More information curation. Not long ago, I would not have believed anyone would pay a monthly subscription for an app that coached them on how to sit still every day. I don’t need an app for that, thank you very much.
And yet, the top 10 mindfulness and meditation apps, which make up most of the “self-care” app category, reportedly brought in $27 million in worldwide revenue in the first quarter of 2018 alone. I have six meditation apps on my phone right now. And I predict that what tech has done for mindfulness, it will attempt to do for our information overload and misinformation problems.
While there are a handful of very good digital reading tools (Pocket, Flipboard, Kindle), the next wave of products will be built to deliver a better news consumption experiences. Some versions are already out there: the beta of the Kinzen app aims to”give every citizen a daily news experience that earns their trust”; I see ads for SmartNews wherever I go; and although Civil’s attempt at launching a crypto-economy for journalism failed, the startup plans to release a WordPress plugin that gives its vetted network of publications the option to archive their work on the Ethereum blockchain. I’ll save the debate over whether blockchain publishing is useful for another post, but some believe doing so can serve as a mark of quality, or indicator of a publication’s ethics and independence to the reader.
Impatience with paywalls. Meanwhile, as more and more newsrooms and apps charge subscription fees to make up for revenue lost to Facebook and Google, we’ll see password fatigue morph into paywall fatigue. Most of us are numb to the unending prompts to create new “safe” passwords, but the increasingly requests to “subscribe” every time we click to read an article will begin to wear on even the most dedicated and thoughtful news consumers. I would happily pay for a year’s bundled subscription to Wired, The Washington Post, and Medium, at a discounted rate with a single login. Similar to Tony Haile’s Scroll service (which bundles outlets into an ad-free experience), outlets will consider consolidating their offers for paid content in 2019. If not, Apple News will continue doing the best job of curating the news, while taking its cut of advertising dollars.
Cobbling it together. On the other end of the media spectrum, a number of homegrown publications will attempt to replicate the small-scale but impressive successes like those of the podcast collective Radiotopia and the crowdfunded newsroom De Correspondent. Both have proven that journalism doesn’t have to “scale” to survive, as long as the relationships they build with listeners and readers is long-term and heartfelt. I think we’ll see more of these independent journalism outlets lean on each other for resources, cross-promotion, and collaboration, just as ProPublica has done successfully and Julia Angwin says she’ll do with The Markup. Again, Civil’s blockchain promises remain unproven, but the group of journalists it recruited to found its “First Fleet” of newsrooms have thrived on relatively small grants.
Journalist as entrepreneur. Remember a decade ago when journalists were told they each needed to build a personal brand? This year, the message will also be that journalists need to become entrepreneurs. I recently launched my own mini-media company, so feel free to call me naive or overly optimistic.
But I’ve worked as a staffer, freelancer, on-contract, and now a founder; I’ve worked for government-funded media (the BBC), an international news service (Thomson Reuters), and listener-supported public radio (WNYC). Even in public radio, the message to producers is to create audio products that have multiple revenue streams: increase membership, spinoff products, sponsorship, live events, grants. They haven’t moved to the subscription model, yet but that’s likely coming very soon. As part of our new venture, Stable Genius Productions, my cofounder and I are cobbling those options together (hell, we even gave crypto a go) to support ourselves while owning our intellectual property and maintaining editorial control. We’re even documenting the process in our meta podcast ZigZag.
The Google/Facebook duopoly won’t convince most journalists to “move fast and break things,” but perhaps we need to get more comfortable with other trite startup terminology like “failing forward” and “pivoting.” As Joe Lubin, the founder of Consensys, told me, “We live in exponential times.” Experimentation may be the new business model.
Manoush Zomorodi is cofounder of Stable Genius Productions and cohost of ZigZag.
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Nik Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Carrie Brown Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”