I hope 2019 won’t be the year that fact-checkers give up from exhaustion.
They are understandably tired. Despite fact-checking Donald Trump for nearly a decade (the first PolitiFact check of his birther claims was published in 2011), his extraordinary run of whoppers and Pants on Fires and four-Pinocchio claims shows no signs of slowing.
He’s like an indestructible monster in a Godzilla movie. The authorities keep firing at him, but he just keeps walking through town, gaining power.
The fact-checkers have tried every weapon they’ve got: Lie of the Year, Whoppers of the Year and even running lists of thousands of his falsehoods. They’ve created new ones, like The Washington Post Fact Checker’s new Bottomless Pinocchio, which is reserved for false claims that have been repeated more than 20 times. Fittingly, only one politician qualifies: Trump.
(Also quite fitting: The Bottomless Pinocchio was introduced on the front page of The Washington Post’s print edition next to a story about Russian propaganda.)
But despite the new weapons, Trump storms on, leaving the truth in tatters.
Looking ahead to 2019, fact-checkers shouldn’t be deterred by his persistence nor by his bogus claims of “fake news.” They should continue to check everything he says and look for more ways to innovate. News organizations should consider:
Bill Adair is Knight Professor of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University.
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Carrie Brown Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Nik Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater