Wallets get opened

“It seems my generation — often seen as embodying the worst of the information age — could well be at the forefront of making this much-needed correction in the media industry.”

Since the first days of the internet, consumers have generally taken for granted that content is free (the creator of the popup ad even regrets that his otherwise irritating brainchild contributed to this expectation). Now, as the ad-focused revenue model founders, people start to rethink the importance of journalism in a dark political climate, and information-overloaded consumers increasingly seek quality control, publishers are taking a cue from the likes of Netflix and Hulu and betting that customers will be willing to pay either for specialized content or for curation.

In part, we have President Donald Trump to thank for this shift. The more Trump relentlessly attacks the media, the more Americans are reminded that they can’t take a thriving free press for granted. Famously, The New York Times, repeatedly disparaged by the commander-in-chief as “failing,” has reported record subscriptions since Trump took office. Moreover, consumers are acutely aware that despite real failures on the media’s part in recent years, it’s journalism that uncovered the biggest scandals of the day, from the Billy Bush tape to Tom Price’s private jet usage to the child molestation allegations that changed the course of a Senate race just a few days ago. That public service, readers seem to have concluded, is worth paying for.

But it’s not just mainstream political journalism that’s benefiting from this shift, and it’s certainly not just a reaction to the president. A longer-term desire for experts to help filter through the noise has been apparent for years. Politico discovered that with its Pro verticals more than half a decade ago. Today, niche outlets covering everything from national security to chemistry to college sports are finding that users are eager to access specialized content — especially if it’s for less than the price of their Netflix subscription. Services like Scroll are experimenting with offering a curated (and ad-free) bundle of stories for a monthly fee. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the phenomenon, highlighting the case of Bill Bishop, who generated $100,000 in a single day when he moved to monetize his well-read newsletter on China. My own publication, War on the Rocks, has a successful membership program for national security professionals that gives them access to a members-only podcast on international affairs and a forum where they can engage in private with others in their field.

In 2018, I predict we’ll see more users paying both for mainstream journalism and for specialized content. This material will get more specific and granular as publications think through the technical challenges and opportunities — for instance, perhaps outlets will soon allow readers to pay specifically for their favorite columnists. Or publications might double down on the promise of email newsletters, another potential source of subscription revenue, by finding ways to improve automatically curated newsletters, making them a more desirable and lucrative product without the labor-intensiveness.

It’s heartening that millennials, in particular, are a crucial part of the paying-for-news trend. It seems my generation — often seen as embodying the worst of the information age — could well be at the forefront of making this much-needed correction in the media industry.

Usha Sahay is managing editor of War on the Rocks.

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

Helen Havlak   Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg   (Hint: It’s about your brand)

Burt Herman   Things get real

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Jake Levine   The return to now

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Errin Haines   At the ballot, it’s time to count black women

Paul Ford   Go global

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Tanzina Vega   It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic

Eric Ulken   The year local publishers get smart(er) about change

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

Dan Shanoff   You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Nikki Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy   Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Sara M. Watson   Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Susie Banikarim   R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Jim Moroney   Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for

Jesse Holcomb   Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Alan Soon   The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media

Julia B. Chan   Looking for loyalty in all the right places

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Aron Pilhofer   We can’t leave the business to the business side any more

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

AX Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall