In the coming year, we’ll see continuing tension between the public and the press over what’s “real” and what’s not. With the president calling journalists in the mainstream media “a stain on America,” it’s safe to say that the “fake news” conversation will persist — and that attacks on the press will, too. It all means that news organizations will have to keep fighting for the trust of a skeptical public, coming up with ways to demonstrate our credibility across all of the platforms on which we publish our journalism.
At Frontline, we believe that one such way is through journalistic transparency. It’s something we’ve long practiced — but now more than ever, we’ve been cracking open our reporting process and offering new, self-directed opportunities to explore, search, and share what goes into building our journalism. As part of our broader Transparency Project initiative, this fall we launched The Putin Files — which made available 56 full-length interviews from the making of Michael Kirk and his team’s documentary, Putin’s Revenge. We published 32 interviews in video alongside transcripts, and 24 interviews in transcript form only — all fully navigable by person, theme, or highlight.
Our goal was not only to make our source material accessible to audiences, but to make it useful. We developed interactive tools that enable readers and viewers to explore annotated transcripts, compare versions of events, and share quotes via social media.
Poynter’s Jim Warren called this endeavor “an admirable move towards transparency.” And while a video and transcript effort like this is unique, there are different efforts at transparency underway at other news organizations — and we hope more will flourish in the year to come. I’m on a new Knight Commission that’s charged with developing ways to deepen public trust in the press and other democratic institutions. Thinking seriously about transparency will be an important part of the equation.
It’s important to note, though, that the burden (and opportunity) of trust-building doesn’t just fall on news organizations, but also on the platforms where people consume our stories. As Emily Bell said earlier this year, “Fake news has become a meaningless and rather dangerous phrase. But the problem of feeling unsure of what to believe and what not to believe, the obliteration of credible brands and the squeezing of all types of content into the same un-delineated window, is very real.” We’ve seen Facebook make moves towards differentiating between verified and unverified stories. Twitter and Google, too. But the problem is massive, and these are just first steps. I hope that in the year to come, media outlets and tech platforms alike will take bigger ones.
Raney Aronson-Rath is executive producer of the PBS investigative documentary series Frontline.
Carrie Brown Transparency finally takes off
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
AX Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Nik Usher The year of The Washington Post
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Mariano Blejman News games rule
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading