Expect another tough year for journalism.

Neither dual antitrust lawsuits against Facebook from the FTC and 46 state attorneys general nor the DOJ’s monopoly case against Google will funnel money to news operations in 2021. Wonks and media watchers will tune to C-SPAN, hopeful that legal action will ease the duopoly’s chokehold on ad dollars, but that won’t happen without a prolonged fight. Remember: The Microsoft case spanned nearly a decade. And many journalism outlets can’t survive that long without radical evolution.

In 2021, expect more noble and/or hopeful but modest efforts to direct money to journalists and newsrooms, deeply roiled long before the contagion locked down Wuhan. But expect those efforts to sustain too few newsrooms. More subject specialists will flock to Substack, hopeful of emulating Andrew Sullivan’s successful subscription model. But really: How many deserving newsletters or sites can one admirer afford — or consume?

Still, expect more newsrooms to secure some grants, (eventually) hold events, and push subscriptions and memberships, perhaps garnering a few more adherents but not enough to guarantee longevity.

Gird for too few renewals or continuing support — not just because so many Americans are in financial distress, but because as people step farther from their keyboards as the pandemic ebbs, many will tire of reading about political, biological and financial chaos. They’ll start deleting newsletters unread as fast as spam, until they are moved to cancel. Then they’ll return to relying on the convenient social pipelines filled with fluff and fakery, namely Facebook, Instagram, and Google. (Little will change at those platforms beyond hiring more lawyers to fight regulators and federal officials).

The Fourth Estate will remain in dire circumstances, with too few billionaires and well-intended donors to ensure the long-term gainful employment of professional and ethical reporters (and editors, designers, product managers, et al.) to do the time- and resource-intensive watchdogging of individuals, institutions and government that protects our democracy.

In yet another Darwinian year, the technologically sophisticated and financially stable New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal will be fine. That’s good for them, as their journalism and interactives are often stellar, but reliance on too few reputable news sources antagonizes the right and contributes to echo chambers, efficiently elevated by algorighms. And guess which platforms are best at monetizing those?

The same ones that deservingly are in the legal hot seat. In 2021, let’s hope for faster inroads in breaking barriers and finding solutions to ensure that journalism survives and thrives.

And fingers crossed that Report For America wins the $100 million MacArthur Foundation grant, which I would predict will happen but don’t want to jinx anything.