I look forward to these predictions every year. I am also honored that Joshua Benton, Director
Nieman Journalism Lab | Harvard University, includes me on the list of those he reaches out to for predictions. Predicting is always a difficult thing to do, but it is also an opportunity to ask ourselves the question in everyone's mind.
Here are three predictions for 2017 published so far that resonated with me:
The year of digital detoxing.
Dhiya Kuriakose is head of syndication and social video at Condé Nast.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/12/the-year-of-digital-detoxing/
As news organizations, we have to reclaim our identities and be more than just “content-creators” that fill feeds. It’s time to rethink our coverage and look deeply at what we stand for. We have to provide insights that last beyond a click or a tweet, that inspire conversations over coffee or dinner. We have to remember the people we create content for and that they are real personalities with opinions and experiences that we will never know. We have to build communities online and offline that speak to the mission of why we do what we do. We have to give people a reason to come back from their digital detoxing.
Building a coherent core identity
Julia Beizer is head of product at The Huffington Post.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/12/building-a-coherent-core-identity/
How can I bottle our core identity as a brand and have its essence shine through all of our experiences, off-platform and on?
Voice was once solely an editorial endeavor. Decisions about what to cover and how to cover it defined a news organization’s identity. But today, what we have to say is only one part of who we are. Our consumers know us by the design choices we make, the frequency and character of our push alerts, what we do on social, how we monetize, how we market, and which technologies and platforms we choose to pursue.
Headlines matter
Felix Salmon is a senior editor at Fusion.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/12/headlines-matter/
Even with the best-crafted headline in the world, for every person who clicks on it, there are hundreds, if not thousands, who see it, digest it, and simply move on. People get their news from headlines now in a way they never did in the past.”
2017 will be the year that news organizations start approaching headlines with the importance they deserve.
…the purview of headlines needs to be wrested back from social-optimization teams. Instead, the people who know the story best — including the people who actually wrote the thing — have to be empowered to veto all headlines which are in any way misleading. Which, yes, would include using “populist” as a euphemism for racist.