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The business of journalism is terrible. Thatâs been the case for a while now, as a drumbeat of pessimism accompanies a struggling industry; this year has been historically bad. Storied newsrooms scaled back. Outlets closed. Thousands lost their jobs.
And yet. This issue of CJR is about the âAnd Yetsâ among us, the persistence and creativity beneath the stagnation. We recognize that times are tough and could get tougher still. But itâs also important for all of usâas an industry and as people who believe in what we doâto acknowledge pockets of excitement and promise. Hope is an obligation for journalists: hope that our stories matter, that they resonate with an audience, that our work has value.
For too long now, our hope has been lodged in the idea that we could sustainâor resurrectâthe past, our focus stuck on legacy newsrooms and existing frameworks. But nostalgia never has been much of a business plan, and it wonât work for journalism. Itâs time now to come to terms with a future that isnât about revival, but about reinvention.
Thatâs our mission with this magazine, to showcase the thinkers, models, and approaches that point toward a new way in our profession. This issue includes:
- Advice, compiled by Feven Merid, our staff writer, from more than a dozen journalism pioneers, about how we might pave a path into the future.
- Danny Funt on direct-to-consumer journalism at a time when everything comes by way of a personal message delivered to your inbox: voicemail, of a kind.
- An exploration by Emily Russell into how audio journalists are experimenting with new models to produce, distribute, and monetize their work.
- Will Tavlin, who spent time at New York magazineâs The Strategist, on the industryâs embrace of product reviews, and how they rate as service journalism.
- A profile by Mary Retta of Ebony magazine and its attempts to transform a legacy title into an all-encompassing brand devoted to âmoving Black forward.â
- Megan Greenwell on a new funding model, through which local philanthropists are supporting community news-you-can-use.
- Hamilton Nolan on the labor arguments over artificial intelligence in media.
- And finally, some experimenting of our own, integrating machine-generation tools into our process of creating illustrations. Darrel Frost, our art director, explains what worked and what didnât.
The through line of everything youâll see here is optimism. Not everything will turn out well, certainly, but there is, at least, the appeal of trying. And, at this point on our industryâs trajectory, thatâs really all anyone could hope for.
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