*slaps roof* this Nieman Lab can fit so many predictions

December 24, 2020 8:06 AM

Nieman Lab asked some of the smartest people in journalism and media what they think is coming in the next 12 months, including Meredith D. Clark on The year journalism starts paying reparations; Doris Truong on Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage; John Saroff on Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites; Taylor Lorenz on Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy; Ryan Kellett on The bundle gets bundled; and many, many more.
posted by adrianhon (15 comments total)

I've read through a little more than a dozen of these so far, and quite a few of them strike me as aspirational - what they would like to see happen next year - rather than predictive. I've found most of them interesting, but there are definitely fewer actual predictions than I would have imagined from reading the given the opening header/paragraph.

Speaking of predictions, is there a mefites predict 2021 thread somewhere? There so should be.
posted by hank_14 at 8:22 AM on December 24, 2020 [10 favorites]

That’s been the theme of these Nieman Lab articles every year: things the authors would like to happen, not a lot of specifics that could tie them up later. They’re a little like the Pantone Color Of The Year in that there’s a small amount of trend analysis mixed with a lot of insider-baseball and performed consensus, though the Pantone people are actually reflecting and driving real interior design decisions.
posted by migurski at 9:00 AM on December 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

My prediction, US politics-wise, is that 2021 is going to look a lot like 2011 , assuming McConnell is still Majority Leader next month.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:11 AM on December 24, 2020 [1 favorite]

The only realistic prediction for journalism in the next 12 months is that it will continue to look more and more like what's been coming over the past 12 years: anything that looks even remotely like a spare part will be sold off, newsrooms cut beyond the bone, everything squeezed at the altar of the almighty online ad rate while the hungry wolves of corporate PR move in to supplement true journalism with "earned media".
posted by rocketman at 10:12 AM on December 24, 2020 [7 favorites]

My prediction, US politics-wise, is that 2021 is going to look a lot like 2011 , assuming McConnell is still Majority Leader next month.

With the added fun of a shadow government being run out of Mar-a-Lago?
posted by Thorzdad at 10:30 AM on December 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

Honestly, in 2021 I'm expecting the First Corporate War.

At this point it feels like we're only about 20 years behind Cyberpunk proper for nearly everything except the extreme body modifications and virtual reality netrunning.

Everything else in the Cyberpunk universe already exists in some form in our modern world. I mean, I was having that conversation about how Cyberpunk 2020 character classes ("roles") could mostly be pegged to real-life examples by 2010.

"It was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual."
posted by deadaluspark at 11:38 AM on December 24, 2020 [9 favorites]

With the added fun of a shadow government being run out of Mar-a-Lago?
That sentence could be read two ways. One of them I rather like.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 1:03 PM on December 24, 2020 [8 favorites]

Mar-a-Largo - the Dol Guldor of Florida
posted by crocomancer at 1:42 PM on December 24, 2020 [5 favorites]

The Pantone Colour of the Year™ 2021 is ... gray? Well, thanks for lifting my mood up, Pantone guys!
posted by Termite at 1:51 PM on December 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

There are two Pantone colors picked this year, 17-5104 Ultimate Gray and 13-0647 Illuminating (a "vibrant yellow").
posted by reductiondesign at 2:13 PM on December 24, 2020

Command-F 'climate' 0/0
posted by Thella at 2:46 PM on December 24, 2020 [4 favorites]

I want to pay for long reads and especially process stories. Single articles at reputable publications should have a tip jar kind-of payment method, so that we can actually fund how-this-process-works reportage.
posted by k3ninho at 4:33 PM on December 24, 2020 [2 favorites]

There are two Pantone colors picked this year, 17-5104 Ultimate Gray and 13-0647 Illuminating (a "vibrant yellow").

Together, they look like the colors of a spaceship loading bay in a 90s-era sci fi thriller.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:19 PM on December 24, 2020 [7 favorites]

Lorenz wasn't smart enough to avoid enabling the far-right by not using the verb 'cancel' in relation to people.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:23 AM on December 25, 2020

Well, the US is seemingly trying to break up two of the biggest companies on Earth and I can't imagine that Amazon is far behind.

These companies are larger (financially) than any other private entity the US has tackled, iirc. I think its going to be a scorched earth campaign from them if it looks like they're going to lose.

Ads directing to foreign competitors, ads fomenting armed dissent, hiring Pinkerton equivalents to target not just the private lives of elected officials but also to compromise wide swaths of upper and mid level government workers, and so on.

And I don't think Joe Biden has the stomach or spine to turn alphabet soup loose on them if they start down that road in a Corporate v State war of spies.
posted by Slackermagee at 6:24 AM on December 25, 2020 [3 favorites]