The spotlight will and should remain on how to strengthen local journalism, especially how to equip local journalists with the tools they need for ambitious accountability and investigative reporting, as we’ve been trying to do at The Marshall Project. Those include data analysis; alternative storytelling tools that allow the use of video, audio, and data visualization; public records requests; audience analytics; and legal help to extract information from officials who’ve gotten used to lax oversight.
We’ll see more exploration of engagement reporting — fundamentally, how do journalists become more proactive, responsible, and respectful in interacting with the communities they write about? How do they understand what kind of information these communities feel they lack — even if that is less sexy, too often dismissed and undervalued basic service journalism that explains how systems work? How do you absorb people’s views and the scars they’ve taken from encounters with journalism while maintaining your journalistic independence and integrity?
They’re tough challenges, but they make contemporary journalism so urgent and a continuing adventure.
Susan Chira is the editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project.
The spotlight will and should remain on how to strengthen local journalism, especially how to equip local journalists with the tools they need for ambitious accountability and investigative reporting, as we’ve been trying to do at The Marshall Project. Those include data analysis; alternative storytelling tools that allow the use of video, audio, and data visualization; public records requests; audience analytics; and legal help to extract information from officials who’ve gotten used to lax oversight.
We’ll see more exploration of engagement reporting — fundamentally, how do journalists become more proactive, responsible, and respectful in interacting with the communities they write about? How do they understand what kind of information these communities feel they lack — even if that is less sexy, too often dismissed and undervalued basic service journalism that explains how systems work? How do you absorb people’s views and the scars they’ve taken from encounters with journalism while maintaining your journalistic independence and integrity?
They’re tough challenges, but they make contemporary journalism so urgent and a continuing adventure.
Susan Chira is the editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project.
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Priyanjana Bengani Partisan local news networks will collaborate
Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
David Cohn AI made this prediction
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale
Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers
Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)
Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.
Johannes Klingebiel The innovation team, R.I.P.
Cassandra Etienne Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
Ariel Zirulnick Journalism doubles down on user needs
Nicholas Diakopoulos Journalists productively harness generative AI tools
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
Jesse Holcomb Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled
Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets
Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again
Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks
Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are
Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism
Eric Nuzum A focus on people instead of power
Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the “free speech” frame
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public
Basile Simon Towards supporting criminal accountability
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where it’s due
Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same
Susan Chira Equipping local journalism
Nikki Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
Kirstin McCudden We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering
Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Anna Nirmala News organizations get new structures
Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
John Davidow A year of intergenerational learning
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
An Xiao Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis
Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
Ståle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too
Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting
J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting
Ryan Nave Citizen journalism, but make it equitable
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low
Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism
Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat
Nicholas Jackson There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work
Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
Janelle Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction
Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities
Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Moreno Cruz Osório Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Kavya Sukumar Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale
Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward
Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession
Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Wilson Liévano Diaspora journalism takes the next step
Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution
Mario García More newsrooms go mobile-first
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning
Ayala Panievsky It’s time for PR for journalism
Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you
Elite Truong In platform collapse, an opportunity for community
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star
Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism
Mauricio Cabrera It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
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Amy Schmitz Weiss Journalism education faces a crossroads
Bill Grueskin Local news will come to rely on AI
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news
Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity
Shanté Cosme The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy
Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Laura E. Davis The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves
Jennifer Brandel AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more.
Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media