Public funding for journalism?!?! The shock! The horror!
Got that knee-jerk reaction out of your system? Great. Because 2019 will be the year that more governments start funding local news — and that’s a good thing.
If we’re serious about journalism’s essential role in our democracy, then we need to get serious about finding new ways to respond to how the collapse of local news is harming communities.
First, we need to engage with and listen to those communities a lot more. And when we start treating people not as consumers but as constituents, we’ll find new ideas, new allies, and new resources to reverse the downward spiral in local journalism and restore the public’s trust in the news.
In fact, that’s already starting to happen.
In New Jersey this year, thousands of residents organized, rallied and lobbied lawmakers to pass the Civic Info Bill. This landmark legislation has created a first-of-its-kind public fund to support quality journalism, promising media startups and other efforts meant to better inform communities.
After years of working in New Jersey and hearing how the loss of local news negatively impacted people’s lives, our group Free Press Action conceived the Civic Info Bill and led the grassroots campaign to build bipartisan support for this landmark legislation. Instead of treating residents like passive customers, we activated a statewide network of dedicated partners to reimagine the future of news and information in New Jersey.
The first $5 million for the Civic Information Consortium has gotten hung up in a procedural dispute between the governor and the legislature, but 2019 will be the year the effort gets funded, the independent board is established, and checks are written to support innovative local projects.
While a few million dollars won’t solve all the problems facing journalism in America, it’s a first step toward expanding what’s possible and showing that public funds should be part of the answer to the journalism crisis.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen more newsrooms move outside their comfort zones and begin embracing community engagement to better understand how to serve their audiences’ needs. And we’re seeing the engaged-journalism space grow and push these ideas even further with civically minded news organizations like City Bureau, Outlier Media, and Resolve Philadelphia leading the way.
In 2019, we need to push things even further and move from community engagement to community activation. In some cases, that means the public will join in new ways to support media and create their own. In other cases, it’ll take the form of pressuring public officials to fund efforts to strengthen local-news coverage and boost civic engagement in communities across the country.
In 2019, Free Press will fight to pass legislation like the Civic Info Bill in additional states and will urge states, municipalities and local institutions to come up with their own creative ways to sustain the news we need.
The rest of the world is already moving ahead of us in looking at ways to support local media. Canada just devoted nearly $600 million to boost the country’s journalism. Great Britain is redirecting $10 million from the BBC’s budget to local news outlets. Australia is considering taxing platform giants to support quality news.
These are the kinds of ideas we need to start debating here. Government funding isn’t the only answer, but neither is philanthropy or blockchain or Jeff Bezos.
And it’s time to retire claims that government funding equals government interference. It isn’t true in places like England or Germany any more than it is at NPR. There are proven ways to build firewalls to shield newsrooms from funders and create independent oversight on how the money is spent. Better still, we should engage the public on setting funding priorities.
Let’s keep in mind that for more than 50 years the United States has dedicated public money for public-interest programming. What’s come out of that? Cultural touchstones like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and hard-hitting journalism like Frontline. 2019 could be the year we seed a new generation of programs, outlets, and technology that respond to local needs and reflect our diverse communities.
Publicly funded media has always sought to produce news and information that serve the public interest and fill gaps in community coverage. Those gaps have become chasms that are harming our democracy, and 2019 will be the year that governments finally step up to address the local-news crisis.
Craig Aaron is the president and CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action, where Mike Rispoli is the director of the News Voices project.
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers