Gone are the days when a single news organization had the resources to dominate local news coverage, or when multiple news organizations would enter fierce competition to “win” on the same local story.
While competition used to drive strong news coverage and accountability reporting, a new information environment driven by technology and battling today’s challenges — from misinformation to declining trust in media — demand solutions from a variety of sources and players. In 2019, we’ll see an increase in multidisciplinary collaboration among sectors, institutions, and news organizations working to better serve local audiences.
There are a few positive indicators pointing to that trend:
Stronger local news ecosystems: A new nonprofit organization, Resolve Philadelphia, is leading a collaboration of The Philadelphia Inquirer, WHYY, Billy Penn, WURD, NBC10, Temple University, and 13 other media outlets in Philadelphia to report on and promote civic engagement around the issue of poverty. Resolve grew out of a 2017 collaborative news project organized by the Solutions Journalism Network about the challenges and the solutions to prisoner re-entry in Philadelphia, producing more than 200 stories and about the social and economic toll of high recidivism rates. In 2019, Resolve Philadelphia will continue to apply the solutions journalism framework to “Broke in Philly” and provide in-depth, nuanced reporting on the impact of poverty and potential solutions in Philadelphia. Knight is supporting a similar effort with the Solutions Journalism Network in Charlotte and has been helping fund the Detroit Journalism Cooperative for more than five years.
National–local partnerships: ProPublica just announced it will be working with 14 more local news organizations under its Local Reporting Network on accountability reporting and investigative reporting projects. Report For America is seeking applications for its next class of reporters and local news organizations after demonstrating tremendous success last year. And Reveal is continuing its strong work bringing data journalism, new forms of storytelling, and a collaborative approach in New Orleans and San Jose, with more cities to come.
Multidisciplinary partnerships: Problems associated with declining trust in media are drawing experts across academia, technology, and journalism to work collaboratively on solutions. One example is Cortico, a media technology nonprofit born out of MIT Media Lab. Cortico is working with the Associated Press, Alabama Media Group, and others to create an ear-to-ground listening tool that can systematically identify and elevate issues important to their local community. We are seeing similar collaborations tackling other critical issues such as the governance of artificial intelligence and the news.
Media funders join forces: More and more, media funders are collaborating to support local journalism projects. For example, Knight joined with the Lenfest Institute in Philadelphia this fall to support a $20 million fund aimed at transforming local journalism. Another key example is NewsMatch, a national matching-gift campaign that is helping nonprofit news organizations build their audience and donor base while also helping them increase fundraising expertise. After launching in 2016 with 57 news organizations, Knight joined with Democracy Fund, MacArthur Foundation, Ethics and Excellence, and a host of others to help members of the Institute for Nonprofit News raise $26.4 million. The 2018 campaign, which closes on Dec. 31, now includes 155 nonprofit news organizations and a host of new funders.
In 2019, we’re hoping that funders will join together to invest in the American Journalism Project, a venture philanthropy organization for local news led by Chalkbeat founder Elizabeth Green and Texas Tribune founder John Thornton.
These examples are among the many collaborative efforts the Knight Foundation journalism team was excited by in 2018. Looking ahead, we anticipate more strategic and unexpected collaborations among news organizations and those passionate about creating a strong future for informed communities.
This prediction was written by the Knight Foundation journalism team: LaSharah Bunting, Paul Cheung, Jennifer Preston, Karen Rundlet. and Nick Swyter.
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Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
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Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
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Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
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Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
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Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
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Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
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