It’s 2019 — time for leaders to step up in news

Like many people in the news industry who write predictions at the end of the year for NiemanLab, I wrote a prediction that is more of a hope. But it’s one based on experience.

I’m seeing talented colleagues step up to lead change in their newsrooms. And they’re doing it at a deeper level than when I first started in this profession. They are changing the budgets, structures and decision-making of their organizations. They’re building spaces in existing companies or starting their own companies to do the work.

So when NiemanLab asked me to make a prediction, mine was one in support of those leaders. The ones who see the deep, structural issues that prevent our news media from the diversity, quality and great coverage it should be providing the public.

Here’s how I explained it in NiemanLab.

There are a many other predictions in the bunch that inspire me, and have similar hopes for the news industry in 2019:

In this year’s predictions, I’m also really interested in how some smart people are thinking about news media’s relationship to Facebook. In my first job at PRI, I designed editorial social strategy for the organization, and even then, six years ago, I was dismayed by the way public media was putting their supporter’s dollars into the private company. Here are some good articulations about what happened and what might happen going forward: