Sic transit gloria scripturam.
In 2019, the written word will begin to taper as the primary vehicle of journalism. It’s been a long time coming: Video, graphics, podcasts, and interactives have all been bubbling, and in 2019 we may approach a tipping point.
This transition makes good business sense: Text is affordable to produce, but it’s also affordable for others to repost and adapt. More sophisticated formats are more distinctive. As publishers move towards subscription-supported models, richer content can be more unique, engaging, and memorable. Done well, it can also be evergreen, as it can be leveraged across story packages whenever relevant themes are in the news.
There are significant barriers to this evolution in formats. One of the largest may be the cultural gap between editorial and technology. Journalism schools and newsroom structures have been moving towards more hybrid programs and projects, but the transition is incomplete. Nonetheless, successful examples of non-traditional formats will snowball, building momentum around strong, impactful, cost-effective journalism that is more than written words and occasional photos.
You’ll know we’ve arrived when Nieman Lab’s predictions for the coming year are not primarily text. Look forward, instead, to short videos, animated GIFs, mini-podcasts, and cartoons. When you see it here, you’ll know we’re arriving.
Justin Kosslyn is head of product management at Google Jigsaw.
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Greg Emerson Power to the user
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling