Media wants your attention. You’re getting value too, but mostly it cares about the attention. We’re well informed, but there’s also all these other side effects. I have illustrated them here:
This is unhealthy. Readers are flattened into the need to be informed and entertained, ignoring the rest of the self. Media companies are finding fresh ways to create value by taking into account more of the reader’s needs. Recently there have been inspiring examples of media that wants to take care of you. This is something we really need in the world right now.
Girls Night In is a newsletter for women that arrives every Friday morning with self-care tips, making it feel okay to stay in and take care of yourself. #100DaysofAndNotOr by katie zhu is a series that explores “the seemingly opposing facets of life, relationships, and identity” and in many ways is immenself validating and illuminating of personal experiences.
Last year I wrote about zines, a format that is rich with material on care. A few highlights I’ve found over the year including Couldn’t Afford Therapy by Lawrence Lindell and A Guide to Writing Yourself by Victoria Emanuela and Caitlin Metz.
Anecdotally, it feels as if The New York Times’ Smarter Living has been appearing more frequently on the homepage. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case: It’s an important balance to everything we’re reading in the news. Look at this stunning animation.
To inform readers means to also support readers’ care for themselves. In 2019, we’ll have more:
Kawandeep Virdee works on product at Medium.
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are