We believe 2019 will mark the beginning of a significant shift in the news industry: the year when newsrooms stop pivoting to formats and platforms and start building relationships for the future. Already we’re seeing the rumblings of a seismic change, as digital bubbles built upon illusory metrics begin to burst and the organizations that have put in the unsexy but necessary groundwork to directly understand and serve their audiences are reaping rewards.
As newsrooms define their missions explicitly around service-first approaches and align around value-based business models, we can imagine how this could play out in the coming year.
Finally — finally! — a pivot that actually works. Although truth be told, this isn’t a pivot — it’s the rediscovery of the force that drove us to j-school many years ago. That force: the commitment to inform the public about their world so they can fully participate in and understand it. By refocusing attention on the audiences we serve, newsrooms will develop deep, sustaining relationships that will begin to repair the outdated, broken business models. Newsrooms are becoming increasingly sophisticated in developing the relationship between audience members and revenue. With a wealth of experience and nothing left to lose, 2019 will be the year this approach breaks through from theory into practice.
Newsrooms have guidelines around how they treat sources. But as co-created content blurs the line between maker and decision-maker, public and staff, newsrooms will need more sophisticated rules for how they work alongside, feature, credit, reward, compensate and protect the people engaging with them pre-publication. We predict the Gather community of engaged journalists will play a key role in building out the work started at SRCCON toward developing an ethical framework for engagement. (That is: In 2019, newsrooms will start to recognize and correct when they’re being askholes.)
Serving the audience means understanding what they need to know, which breaks journalism free from the restrictions of which platform they use and their medium of publication. The new answer: whatever makes sense for the audience. The end result of reporting will no longer necessarily be a story. It could be a community event, or a conversation, or even a puppet show (wait, that one already happened). What was produced will take a back seat to the all-important question of who was informed and how it served them.
If you know what the acronym CRM means, you’re more likely to be working on the revenue side of journalism or be in a management or innovation position. In 2019, editorial staffers will learn about customer relationship management systems and start to understand how CRMs can benefit their work. (If you don’t know, a CRM helps you track user data and communication, with an eye toward deepening people’s relationship with your organization.)
We predict that as newsrooms continue to open up to their communities, the public won’t just be supporting what newsrooms do by contributing financially (through subscriptions, donations, or membership programs) — they’ll be contributing on the front end to shape and enrich coverage, to provide content and insight for the journalism newsrooms are producing.
This will create the need for editorial relationship management systems so content and revenue departments can understand the full “user journey” with their brand. Creating a universal system will be no small technical task, but the tremendous insights it will yield will justify the investment. Beyond high-level trends of how public engagement leads to revenue, newsrooms will be able to see and value the public as more than a click or a dollar amount, but start to understand individuals holistically and serve them accordingly. (If you’re interested in this, holler.)
Content consumption metrics and analytics platforms like Chartbeat and Parse.ly were early to the gate in shaping newsroom priorities and their understanding of engagement. But trying to make sense of people’s behaviors, desires and impulses by the digital traces (archaeology) they leave behind will be understood as just one blurry half of the picture. In 2019, the anthropological arm of journalism will continue to develop, and more newsrooms will make it a priority to actually talk to their living, breathing audience members in deeper and more sustained ways to understand and serve their needs. The work of Spaceship Media, The Free Press’ News Voices, and pioneering practitioners like jesikah maria ross at Capital Public Radio and Ashley Alvarado at KPCC will start to be recognized and valued at a premium. While reconstructing the public’s needs and wants via their digital traces and artificial intelligence will continue to attract interest for how “clean” and efficient it can be, the inherent limits and dangers of flattening the public to datasets will be felt, and so will the lack of trust-building that is created through real-life engagement.
As pageview-driven business models continue to struggle, newsrooms will try to identify and agree upon what’s useful (and realistic) to measure about their journalism, in order to show its value to different stakeholders, like the audience (subscriber or member models), advertisers or sponsors, and grant funders. In 2019, journalists — and the people on the business side of their organizations — will share what’s working from their own experiments, and learn from research (such as that by the Center for Media Engagement, Pew Research Center, Trusting News, Membership Puzzle Project, and others). As the Membership Puzzle Project says, the “metrics for evaluating success and deliverables at the conclusion of the experiment should themselves be part of the experiment” a newsroom undertakes. We predict this experimentation culture with metrics will begin bearing fruit by the end of 2019. These new metrics likely will take more effort to measure than the industry’s previous golden metrics (circulation, pageviews, time on page).
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Newsrooms are moving at a glacial pace to diversify their staff and retain journalists who come from underrepresented or marginalized communities. So newsrooms leaders? Do better.
Now the first problem begets a second issue: the diversity of sources cited in reporting. As we advocate for radical transparency about the makeup of our newsrooms (slow as that may be), newsrooms will begin to track and talk more publicly about the diversity of their sources. The industry knows this is an issue because journalists like Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato and Greg Linch (among many others) are building databases to combat this. But consider this: Tracking source diversity will be a part of the monthly newsroom analytics report, presented to staff regularly and yes, made public. Let’s dream a little further here: What if AI evolved to a point where it could comb stories for these identifiers (without racist implications) and this data point became a staple in analytics dashboards?
Public media stations such as KUT in Austin, WHYY in Philadelphia, KUOW in Seattle, and KQED in San Francisco are already doing this work and confronting some of the unflattering numbers. If newsrooms are serious about building and gaining the trust of their audiences, they’ll be completely honest to the public about what their newsroom looks like and who they’re talking to in their stories.
WIthout professional development budgets, journalists are seeking out and creating new spaces to learn from one another. For example, there are active Facebook Groups for public media millenials, diverse social media editors, and TV news producers, as well as Slack organizations for news nerds, audience engagement people, and journalists of color. In 2019, we’ll see continued growth in the number of Slack organizations and Facebook Groups related to journalists’ identities and roles. It’s also likely the existing digital groups will grow their membership, leading to the problems that inevitably emerge as a close-knit community scales from dozens to hundreds to thousands.
Through these other ways of connecting and learning, journalists may not see as much value in high-dollar professional organization memberships, or may cut back to only belonging to one rather than two or three. The professional organizations will be forced to assess what they can offer that these free and often well-moderated communities can’t, or partner with these communities to provide value. (Maybe improved moderation, or upgrading Slacks to the paid plans.)
To better meet the demands of an audience-driven mission, newsrooms will begin seeking candidates from non-traditional backgrounds who bring an array of needed skills to the table.
As traditional institutions continue to battle market and cultural forces for relevance and sustainability, dalliances will turn into full-fledged partnerships, and new shared futures will emerge. Poised for the hookup are libraries and newsrooms. They both serve the function of helping people get the information they’re seeking, except one institution has more public trust, more geographic and demographic diversity, and a more stable tax-supported future. The other has a lot of eager people (employed and laid off) with skills and desire to generate new information and be of service to their communities.
In 2019, we’ll start to see more collaborations like this one between The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Public Library and this one between The Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Public Library that pave the way for actual mergers of functions, resources, talent, and service.
Thanks to Darryl Holliday from City Bureau and Simon Galperin from GroundSource and Community Information Cooperative for the conference lobby brainstorm session on this library-newsroom baby idea.
Beyond news outlets and libraries, what other institutions are responsible for providing trustworthy information to the public so they can make informed choices? All of them. The education, healthcare, policy, and financial sectors (to name a few) are wrestling with the same struggle: going from largely closed and autocratic decision-making systems to being more participatory and democratized. What might journalism learn from what’s working in these other fields? We’ll only find out if we start to ask those questions and intentionally co-mingle. We predict 2019 will bring at least one new interdisciplinary gathering.
With the recent collapse of Mic, layoffs at Vox Media, and countless other examples of news startups raising huge and missing marks, the intrepid entrepreneurs building the next generation of media companies will think twice when considering venture capital models and promising billion-dollar unicorn exits. Instead, they’ll align the investment dollars with the service values their companies espouse and turn to zebras. They’ll seek to balance profit and purpose, and like the actual zebra, will have competitive advantages not through being an outlier, but through cooperation. Instead of using “maximize shareholder revenue” as their north star, they’ll more creatively organize their companies to be able to pursue a double bottom line. Likewise, newly activated investors will look to support media companies working in this way. We’ll start to see philanthropy and others invest in revenue-based financing that supports the 81 percent of undercapitalized entrepreneurs.
So those were a lot of predictions. And we’re going to be working toward making all of them come true. As can be gleaned from the fact this was a collaborative post, we love collaborating. So don’t be shy if you feel like creating this future together.
This prediction was written by Hearken staffers Jennifer Brandel, Julia Haslanger, Krystina Martinez, and Bridget Thoreson.
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Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
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Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
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Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
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Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
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Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
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Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
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Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
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Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
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Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
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Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
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Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
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Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
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Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
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