To survive, journalism outlets must pivot to promoting action — not just news — in 2025
Read my Nieman Lab prediction for this year.
Happy New Year y’all! Anita here. I’ve had a much-needed period of R&R after an intense second half of 2024, but now I’m ready to roll into what’s already shaping up to be an exciting year both personally and professionally for me. 🌟
As much as I’m looking forward to 2025, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say I’m feeling deeply concerned about the state of the world, with Canada’s fate especially top of mind, as we’re facing “the most serious threat to [our] sovereignty and economic prosperity since the Second World War” from what would’ve historically been our least likely foe: the United States. Donald Trump’s threats are particularly unsettling given this analysis from International Intrigue (one of my new favourite newsletters) that China’s increasing military incursions into Taiwan, coupled with Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine, is “a warning for all small and middle powers in the world, especially those bordering great powers” — i.e. Canada next to the U.S. — and that it’s a “snapshot of what our multipolar world might look like going forward.”
For me, these growing threats to democracy on our own soil reinforce my commitment to journalism, especially at the local level. When it comes to geopolitics internationally, there’s unfortunately little we can do as regular citizens to move the dial beyond voting, protesting and writing to our political representatives. What we do have control over is local and therefore tangible — taking action in our own backyards — which in part has inspired my prediction for Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab. Please read it, below, and let me know what you think.
Media outlets will pivot to promoting action — not just news
From the early 2010s until now, our industry saw the rise of what I’ll call community engagement 1.0. — that is, consulting communities about their information needs and genuinely serving our audiences by delivering journalism that fills in those gaps. The earliest explanation of this that I’ve seen is from a 2011 blog post titled “What does ‘community engagement’ mean?” by the late Steve Buttry, former director of student media at Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication. In his post, Buttry writes succinctly, “Community engagement = News orgs make top priority to listen, to join, lead & enable conversation to elevate journalism.”
That same year, Joy Mayer, executive director and founder of Trusting News, described in a slide deck that engagement involved knowing more about “why people turn to us, what they want from us, how we can help,” and emphasized that involving our audiences in the journalism we produce makes it “more in touch, more comprehensive and more present.”
Since then, the engagement journalism movement has become increasingly widespread, in part thanks to the popularity of platforms like GroundSource and Hearken that specialize in supporting newsrooms with this work. Today, media organizations as wide-ranging as neighbourhood startups to legacy broadcasters have embraced the practice and integrated it into their newsgathering workflows.
All of that is fantastic. And yet.
Overall interest in the news is still unequivocally declining. The Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report says that long-term trends in attention loss, news avoidance and news fatigue suggest the public is becoming more ambivalent about the news — and it’s a global phenomenon impacting countries from Argentina to the UK. Even more alarming, young people make up a significant proportion of that decline.
It’s why, for the past few years, I’ve been obsessed with honing in on what the precise function of news really is in our modern times. Why do we, as journalists, do what we do? What’s our fundamental value? And how do we translate that value to the public in a way that’s clear and accessible?
The zenith of venture-backed, pageview-driven media (of which I was a part) in the 2010s diverted the focus of newsroom management towards chasing eyeballs in exchange for digital ad dollars. At this point in our industry’s history, we veered off course, mistaking volume for value and clicks for connection.
Community engagement best practices have tried to rectify that, with more and more newsrooms making a concerted effort to listen to the communities they serve. Even so, though, one nagging question that kept coming up for me was: Do these audiences understand how they can use this information in their daily lives, however tailored it is to them?
If there’s one quibble I have with engagement 1.0., it’s that newsrooms employing this approach are still focusing on process rather than outcome. It’s understandable, after all, since journalists are historically trained to just focus on the reporting, and not the consequences of their reporting.
But that’s no longer cutting it.
To be clear, I don’t mean to say that engagement journalists don’t take great care to reduce harm, and gather information from sources through a trauma-informed lens (they do). Rather, I mean that we can be more concerned about what we’re not doing than what we are delivering.
Enter engagement. 2.0., which I describe as leveling up community engagement best practices to encourage the public to move from engaging with the news to engaging with the world — that is, their neighbourhood, city, province/state, country — around them.
And let’s face it: The world is in survival mode. So, journalism at its core should be information that’s useful or user-friendly, that helps people navigate their lives on a daily basis, that helps them make decisions impacting their future, that helps them take action. “Useful” also means focusing less on needlessly anxiety-inducing information that causes paralysis, and instead on concrete solutions that someone can actually take action on. We’re talking brass tacks. “Get in, get out” kind of information. “How do I eat?” kind of information. “Where do I live?” kind of information.
At The Green Line, a hyperlocal information and community services organization I founded in April 2022, engagement and action are built into our foundation. Our mandate is to deliver “information you can actually use in your daily life,” and to investigate “the way Torontonians live to report on solutions, actions and resources that help you become happier in our city.”
The information we provide aims to not only help people advocate for themselves through voting and other democratic processes so they can effect policy outcomes, but also to support each other through mutual aid. It’s likely not a shock for you to learn that governments worldwide are enacting funding cuts that will result in a reduction in public services, so helping people help themselves will be more than a matter of building character.
People may be turning away from the news, but they’re not — nor will they ever — turn away from useful, thoughtfully curated information that helps them do something about their problems, and ultimately improves their lives.
The Green Line opportunities: text/video pitches
The Green Line is looking for freelancers interested in short-form and long-form pitches for text-based articles, as well as videos and photography, from experienced reporters based in Toronto that tackle systemic issues in the city through a solutions lens. We offer highly competitive freelance rates. If you’re interested in pitching, please email your pitch, resume and links to three clips to hello@thegreenline.to.
Quick and Clean
I’m delighted to share that LION Publishers, for which I serve as a Board member, has been awarded a $4 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation as part of the national Press Forward initiative in the U.S.!
I’m a fan of culture writer Anne Helen Petersen’s Substack, Culture Study, and recommend reading one of her latest essays titled “Posting Less,” which really speaks to my personal handling of social media over the past few years.
December 2024 was the month of Nieman Journalism Lab predictions, and among my faves is this very handy visualization of what Condé Nast audience strategy VP Sarah Marshall dubbed the the “inverted trapezoid” version of an audience funnel (bonus: Check out Hugging Face’s cool interactive visualization mapping over 100 predictions from Nieman Lab contributors).
Many thanks to Substack newsletter Pod the North and the European journalism hub Bonn Institute for shouting out The Green Line!
How you can support The Other Wave
My professional mission has always been to support the global movement towards more thoughtful, impactful news coverage, and all the ways that manifests. If The Other Wave gets you to think even a little differently about journalism, especially in Canada, then I will have accomplished what I set out to do. And if TOW gets you to take action and support Canadian media outlets — especially ones that strive to be innovative and inclusive — I will have exceeded my expectations.
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