1. Absent some kind of creative intervention, 2020 campaign coverage looks like it will be the same as it ever was. Who’s ahead? What’s it gonna take to win? The debacle in 2016 has not brought forth any dramatic shift in approach. The “savvy” style remains in place. Its practitioners are confident that they can prevail. They are probably right.
2. The Correspondent, with which I am publicly identified, met its crowd funding goals and now has to deliver on these principles. That will not be easy.
3. With his hate campaign against journalists, Trump has been successful in isolating about a third of the electorate in an information loop of its own. These are people beyond the reach of journalism, immune to its discoveries. Trump is their primary source of information about Trump. The existence of a group this size shows that de-legitimizing the news media works. The fact that it works means we will probably see more of it.
4. Fox News is merging with the Trump government in a combination unseen before. We don’t know what that combined thing is, or even how to talk about it. The common shorthand is “state media.” But that is only half the picture. It’s true that Fox is a propaganda machine. But it is also true that the Trump government is like a cable channel— with nukes.
5. Around the world, so called populist movements are incorporating media hate into their ideology— and replicating. No one knows how to stop or even slow this development.
6. Now in its 15th year, the business model crisis in journalism is still unsolved. (But at least we know that except in rare cases digital advertising is not going to be the answer, which counts as progress.)
7. Membership models in news need to be participatory to work, but we’re falling behind in our understanding of how to make that happen. With ad-supported media, we know what the social contract is. We know how it works with subscription, as well. For membership, we do not yet know what that contract is.
8. The harder I work on some these problems (1, 3, 4, and 5 especially…) the more cynical I get. The more cynical I get, the harder it is to believe that any of that work matters.
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