Predictions for Journalism 2023

Each year, we ask some of the smartest people in journalism and media what they think is coming in the next 12 months. At the end of a trying 2022, here’s what they had to say.

Updating through Dec. 22
See all predictions →
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson
Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
Parker Molloy
We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
J. Siguru Wahutu
American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies

“If we automate some commodity news, we can provide a lot more information to people who need it.”

Bill Grueskin
Local news will come to rely on AI

“A major metropolitan daily will sever its ties with the major wire services and go local-only.”

Joshua P. Darr
Local to live, wire to wither

“Tomorrow’s journalism belongs to those who’ve been excluded, harmed, and failed by the media.”

Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni
The future of journalism is not you

“We’ll see news organizations adopt and embrace shared values as the way to succeed in the face of the industry’s collapse.”

Christina Shih, Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials

“The threats journalism faces are profound and evolving. So is our capacity to respond.”

Raney Aronson-Rath, Journalists will band together to fight intimidation

“The threat of online violence and the cost of deferred DEI efforts have one thing in common: News workers of color bear the burden.”

Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles, DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse

Eric Holthaus
As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Josh Schwartz
The AI spammers are coming
Francesco Zaffarano
There is no end of “social media”
David Cohn
AI made this prediction

“How often do you ask your colleague how they’re feeling, and are you prepared for the answer?”

Kathy Lu, We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders

“You either adapt or die.”

Delano Massey, The industry shakes its imposter syndrome

Mauricio Cabrera
It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
Cassandra Etienne
Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities
All predictions in chronological order
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan JacksonFunders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs“Redesign grantmaking so it doesn’t feel like the Hunger Games.”
Parker MolloyWe’ll reach new heights of moral panic“More hollowed-out and understaffed mainstream media outlets will find themselves either embracing right-wing moral panics about LGBTQ people or simply not having the energy or resources to fight back against them.”
J. Siguru WahutuAmerican journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies“American journalism operates in the U.S. similar to how settler newspapers in British East Africa and British West Africa did.”
Bill GrueskinLocal news will come to rely on AI“If we automate some commodity news, we can provide a lot more information to people who need it.”
Joshua P. DarrLocal to live, wire to wither“A major metropolitan daily will sever its ties with the major wire services and go local-only.”
Megan Lucero and Shirish KulkarniThe future of journalism is not you“Tomorrow’s journalism belongs to those who’ve been excluded, harmed, and failed by the media.”
Christina ShihShared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials“We’ll see news organizations adopt and embrace shared values as the way to succeed in the face of the industry’s collapse.”
Raney Aronson-RathJournalists will band together to fight intimidation“The threats journalism faces are profound and evolving. So is our capacity to respond.”
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen SearlesDEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse“The threat of online violence and the cost of deferred DEI efforts have one thing in common: News workers of color bear the burden.”
Eric HolthausAs social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power“Elon Musk just created a new era of social media: Niche verticals of like-minded people that can charge premium advertising rates and accelerate the interests of their communities.”
Josh SchwartzThe AI spammers are coming“Will there be any place at all for human-written SEO-friendly content?”
Francesco ZaffaranoThere is no end of “social media”“Predicting the end of social platforms is the ultimate expression of a secret desire to put them back in the attic because we fear we will never quite learn how to use them.”
David CohnAI made this prediction“Some (not all) journalists will navigate their careers as those who can leverage this technology to improve the news ecosystem.”
Kathy LuWe need emotionally agile newsroom leaders“How often do you ask your colleague how they’re feeling, and are you prepared for the answer?”
Delano MasseyThe industry shakes its imposter syndrome“You either adapt or die.”
Mauricio CabreraIt’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities“Creators have communities. Publishers have audiences — a big problem for the media industry when it comes to earning money.”
Cassandra EtienneLocal news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities“Community reporting fellowships will become increasingly important in diversifying newsrooms and strengthening local news ecosystems.”
Nikki UsherThis is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)“Contrary to what The New York Times has speculated, we are not at peak newsletter. We are just at peak newsletter via email delivery.”
Anna NirmalaNews organizations get new structures“At the early stages of an organization’s growth or transformation, it may not make sense to hire a super senior full-time resource right away.”
Michael SchudsonJournalism gets more and more difficult“It grows more and more difficult to cover a world without boundaries, where everything is related to everything else.”
Martina EfeyiniTalk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.“To engage younger audiences in science journalism, news organizations have to talk to them to see what sparks their curiosity.”
Stefanie MurrayThe year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy“Let’s see one of our big media organizations step up and declare itself a pro-democracy newsroom, and spell out what that means and how it will shape their coverage.”
Sarah MarshallA web channel strategy won’t be enough“There has been no reduction in Facebook traffic to Condé Nast’s brands as a whole.”
Cari Nazeer and Emily GoligoskiNews organizations step up their support for caregivers“News organizations — particularly the ones that have spent the past couple years reporting on caregivers hitting their breaking point — can no longer afford not to prioritize the needs of caregivers on their own staffs.”
Walter FrickJournalists wake up to the power of prediction markets“Your audience collectively knows much more than you do.”
Taylor LorenzThe “creator economy” will be astroturfed“We cannot allow rich and powerful creators to disguise themselves as grassroots or to seize power online in order to promote extremist ideology.”
S. Mitra Kalita“Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”“It’s no wonder that news consumption is plummeting and users are left feeling confused or overwhelmed.”
Priyanjana BenganiPartisan local news networks will collaborate“Networks with aligned interests will boost each other’s narratives in a coordinated fashion to inundate readers with the same message from different places.”
Peter SterneAI enters the newsroom“These tools could free reporters up to spend more time interviewing sources and digging up information and less time transcribing interviews and writing daily stories on deadline.”
Lisa HeyamotoThe independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability“How a news business compares to others matters much less than how successfully it meets its own goals.”
Anika AnandIndependent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures“Traditional ‘HR’ is changing, and independent news organizations are helping the journalism industry catch up.”
James SalangaJournalists work from a place of harm reduction“Next year, I want more people to ask: What would journalism premised on harm reduction look like?”
Sue CrossThinking and acting collectively to save the news“Collective impact initiatives go beyond the kind of editorial collaborations we usually see in journalism.”
Nicholas DiakopoulosJournalists productively harness generative AI tools“It’s probably better to think of these tools as internal newsroom tools, making suggestions to reporters and editors rather than generating text that will be directly published.”
Jim FriedlichLocal journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage“There is an urgent need to focus election coverage on the issues and the civic process — not the candidate horse race.”
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan LoperMission-driven metrics become our North Star“Gorging on data to micro-target users won’t help us make the major difference necessary to earn people’s trust.”
Alexandra BorchardtThe year of the climate journalism strategy“Climate change needs to advance from topic to frame, gaining relevance in every beat to become more subtle and less one-off alarmist.”
Doris TruongWorkers demand to be paid what the job is worth“Journalists should not only demand the wages we deserve, we should ask for the lifestyle flexibility we need.”
Sarabeth BermanNonprofit local news shows that it can scale“We are beginning to see the maturation of and experimentation by a number of individual organizations showing how nonprofit news can scale.”
Kerri HoffmanPodcasting goes local“Podcasting will grow as an essential source of news, storytelling, and opportunity within local communities.”
Jakob MollJournalism startups will think beyond English“There is much we can learn from our American colleagues. But there is as least as much we can’t.”
Gordon CrovitzThe year advertisers stop funding misinformation“When brands stop advertising on misinformation sites and instead advertise on quality news sites, their CPM price for ads goes down and engagement with their ads goes up.”
Pia FreyPublishers start polling their users at scale“Every good conversation starts with a question.”
Kaitlin C. MillerHarassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly“As more journalists speak out, and more news organizations grow hungry for motivated and talented reporters, they will have to begin adjusting the norms that have historically ignored abuse.”
Gabe SchneiderWell-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay“We need to publicly discuss how inappropriate these salary disparities are — both in for-profit and nonprofit newsrooms — when so many news organizations are struggling and laying off workers.”
Michael W. WagnerThe backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming“We will be increasingly likely to hear that pro-democracy reporting is biased, dangerous, and un-American.”
Juleyka LantiguaNewsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine“Coming into the 2024 elections, the country cannot rely on the bravest among us to occasionally burst through the lies.”
Joni DeutschPodcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence“My hope is for podcast makers to overcome this insatiable need to be the first, the best, and the one-and-only, and to instead focus on being collaborators and audio allies.”
Daniel TrielliTrust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.Harsh (even if fair) coverage of left-of-center governments will not decrease accusations of bias in the U.S., Brazil, or anywhere else.
Sam GuzikAI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.“We can be open to the disruptive power of artificial intelligence at all points in our value chain, instead of closing ourselves off and assuming the future will look just like today.”
Sarah StonbelyGrowth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels“By taking these efforts down to the state level, we are able to engage people in a way that’s not possible when hyperpartisan politicians in Washington DC are fighting over Big Bird.”
Tim CarmodyNewsletter writers need a new ethics“Outside the framework of established institutions and expectations for how writers interact with the people funding their work, these writers are usually left on their own to sort out any ethical conundrums that might arise.”
Amy Schmitz WeissJournalism education faces a crossroads“Journalism schools and departments will reassess how they teach storytelling and reporting, communication processes, newsroom leadership, and newsroom workflows to mesh to the future media landscape.”
Paul CheungMore news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs“More news organizations will position themselves as social-impact business, while adhering to journalistic values in the execution of their missions.”
Ryan Gantz“I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”“Can you give me an example of what the concluding paragraph of my Nieman piece might sound like if spoken by an old pirate to his crew of apprehensive journalists and technologists working in media?”
Andrew DonohueWe’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy“It’s not enough anymore to just hope your stories help people make better decisions. You have to hope your stories help preserve our democracy.”
Mariana Moura SantosA woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world“Having women journalists and reporters is not the same as having women leading a newspaper.”
Rachel GlickhouseHumanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor“Creating a more supportive, communicative, and organized workplace will help retain and attract talent, which can ultimately save time and money.”
Karina MontoyaMore reporters on the antitrust beat“For the sake of journalism’s future financial independence, it is in the interest not only of the public, but of journalists themselves, to grapple with the complexities of this beat.”
Jennifer BrandelAI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more. “What would it take for you to orient your interactions to ensure that the people you engage with, report on, and report for get the signal that you and your newsroom really care?”
Moreno Cruz OsórioBrazilian journalism turns wounds into actionBrazilian journalism will need to turn “awareness into new practices to reaffirm it as an institution capable of meeting the challenges imposed on Brazilian society.”
Ståle GrutYour newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too“The pressing need for rules and guidelines for creating or using AI-generated content, should spawn a broader review of how images are treated by the news media.”
Elizabeth Bramson-BoudreauMore of the same“I’m of the belief that 2023 probably won’t be all that different from 2022.”
Shanté CosmeThe answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy“We can’t just expect journalists to practice self-care; we need to put processes in place to ensure they aren’t overworked and actively help them manage their workloads.”
Kaitlyn WellsWe’ll prioritize media literacy for children“We’ll see more parents, educators, and lawmakers evaluate the types of literacy we’re sharing in schools with an aim to both inform and eradicate the vitriol spewed against inclusive literature.”
Ryan NaveCitizen journalism, but make it equitable“There exists enormous potential to build partnerships between newsrooms, individual content creators, mediamakers, and citizens that are both just and sustainable.”
Julia BeizerNews fatigue shows us a clear path forward“News fatigue and subscription fatigue are both very real, but they point to a clear path forward.”
Wilson LiévanoDiaspora journalism takes the next step“Shedding socioeconomic and cultural preconceptions and approaching the diaspora on equal terms, with an open mind, must be a priority.”
David SkokRenewed interest in human-powered reporting“Twitter is less a town square than a gladiator arena, overseen by a private company trying to sell advertisements and $8 checkmarks against a discourse that’s increasingly angry and hateful”
Surya MattuData journalists learn from photojournalists“To meaningfully report on society, we need to be able to observe what’s taking place on social platforms without relying on their permission. “
Mar CabraThe inevitable mental health revolution“It’s the media organizations’ turn to pick up the baton and lead the way towards a more sustainable culture of care in journalism.”
Jenna Weiss-BermanThe economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)“A lot of dumb, massive deals have been made in podcasting.”
Khushbu ShahGlobal reporting will suffer“U.S. audiences will be less informed about the world.”
Errin HainesJournalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public“Imagine how different our campaign coverage would be if we treated the entire cycle like one big debate, focused on the priorities we poll people about, but rarely follow up on.”
Andrew LosowskyJournalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter“This new type of app isn’t a platform itself but instead pulls together various platform and content streams to offer a single, seamless networked experience.”
Sue RobinsonEngagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality“Until our engagement journalism tactics confront the reality of discursive silos in which you believe this happened, I believe that happened, and we never end up with a shared set of facts…they will fail.”
Jody BrannonWe’ll embrace policy remedies“It’s time journalists, advertisers, technologists, regulators, lawmakers, and others convene to craft equitable standards of distribution and monetization of news content.”
Dannagal G. YoungStop rewarding elite performances of identity threat“In 2023, journalists can choose to relegate cynical elite displays of identity threat to mere footnotes.”
Larry RyckmanWe’ll work together with our competitors“There’s a growing awareness that our readers are better served when we pool resources and tackle topics of public interest.”
Felicitas Carrique and Becca AaronsonNews product goes from trend to standard“Organizations will realize that they need formal product managers — and even full-fledged news product teams — to connect the work they’re doing in the newsroom with the audience, technology, and revenue strategy.”
AX MinaJournalism in a time of permacrisis“The work ahead needs to include supporting the whole person in the workplace and ensuring we have the energy, joy, and spirit to show up fully for our selves, our teams, and our audiences in difficult times.”
Kirstin McCuddenWe’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering“We’re on the cusp of federal protections with the PRESS Act.”
Anita VarmaJournalism prioritizes the basic need for survival“Journalism will do justice to millions of people’s lived realities by representing these shared conditions from the ground up.”
Matt RasnicMore newsroom workers turn to organized labor“Union representation continues to be prevalent at larger news organizations, but we are also seeing smaller organizations’ employees banding together.”
Nicholas JacksonThere will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work“This constant cycle of two-steps-forward, two-steps-back can be disorienting, but it has allowed us to more quickly bring in new people, often those previously excluded from our newsrooms.”
Ben WerdmullerThe internet is up for grabs again“Given a limited set of time, people, and resources, how can you best decide which platforms to bet on?”
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van DevenNarrative change trend brings new money to journalism“Many in philanthropy are eager for journalism to regain the public’s trust by telling a more complete and accurate story about communities it has historically misrepresented and excluded — and many journalists want the same thing.”
Jessica ClarkOpen discourse retrenches“The ‘Substackization’ of celebrity journalists removes these voices from the larger conversation and makes them more narrowly available to a paying audience made up of superfans.”
Brian StelterFinding new ways to reach news avoiders“Let’s make it harder to avoid the news and a whole lot easier to get caught up.”
Jarrad HendersonVideo editing will help people understand the media they consume“People will have a tougher time discerning fact from fiction moving forward, and one remedy is understanding video editing.”
Ariel ZirulnickJournalism doubles down on user needs“If we continue to study just the tiny portion of a person’s day that they spend consuming journalism, we will miss innumerable opportunities to weave ourselves into people’s lives.”
Sumi AggarwalSmart newsrooms will prioritize board development“Many leaders focus their board efforts on traditional fundraising, audits, and budget approvals, but they miss opportunities to have their boards be true partners.”
Janet HavenChatGPT and the future of trust “We will see ChatGPT and tools like it used in adversarial ways that are intended to undermine trust in information environments, pushing people away from public discourse to increasingly homogenous communities.”
Sue SchardtToward a new poetics of journalism“Journalists as anthropologists, social scientists, forensic experts, and poets leave a discoverable trace for those want to understand where they’ve come from. Let’s be generous with what we leave for them.”
Don DayThe news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.“Listening gives us insight into what people want to see less of: Opinion content. Heavy, glitzy crime stories. National news.”
Amethyst J. DavisThe slight of the great contraction“I’m often told philanthropy and the foundation world move slowly. For rural and suburban communities, they clearly don’t move at all.”
Cory BergmanThe AI content flood“For good and bad, AI-written content will flood the internet, an amalgamation of the work of millions of human writers and journalists who came before it.”
Upasna GautamTechnology that performs at the speed of news“The optimal content management platform will provide four key benefits: speed, flexibility, monetization, and empowerment.”
Jesse HolcombBuffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled“While forecasts, studies, and national estimates are useful in thinking about the future of news, the reality is going to play out locally, and no two communities will be exactly alike.”
Rodney GibbsRecalibrating how we work apart“The stakes are too high to sit back and hope it works itself out.”
John DavidowA year of intergenerational learning“Maybe Boomers like me can leverage our experience to clean up some of the mess our generation created.”
Jonas KaiserRejecting the “free speech” frame“We should press for an honest debate, and journalists in particular shouldn’t fall victim to the right’s often dishonest use of the ‘free speech’ frame.”
Anthony NadlerConfronting media gerrymandering“If news organizations want to reach popular and heterogeneous audiences, they have to think in terms of building diverse coalitions, not a mass audience.”
Christoph MergersonThe rot at the core of the news business“Repairing the rot requires us to imagine a media system that isn’t centered nearly as much around profit motives — and then insist that our elected officials help to bring it about.”
Zizi PapacharissiPlatforms are over“Why stay? Does the economic benefit really outweigh the reputational cost? The time seems opportune to leave and make a statement in so doing.”
Eric UlkenGenerative AI brings wrongness at scale“For all its promise, generative AI can get more wrong, faster — and with greater apparent certitude and less transparency — than any innovation in recent memory.”
Tamar CharneyFlux is the new stability“Sometimes we can pretend we’re in a moment of stability, despite the ever-changing landscape around us; at other times, it’s all too apparent that we’re living in a time of profound shifts.”
Laura E. DavisThe year we embrace the robots — and ourselves“So many of our practices and habits are simply those: practices and habits. They are not what defines the profession or what makes it useful to the public.”
Laxmi ParthasarathyUnlocking the silent demand for international journalism“Readers in the United States demand a higher standard of international journalism — and that demand is waiting to be unlocked.”
Dana LaceyTech will screw publishers over“Founders will doom their companies by believing the wrong people. They’ll perform napkin math with VCs that affirms whatever they already believe.”
Nicholas ThompsonThe year AI actually changes the media business“New companies will appear that use AI to aggregate and summarize journalism; reporters will learn how to use the new tools to find ideas; writers will figure out how it can help them compose new stories or at least get through writer’s block.”
Elite TruongIn platform collapse, an opportunity for community“Have you asked your top readers how they feel about Twitter and Facebook and if they plan to stay, or only your colleagues in journalism?”
Basile SimonTowards supporting criminal accountability“I eagerly await the large ‘merchants of truth,’ news organizations that trade on their production of accurate records, marketing their ability to establish provenance and unbroken integrity, from capture to their client’s screen.”
Susan ChiraEquipping local journalism“How do you absorb people’s views and the scars they’ve taken from encounters with journalism while maintaining your journalistic independence and integrity?”
Eric NuzumA focus on people instead of power“In their view, besides tragedy and crime, all current local news media does is tell the stories of people in power, not about people like them nor stories that directly (or clearly) impact their lives.”
Mael VallejoMore threats to press freedom across the Americas“Being a journalist is becoming a heroic profession in the Americas, and neither governments nor society is acting to protect the watchdogs of democracy.”
Emma Carew GrovumThe year to resist forgetting about diversity“Because two years of trying to get better wasn’t enough.”
Sarah AlvarezDream bigger or lose out“We can no longer pull our punches when it comes to what we allow ourselves to dream and demand for our work and our world.”
Hillary FreyDeath to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires“As newsroom leaders address equity, fairness, and labor concerns, they should extend their consideration to prospective hires as well as to employees.”
Julia AngwinDemocracies will get serious about saving journalism“If democracy is going to survive, we’re going to need to fund its watchdogs.”
Eric ThurmJournalists think of themselves as workers“Even a public service is still a service, and even the most high-minded reporters still have to pay the rent.”
Sam GregorySynthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made“We’ll see these expanding authenticity and provenance technology efforts intersect with the evolving TikTokification of media production, focused on remix, playful editing, and integrated AI effects.”
Alexandra SvokosWorking harder to reach audiences where they are“There’s a reason young people are looking to graphics in Instagram carousels to explain news topics to them.”
Alex PerryNew paths to transparency without Twitter“A movement to expand industry transparency cannot be led by the news organizations that perpetuate the lack of transparency.”
Joe AmditisAI throws a lifeline to local publishers“That’s more time that could (and should) be spent reporting or engaging with community members.”
Valérie Bélair-GagnonWell-being will become a core tenet of journalism“It matters not just for individual journalists, but for news itself and for the profession’s relationships with audiences and the public at large.”
Peter BaleRising costs force more digital innovation“Those who moved fast over the past five years will come out on top, and those who didn’t will struggle, fire staff, and disappoint customers and advertisers with clunky sites, second-grade apps, and increasingly thin newspapers they’ll still try to charge the earth for.”
Kavya SukumarBelling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale“For a fact-checking effort to gain trust, the arbiters of truth cannot also be its distributors.”
Burt HermanThe year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning“Journalists will become even more essential to society as AI enters the mainstream, where we will help set standards, track potential abuses, and bring our ethics and standards to the technology.”
Bill AdairThe year of the fact-check (no, really!)“Individual checks are now more important than the organizations that produce them.”
Gina ChuaThe traditional story structure gets deconstructed“Despite huge changes in the technology of news, the structure of a story today doesn’t look hugely different from one in, say, 1932.”
Johannes KlingebielThe innovation team, R.I.P.“You might be forgiven for suspecting that news companies are more interested in appearing innovative than actually doing something new.”
Tre'vell AndersonContinued culpability in anti-trans campaigns“There aren’t two sides to the humanity of trans people.”
Barbara RaabMore journalism funders will take more risks“Given that philanthropy is uniquely unaccountable for its performance, funders have great freedom to take risks and to experiment. Now is the time.”
Victor PickardThe year journalism and capitalism finally divorce“It is capitalism that incentivizes the degradation of our news media — disinvesting in local journalism, weaponizing social media to capture our attention and data, and devaluing media workers’ labor conditions.”
Simon GalperinPhilanthropy stops investing in corporate media“It’s time for journalism philanthropy to ditch corporate media sellouts and double-down on supporting and expanding the non-commercial journalism sector.”
Jacob L. NelsonDespite it all, people will still want to be journalists“My hope is that journalism educators meet this demand by doing what we wish more journalists did within their newsrooms.”
Alex Sujong LaughlinCredit where it’s due“Saying people’s names isn’t difficult, but it does disrupt the assumption that brilliant journalistic work is the product of singular, virtuosic talents rather than collaboration.”
Alan HenryA reckoning with why trust in news is so low“Too often the way large media organizations approach journalism implies that their audience is actually the Pulitzer Board, as opposed to their subscribers and the general public.”
Richard TofelThe press might get better at vetting presidential candidates“It remains a sad episode that Secretary Clinton’s emails received more attention for the server on which they resided than for what they said about how she had done in her job.”
Emily NonkoIncarcerated reporters get more bylines“Our media industry, which is largely white and non-impacted by the system, has long underestimated and/or ignored people behind prison walls.”
Masuma AhujaJournalism starts working for and with its communities“Can we leave people with a sense of belonging? A sense of purpose or of wonder? A sense of agency even in the face of systemic problems?”
Ayala PanievskyIt’s time for PR for journalism“Even if the media industry takes urgent steps like diversifying newsrooms and empowering local media, the populist media bashing won’t go away. Ignoring it is not a sustainable way forward.”
Cindy RoyalYes, journalists should learn to code, but…“They’ll need to think of coding as not just a single practice, but a range of related practices.”
Snigdha SurNewsrooms get nimble in a recession“Every day you can scope down what you’re doing to the most important things is another day you can keep fighting.”
Jim VandeHeiThere is no “peak newsletter”“People will realize the idea that we had reached ‘peak newsletter’ was both stupid and undermined by the data and consumer preference.”
Jaden AmosTikTok personality journalists continue to rise“It won’t just be brand accounts posting these TikToks — it’ll be reporters using their own accounts to explain their reporting.”
Mario GarcíaMore newsrooms go mobile-first“The majority of those making news content decisions should be digital natives.”
A.J. BauerCovering the right wrong“Journalists can’t be so cavalier as to assume that ‘shedding light’ on antisemitism, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, and racism is always either harmless or beneficial.”
Ryan KellettAirline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers“The creative pursuit of reader revenue will continue as we borrow from other industries — even industries we often love to hate.”
Jessica MaddoxJournalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture“Content lives and dies by the number of people who engage with it. The press needs to stop giving attention away for free.”
Dominic-Madori DavisEveryone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting“The lack of diverse insight, analysis, and segregated coverage seems intentional — like a form of editorial redlining.”
Joanne McNeilFacebook and the media kiss and make up“Watch for Facebook to reemerge, promoting itself as the sensible, mature alternative to Elon Musk’s Twitter chaos.”
Al LuccaDigital news design gets interesting again“Modern digital design has drained all sentiment and inventiveness from products we use on a daily basis.”
Leezel TanglaoCommunity partnerships drive better reporting“It shows the power behind diverse teams who bring their shared life experiences to the table. It confirms that this work can’t be locked inside in newsroom silos.”
Esther Kezia ThorpeSubscription pressures force product innovation“Once growth slows and the lowest-hanging fruit — the superfans — have signed up, publishers will have to get smarter about how to make money from the rest.”
Brian MoritzRebuilding the news bundle“The overarching lesson of digital media’s first generation is that the users have the power.”
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