face mounting precarities in such spaces. These hazards — including escalations in harassment and threats of physical and sexual violence — highlight the need to remember the humans doing journalism and their many unique complexities.
News audiences have already begun moving away from acts of authenticity, citing them as performative, marginalizing, and tokenizing. Authenticity has also been shown to give leverage to micro-celebrities and pseudo-journalists on social media seeking to spread disinformation. Authenticity has been relational and rarely supportive of journalism.
Our collaborative research on wellbeing in the workplace similarly points to other issues for journalists. Journalists, especially those doing visible work with particular positionalities, can limit their realness or authenticity due to the constant attacks on the profession and their identity. Journalists may alter their experiences, or even their content, to shield themselves from abuse. They may also disconnect from social media practices to find some sense of realness. Or they may change their sense of self to connect to a particular set of audiences, performing to different norms across different platforms.
Humanness as a value for journalism is a powerful organizational framework to acknowledge journalists as complex people with different lived experiences who strive to conduct strong ethical and accurate reporting. As our evidenced-based research shows, different types of organizational intervention can support this framework — from systemic support infrastructures, training, and awareness, risk management, specialized support for high-risk reporting, and workflow considerations, to workplace culture change and wellness programs. Humanness will remain difficult for a fractured media culture that values speed, sensationalism, click and engagement, and simplistic narratives. But considering how journalism values itself through humanness will only benefit the news in 2025.
Journalism already adopts many of these principles. But as we take stock of 2024 and look ahead to 2025, humanness for news leadership will provide a powerful framework for an industry that seeks to listen carefully, report accurately, and demonstrate the importance of humanness in news.
This prediction was co-written with Avery Holton of the University of Utah.
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon is a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Rather than focus on authenticity, media organizations will double down on journalists’ humanness in its many forms.
Theorists have long lamented the lionization of an authentic self, decrying authenticity as a mirage, an illusive social construct, a pursuit of expectations rather than genuineness, and a trap of stereotypes that, when chased, can promote an individualistic approach and a loss of shared meaning.
Authenticity — as journalists seek to perform their authentic selves — has been tagged as a journalistic necessity for audience engagement and market-driven goals, a means for journalists to set themselves apart from content driven by artificial intelligence, and a way of reckoning with distrust in the news. But authenticity is rarely clearly defined. Instead, it’s offered as a mystical salve to many of journalism’s recent challenges. Just as audiences have begun turning away from some social media influencers because of their lack of genuine connections, so do journalists risk losing their audiences through enactments of authenticity that, at their core, may be perceived less as genuine humanness and more as illusory performance.
As we look ahead to 2025, we see journalism shaking off the problematic nature of authenticity and leaning more into humanness. This means going beyond data trends and providing a nuanced picture of people’s motivations and emotions while embracing, if not promoting, deeper forms of self-expression. While not a static concept, humanness as a value allows journalists to address audience calls for deeper connections while helping media organizations acknowledge and promote the human side of their journalists.
As journalists wrestle with calls to perform more authentically in digital spaces, they face mounting precarities in such spaces. These hazards — including escalations in harassment and threats of physical and sexual violence — highlight the need to remember the humans doing journalism and their many unique complexities.
News audiences have already begun moving away from acts of authenticity, citing them as performative, marginalizing, and tokenizing. Authenticity has also been shown to give leverage to micro-celebrities and pseudo-journalists on social media seeking to spread disinformation. Authenticity has been relational and rarely supportive of journalism.
Our collaborative research on wellbeing in the workplace similarly points to other issues for journalists. Journalists, especially those doing visible work with particular positionalities, can limit their realness or authenticity due to the constant attacks on the profession and their identity. Journalists may alter their experiences, or even their content, to shield themselves from abuse. They may also disconnect from social media practices to find some sense of realness. Or they may change their sense of self to connect to a particular set of audiences, performing to different norms across different platforms.
Humanness as a value for journalism is a powerful organizational framework to acknowledge journalists as complex people with different lived experiences who strive to conduct strong ethical and accurate reporting. As our evidenced-based research shows, different types of organizational intervention can support this framework — from systemic support infrastructures, training, and awareness, risk management, specialized support for high-risk reporting, and workflow considerations, to workplace culture change and wellness programs. Humanness will remain difficult for a fractured media culture that values speed, sensationalism, click and engagement, and simplistic narratives. But considering how journalism values itself through humanness will only benefit the news in 2025.
Journalism already adopts many of these principles. But as we take stock of 2024 and look ahead to 2025, humanness for news leadership will provide a powerful framework for an industry that seeks to listen carefully, report accurately, and demonstrate the importance of humanness in news.
This prediction was co-written with Avery Holton of the University of Utah.
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon is a professor at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
