This year we saw media companies help you register to vote; tell you how to stop climate change; vet charitable organizations for you after Hurricane Florence and the California fires; and connect readers with information about rental homes in Detroit.
Next year will bring more problems, and with those problems a desire by news consumers for more solutions. I predict that this audience demand, together with changes we are already seeing in journalism as it is taught and practiced, and the need of media companies to engage new audiences will extend service journalism to new verticals in 2019.
Embedding product thinking into newsrooms—that is, looking at journalism as a product that can solve problems for consumers—has already laid the groundwork for new topics and types of service journalism. Questions like “what problem are we trying to solve?” “for who?” and “what is the best way to do that?” are increasingly common at the start of newsroom projects. This approach will broaden the use of service journalism to more verticals and outlets as service oriented solutions will be considered earlier in editorial development.
Audience, social and community editors increasingly work with, report on, and solve problems for communities through their journalism. As these individuals rise in newsroom hierarchy, service journalism will gain prominence. Many academic programs and courses teach community journalism, which means there is both a top-down and bottom-up push for this methodology. This mainstreaming of community journalism helps ensure the questions and needs of audiences are front and center—a necessary element for service journalism to broaden to more topics.
A study from the BBC found that “64 percent of under 35s want news to provide solutions to problems.” Other studies have found that women can benefit from a positive framing of the news. Underserved audiences, in combination with a need and desire by various outlets to diversify their audience, will accelerate the use of different approaches to journalism and reporting. And (you guessed it!) service journalism is likely to be one of the formats used to appeal to these audiences and build trust.
Neither service journalism nor journalism as a service is a new idea. But in the coming year, service journalism will move beyond product recommendations and smarter living. In 2019, we’ll see service journalism improve social services, create additional civic engagement, and change business practices. We may even see publications offer toolkits on running for political office or a how to guide for fixing capitalism.
Alyssa Zeisler is the audience managing editor at Barron’s.
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness