Pushing To The Future Of Journalism
(A project of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, 20 December
2013)
To close out
2013, we asked some of the smartest people we know to predict what 2014 will
bring for the future of journalism. Here’s what they had to say.
Dan Gillmor
“If
journalism is to matter, we can’t just raise big topics. We have to spread
them, and then sustain them.”
Amy Webb
“Our
interests are temporal, as is the news cycle. But those two don’t always align
perfectly.”
Staci D.
Kramer
“We have
some serious firepower to throw at problems — and far too often, we have no
idea if those problems already have good solutions.”
Miguel Paz
“Finally,
some Latin American newsrooms will start understanding that news nerds —
developers coding in the public interest within media — are an essential part
of quality reporting.”
Juan Antonio
Giner
“For all
these reasons, if we don’t change the editorial model, our print product
becomes just a compilation of old news, known stories, and heard comments. Dead
bodies. Forensic journalism.”
Tiff Fehr
“Driven by
FiveThirtyEight’s steadiness in the 2012 presidential election headwinds, today
we seem to ask more questions about finding the best algorithm, model, or
statistic.”
David Jacobs
“Writers
need to find readers wherever they are, and as more media is produced on mobile
devices and the process of consumption begins to look more and more like
creation, this will become obvious.”
Alfred
Hermida
“Reporters
are not trained to talk about the holes in their reporting. But in a stream of
constant updates, adding notes of caution can have much value.”
Mariano
Blejman
“Understanding
our proper audience will be disruptive at a time when the media has mostly left
demographic analysis to social networks.”
Michelle
Johnson
“Web design
really becomes less about the web and more about mobile.”
Elise Hu
“As
journalism gets more one-to-one, causes become more personal, and communities
divide into subsets of subsets, someone will find a metric to meet the moment.”
Dan Shanoff
“It’s a trap
to conflate popularity and the ability to build a new property.”
Adrienne
Debigare
“Our future
as an industry lies in our ability to tap into the resources and empirical
insights that Big Data offers without eroding the trust of our users.”
Henry
Blodget
“It is the
newsrooms that are embracing these differences, as opposed to fighting them,
that are growing and innovating as the medium develops.”
Etan
Horowitz
“Consumers
will increasingly expect to find their favorite media brands on new devices and
platforms.”
Felix Salmon
“To a large
degree, this is a discussion which only journalists, and maybe the occasional
underemployed philosopher, could ever care about.”
Pablo
Boczkowski
“The year
ahead might bring news organizations that will pay more attention to the
public. While that might be good for their bottom lines, it might also be bad
for the quality of our democratic life.”
Cory Haik
“Now is the
time to push the boundaries and use the best of those worlds in the service of
storytelling.”
Martin
Langeveld
“No grand
strategy, no new business models for news will emerge from Omaha. Ultimately,
these papers will be closed or sold.”
Sue Schardt
“We will
begin to see fresh faces and hear new and unexpected voices on public media
platforms that will grow over time.”
Ed O'Keefe
“Instagram,
Facebook, Vine, Twitter, and Snapchat (srsly) are news mediums — because that’s
where the audience is.”
Reyhan
Harmanci
“The most
successful media companies have figured out how to translate their core ideas
into any number of forms.”
Elizabeth
Green
“More niche
nonprofit news organizations will be unmistakably good for democracy. The more
knowledgeable our news sources, the more knowledgeable we can be as citizens
and policymakers.”
Jason Kottke
“The Stream
might be on the wane but still it dominates. All media on the web and in mobile
apps has blog DNA in it and will continue to for a long while.”
Jenna
Wortham
“The demand
is there if the experience is new enough and original enough.”
James
Robinson
“2014 is the
year that newsrooms will begin to think of analytics as a way to increase the quality
of their readership, not just the quantity.”
Tasneem Raja
“The levels
of wit, critical thinking, domain knowledge, netspeak literacy, digital acumen
— and, of course, diversity — on display in these conversations should have
editors sitting up and taking note.”
Justin
Auciello
“Covering
the realities of everyday life — car accidents, house fires, general police
activity, weather emergencies — is well suited to the citizen journalist.”
Carrie
Brown-Smith
“The
startups most likely to succeed will be those that are closest to their
communities and that have an intimate understanding of their readers’
information-seeking behaviors and motivations.”
Lauren
Rabaino
“We’re
limiting the opportunity for our readers to understand all the intersecting
impacts by reducing context to a few paragraphs of background.”
Katie Zhu
“Newsrooms
are going to start thinking about responsive in terms of tailoring experiences
based on a reader’s context in the physical world.”
Rick Edmonds
“One- or
two-time visitors are not a business opportunity — they are an accident.”
Evan Smith
“The
hand-wringing about native advertising will give way to hand-clapping at the
prospect of someone paying for serious journalism.”
Rasmus Kleis
Nielsen
“When it
comes to the future of news, as when it comes to so many other things, it is
worth following the money.”
Sarah
Marshall
“News sites
will find new ways to use social media to surface stories from the archives and
extend the lifecycle of content.”
Adrienne
LaFrance
“Just
imagine having a beat not tethered to a physical place or set topic, but an
abstract and ever-changing linked set of ideas that you get to explore in
real-time with other curious people.”
Hassan
Hodges
“The initial
consumer of content is increasingly not human. The consumer is software, and
software’s favorite food is data.”
Mandy Brown
“No story
should depend upon the presence of videos and other interactive elements;
stripped of all styles and embeds, a story should remain readable and
compelling on its own.”
Jim
Schachter
“Our news
reports and stories increasingly will be produced and packaged in forms
divorced from the formats dictated by a radio clock.”
Damon Kiesow
“Apple has
once again short-circuited an entire industry and started a land grab to
connect the realms of digital advertising and physical transactions.”
Matt Haughey
“In the end,
they spark important conversations about important topics, and those
conversations don’t feel lessened if and when an original story gets
undermined.”
Maria
Bustillos
“The most
interesting thing about the cream rising to the top faster is that the best
writers on a given subject can find each other faster.”
Matt Waite
“It’s a
matter of time — and I think that time is 2014 — until a paparazzo with no
training and a drone bought off the Internet crashes into a very pretty face.”
Philip Bump
“We’ve
proven to be relatively bad at verifying authenticity in the face of a culture
that seems weirdly amused by tricking the press.”
Jennifer
Brandel
“Audience
engagement techniques will begin shifting away from the mindset of ‘What can
they do for us?’ to ‘What can we do for them?’”
Jan Schaffer
“Let’s stop
the handwringing about losses in legacy journalism and work on creating and
growing the next acts in media.”
Erika Owens
“In 2014,
we’ll all need to challenge ourselves to more publicly share and document not
just how we deal with insecurity, but how we build our skills, networks, and
confidence.”
Scott Klein
“Every skill
you don’t have leaves a whole class of stories out of your reach. And data
stories are usually the ones that are hiding in plain sight.”
Allen Tan
“Institution-making
is a messy process, but it doesn’t have to be a lonely one.”
Michael
Schudson
“The answer
will be what it has been since Walter Lippmann got it right 90 years ago.”
Fiona
Spruill
“Smart
journalists should experiment now, because at least one of these devices will
move out of the geeks-only realm before we know it.”
Raju
Narisetti
“The
privileged status a newsroom enjoys ought to come with accountability and a
responsibility to help sustain both journalism and the business of journalism.”
The Nieman
Journalism Lab is a collaborative attempt to figure out how quality journalism
can survive and thrive in the Internet age.
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