Nieman Lab.
Predictions for
Journalism, 2024.
Journalism is a mere memory on Facebook. The platform reminds me of this daily by serving up a historic feed of my life and the internet we once inhabited. In between photos of first days and family vacations, I scroll through headlines prefaced by lengthy anecdotes and diatribes, my “take” attached to facts backing me up.
Facts are a Facebook memory, too.
Nowadays, if users dare share, many relegate articles to “link in comments,” an algorithmic workaround so they might still reach friends and stand a shot at engagement. Maybe we’ll add a dancing gif or puppy pic to really grab your attention.
In 2024, this will not be enough to save democracy.
The past few weeks have shown us why. The Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and ensuing coverage serve as a tragic dress rehearsal on how we might share news and updates, dialogue, and expose ourselves to multiple points of view. Namely, we’re not. Misinformation and disinformation abound and have devolved into what the RAND Corp. calls “truth decay.” The think tank reports “the more one is invested in an outcome and the more one demonizes those on the opposing side” are traits of the greatest offenders.
Over the past few years, as the act of sharing links to news coverage, articles and even opinion pieces was devalued, users ceased to do so. That does not mean they stop engaging. Instead, they fill the void with memes, opinion, conjecture, images of violence and destruction and great cruelty that might be true but also might not, and history lessons that might be true but also might not. The sharing of false information online, RAND reports, “is particularly pronounced among the highly partisan crowd.”
I am not one of those people longing for the good ol’ days when social media was safe, equitable, democratized. It never has been. In fact, for years, I felt that the focus on misinformation and polarization was too easy a scapegoat for journalists and funders to evade their own responsibility to meet audiences where they are, optimize for digital success, and ensure good information outperformed the bad. But the decision to suppress external links across social media — I use Facebook as the most egregious example but X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn are guilty, too — has created even more mayhem. Now we don’t even stand a chance.
Our public spaces are devoid of journalism at precisely the time we need it most. Many of us lucky enough to still be employed in newsrooms plod on, even as referral traffic from social media tanks and general news consumption also slumps. Where do you find news? Where does news find you? Email newsletters, videos on Instagram, push alerts are among the answers. But they are no replacement for the platforms where conversations about the news still rage on, despite the absence of news.
In an election year, this feels especially dangerous and puts platforms in the position of playing an impossible game of whack-a-mole, one of their own design. Platforms decided they are not publishers, but both remain beholden to Silicon Valley’s formula of scale and stickiness.
Community or niche media outlets, like my Queens-based startup Epicenter-NYC, hardly register in these models. Yet our laser focus on the people we serve — communities united by geography, identity, or a subject area — help us forge connections and establish trust. Our definition of news is expansive and utilitarian. Our journalism comes in forms beyond inverted-pyramid-style articles such as QR codes, flyers, or translators at the food pantry. We are rooted in service, solutions, actions, and needs, even as we fend off questioners who ponder whether we are committing Journalism.
Since 2015, I have dutifully penned these predictions and try to do so, year after year, with a sense of idealism and optimism. I feel neither right now. Journalists’ ability to help audiences connect to news and information at scale has never felt more challenged. In 2024, I will keep doubling down on that which we can control:
- Direct relationships with our users;
- New formats and platforms and venues for content discovery (WhatsApp, Eventbrite, and, yes, IRL);
- Trusted networks and overlapping audiences.
Many of us in the URL Media network, a company I founded with WURD’s Sara Lomax to help community media achieve scale and sustainability, are planning to share resources and information to help voters make sense of the issues, candidates, and basic information such as where to cast a ballot. Will the lines be long? Will our people be safe? Why bother voting?
We make our reporting relevant by connecting politics, policy, and participation to people’s real lives and worlds. We make news and information feel more like a conversation with our users, including the all-important action of taking our efforts not just off platforms but offline altogether. For example, we cannot wait till the last week of October to talk to Black female voters about how they’re feeling; we must center them all year long.
Quality journalism in 2024 will be dependent on such community ties, the clarity of who we are serving and the all-important why. Without this hustle and humanity, we risk more than journalism becoming the stuff of Facebook memories — but democracy itself.
S. Mitra Kalita is the co-founder and CEO of URL Media and founder and publisher of Epicenter-NYC.
Journalism is a mere memory on Facebook. The platform reminds me of this daily by serving up a historic feed of my life and the internet we once inhabited. In between photos of first days and family vacations, I scroll through headlines prefaced by lengthy anecdotes and diatribes, my “take” attached to facts backing me up.
Facts are a Facebook memory, too.
Nowadays, if users dare share, many relegate articles to “link in comments,” an algorithmic workaround so they might still reach friends and stand a shot at engagement. Maybe we’ll add a dancing gif or puppy pic to really grab your attention.
In 2024, this will not be enough to save democracy.
The past few weeks have shown us why. The Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and ensuing coverage serve as a tragic dress rehearsal on how we might share news and updates, dialogue, and expose ourselves to multiple points of view. Namely, we’re not. Misinformation and disinformation abound and have devolved into what the RAND Corp. calls “truth decay.” The think tank reports “the more one is invested in an outcome and the more one demonizes those on the opposing side” are traits of the greatest offenders.
Over the past few years, as the act of sharing links to news coverage, articles and even opinion pieces was devalued, users ceased to do so. That does not mean they stop engaging. Instead, they fill the void with memes, opinion, conjecture, images of violence and destruction and great cruelty that might be true but also might not, and history lessons that might be true but also might not. The sharing of false information online, RAND reports, “is particularly pronounced among the highly partisan crowd.”
I am not one of those people longing for the good ol’ days when social media was safe, equitable, democratized. It never has been. In fact, for years, I felt that the focus on misinformation and polarization was too easy a scapegoat for journalists and funders to evade their own responsibility to meet audiences where they are, optimize for digital success, and ensure good information outperformed the bad. But the decision to suppress external links across social media — I use Facebook as the most egregious example but X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn are guilty, too — has created even more mayhem. Now we don’t even stand a chance.
Our public spaces are devoid of journalism at precisely the time we need it most. Many of us lucky enough to still be employed in newsrooms plod on, even as referral traffic from social media tanks and general news consumption also slumps. Where do you find news? Where does news find you? Email newsletters, videos on Instagram, push alerts are among the answers. But they are no replacement for the platforms where conversations about the news still rage on, despite the absence of news.
In an election year, this feels especially dangerous and puts platforms in the position of playing an impossible game of whack-a-mole, one of their own design. Platforms decided they are not publishers, but both remain beholden to Silicon Valley’s formula of scale and stickiness.
Community or niche media outlets, like my Queens-based startup Epicenter-NYC, hardly register in these models. Yet our laser focus on the people we serve — communities united by geography, identity, or a subject area — help us forge connections and establish trust. Our definition of news is expansive and utilitarian. Our journalism comes in forms beyond inverted-pyramid-style articles such as QR codes, flyers, or translators at the food pantry. We are rooted in service, solutions, actions, and needs, even as we fend off questioners who ponder whether we are committing Journalism.
Since 2015, I have dutifully penned these predictions and try to do so, year after year, with a sense of idealism and optimism. I feel neither right now. Journalists’ ability to help audiences connect to news and information at scale has never felt more challenged. In 2024, I will keep doubling down on that which we can control:
- Direct relationships with our users;
- New formats and platforms and venues for content discovery (WhatsApp, Eventbrite, and, yes, IRL);
- Trusted networks and overlapping audiences.
Many of us in the URL Media network, a company I founded with WURD’s Sara Lomax to help community media achieve scale and sustainability, are planning to share resources and information to help voters make sense of the issues, candidates, and basic information such as where to cast a ballot. Will the lines be long? Will our people be safe? Why bother voting?
We make our reporting relevant by connecting politics, policy, and participation to people’s real lives and worlds. We make news and information feel more like a conversation with our users, including the all-important action of taking our efforts not just off platforms but offline altogether. For example, we cannot wait till the last week of October to talk to Black female voters about how they’re feeling; we must center them all year long.
Quality journalism in 2024 will be dependent on such community ties, the clarity of who we are serving and the all-important why. Without this hustle and humanity, we risk more than journalism becoming the stuff of Facebook memories — but democracy itself.
S. Mitra Kalita is the co-founder and CEO of URL Media and founder and publisher of Epicenter-NYC.
