If 2016 has shown us anything, it’s that journalists can’t afford to live in bubbles. We can be a self-reinforcing bunch, so we are surprised when “mainstream America” is unfamiliar with certain news events — or even something in the recent past that should still be part of the national consciousness. Just this month, we’ve seen some readers claim that Japanese Americans weren’t actually interned under harsh conditions during World War II.
That’s why, as an industry, we must do better at informing ourselves and providing proper context for our readers.
This means that news managers need to broaden their pool for hiring and promotion. We need journalists who can connect with readers in the heartland, not just because they are empathetic reporters but because they understand what it’s like to live and work there.
Diverse perspectives go far beyond race and ethnicity: It also means actively cultivating a newsroom whose journalists represent a broad cross section of America. We need more journalists who understand our military, more people who know about religions beyond Christianity, more people who know what it’s like to live in poverty. And we certainly need to continue to increase the number of journalists of color, particularly in top management.
Stories involving Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and immigration will have even more resonance as we transition to a new presidential administration. And stories from other parts of the world will need to be framed in a way that Americans will grasp their far-reaching relevance. When a seven-year-old girl in Aleppo becomes this era’s Anne Frank by using Twitter to share her daily struggles to survive, we see how social media, news, and ordinary people intersect.
More than anything, we’ll be faced with the reality that readers have evolved beyond one-size-fits-all news. To ensure that news reports have impact, we’ll need to connect with readers because we reflect the readers. And that starts with concerted efforts to hire, retain, and promote diverse viewpoints.
Doris Truong is the weekend homepage editor at The Washington Post.
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
David Weigel A test for online speech
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Andy Rossback The year of the user
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow