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