The Media Today

The media today: What’s coming for journalism in 2018?

December 22, 2017
 

Though we’ve got a few days of news left in 2017, NiemanLab is already focused on the future. Its “Predictions for Journalism 2018” series gathers voices from across the industry to forecast where we’re headed in the months to come. The entire list is worth perusing, but a few stood out.

“In 2018, digital news companies will get bought and sold, big-name brands will miss their ambitious growth goals, while plenty of newsrooms will keep pirouetting amid more jobs cut. And many news executives, mostly white men, will keep getting hired in big jobs,” Raju Narisetti writes in the opening to his must-read on the coverage of high-flying digital start-ups.

Trust in “the media” continued to be an area of concern in 2017, but Umbreen Bhatti notes that it isn’t a new issue. “We’ve come a long way from the days of viewing our audiences as a monolith, with a singular set of concerns. Let’s not go back to that in 2018,” she writes. “The reality is that many people—take African Americans and Muslims, as examples—have long had reason to be skeptical of our industry’s ability and, frankly, desire to reflect their lives and their communities fairly, with accuracy and nuance.”

YEAR IN REVIEW: Awards, players, trends and feuds that made 2017 what it was. 

“2018 will be the year where frank talk about race and racism in newsrooms will replace ephemeral promises to diversify,” Tanzina Vega writes in her look at the disconnect between what reporters of color saw in 2017 and what the way their white colleagues covered it.

Below, more predictions and pleas from the list.

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Other notable stories

  • Since launching his campaign for president, Donald Trump has posted 990 tweets critical of the press. CJR’s Jonathan Peters, with a big assist from NYU grad student Stephanie Sugars’s spreadsheet, analyzes the attacks, writing that they show “the terrible depth of Trump’s anti-democratic depravity and his willingness to scathe any journalist or news organization in his way.”
  • From Tokyo to South Florida, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman takes a ride on the Steve Bannon self-promotion campaign.
  • Good news: Washington City Paper was bought by DC businessman and philanthropist Mark Ein, who has enlisted a star-studded advisory board to build support for the outlet that has helped launch the careers of Jake Tapper, Katherine Boo, David Carr, and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
  • Eric Schmidt, who helped build Google into one of the world’s most valuable properties, is stepping down as Alphabet’s executive chairman.
  • I missed this yesterday: ProPublica and The New York Times found that Facebook is allowing dozens of companies—including Verizon, Amazon, and Target—to exclude older workers from seeing job ads.
  • Legendary broadcaster Dick Enberg, who covered 28 Wimbledons, 10 Super Bowls, and eight NCAA men’s basketball title games for a variety of networks, died Thursday.
  • Janet Elder, a top editor at The New York Times, died Wednesday evening. Elder was an expert translator of polling results and served as the “driving force” behind the launch of The Upshot, but she is also remembered as a champion and confidante of women at the Times.

TRENDING: Trump’s Twitter crusade against the media  

Pete Vernon is a former CJR staff writer. Follow him on Twitter @ByPeteVernon.