2017 will be the year that reader loyalty is tested.
Faced with a new political reality that many didn’t expect, readers are looking to deepen their relationships with publications that can help them make sense of the world. In recent weeks, nonprofit newsrooms have seen a “flood” of donations, and the New York Times has gained hundreds of thousands of new subscribers.
It’s tempting for publishers to coast on readers’ renewed passion for journalism. But they shouldn’t get complacent. There’s a clear opportunity for publishers to channel this post-election energy into something more reliable. Those that develop strategies now to double-down on long-term loyalty will succeed in 2017.
They’ll do this in a few ways:
In 2017, the publishers that optimize for quality of content over quantity of clicks will earn the loyalty — and the business — of readers. Their audiences may be smaller, but they’ll be more valuable.
Keren Goldshlager works on Medium’s publisher development team.
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
David Weigel A test for online speech
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Carrie Brown We won’t do enough
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism