Happy New Year!
I love how The Economist’s Tom Standage, in charge of digital strategy, recently wrote:
“DO YOU FEEL lucky? The number 21 is connected with luck, risk, taking chances and rolling the dice. It’s the number of spots on a standard die, and the number of shillings in a guinea, the currency of wagers and horse-racing. It’s the minimum age at which you can enter a casino in America, and the name of a family of card games, including blackjack, that are popular with gamblers.
All of which seems strangely appropriate for a year of unusual uncertainty.” — Tom Standage, editor of The World in 2021.
As many of you know, I often wrote an annual letter for TheEditorial. So given 2020 has delivered us a chaotic, pummeled, mosh-pit-of-a-media landscape, I felt compelled to offer you something of a roadmap.
I’ve been writing about the loss of local news and the preservation of leading magazines and journalism for a long time, and ironically publishedan OpEd on Section 230 in the Boston Globe this time last year pre-Trump’s temper tantrum and coopting of what could be a real and thoughtful discussion around a law created 25 years ago! Who knew he’d hold up stimulus payments to desperate American families and the Defense Bill over it. As I continue to research this space at Harvard as a research fellow on The Future of News Project (a nascent joint project between IQSS and HBS), I wanted to share my crystal ball thinking on media as the world wonders who to trust, where to get facts and how to move the world to a better place.
Here are my Seven Predictions for Media in 2021:
Regulation is Coming
Data Will Become Portable
The Micro-Targeting of Political and Ideological Ads Is Under Fire
You Must Choose: Are You a Publisher or Data Bank?
News Aggregation Will Improve
Rolling Up of Local News Will Go Digital
Everyone is Under the Media Tent Now
For the past decade, there has been a rising tide of voices about the trouble caused by content on social media, its virality, and amplification at the expense of solid journalism given the revenue model favors the former. Things move fast in this space. In the last few years alone, fake news has been coined disinformation, filter bubbles now amplify the most egregious content, and local news deserts are the norm. With rising dissent, Facebook and Twitter have been vilified, chastised, and hauled into Congress and yet their collective market cap continues to rise astronomically to over $800 billion. While major social media companies responded this year and applied a few speed bumps in preparation for the 2020 U.S. election, Tiktok, Snapchat, and any other new platform using user-generated content now bring the same disinformation possibilities to a viral video that has long challenged YouTube. In all of this, the structural problem for both media and platforms remains – An ad-based model without a gatekeeper to sort the wheat from the chaff, the nefarious from the sublime, fact from fiction.
On the side of fact and science, only the New York Times and Washington Post have been able to grow their subscription models to a level of self-sufficiency that newsrooms around the globe now envy. For those of us who study media, the only certainty we see is that the media and platform landscape is in total flux, and, as regulation looms, an opportunity to solve the problems is upon us, if we can get it right.
What is key to understand is that everyone is now a media company. Traditional media (hanging on by a thread) is no longer the only way to spread the word and fading fast as the go-to source for most of the general public, especially those under 40 and glued to social media for information. Only a meager 14 percent of Americans pay for local news according to Pew Research and without a new product that offers consumers a reason to pay at a lower price, this will sadly continue. Even more concerning, social media is networked: it connects users adding a velocity to the amplification of information and, most notably, to disinformation that spreads like wildfire. While high-quality content continues to make its way through the information ecosystem through legitimate and established newsrooms, the sensational and conspiratorial misinformation is more appealing and thus more lucrative.
New forms of media have entered the arena in the form of short videos and memes, built-to-be salient at a rapid glance, shared even faster than a 750-word news story. Digital media has the upper hand. Even the newsrooms that have rebuilt digitally, often with the help of their wealthy owners like the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times, understand that the content must also feed off connections who will share these news stories. The robust subscription model of a few world-renowned and national newsrooms offers a glimmer of hope, but this is still a volatile and transformative space to watch.
Regulation Is Coming
“It's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm, as well. And that goes for fake news, for foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy,” Mark Zuckerberg in front of the Senate in April 2018. His exchange with Senator Lindsey Graham is one for the history books where Zuckerberg responded, “Well, senator, my position is not that there should be no regulation. I think the Internet is increasingly ...” GRAHAM: “You embrace regulation?” ZUCKERBERG: “I think the real question, as the Internet becomes more important in people's lives, is what is the right regulation, not whether there should be or not.”
A year later, Zuckerberg penned his own blueprint for such regulations in an OpEd he wrote for the Washington Post resulting in tech lobbyists descending on Washington in multitudes. This month, The Federal Trade Commission and 48 attorneys general across the nation filed much-anticipated lawsuits against Facebook, accusing the social media giant of gobbling up competitive threats in a way that has entrenched its popular apps so deeply into the lives of billions of people that rivals can no longer put up a fight. They are calling for a breakup of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. There has also been a flurry in Congress of filing bills around saving local news, a local-news commission, and tax-exemptions for news subscriptions. Australia and The EU are already further along than the rest of the world to fine, curb, and levy a tax on the major platforms and extract payments to news publishers. President-elect Biden has said Section 230 will be revised, and both the FCC and FTC are poised to dive deeper into antitrust and data privacy regulations as we await the new nominees who will transform these regulatory agencies into beehives or sloths, depending on their courage. For American-born social media giants, the precedence of their home country closing out a competitor and forcing the sale of a Chinese TikTok’s ownership to a proposed U.S.-based entity that would include partnerships with Oracle and Walmart further lends to an increasingly messy global tech regulation landscape.
Regulation will become splintered until US-spawned platforms get it right. A one-fits-all approach to the Internet is not working, regardless of how much big tech wills it true. Some countries are under dictatorships, some like ours, are mature democracies with the rule of law as the end game. There will be learning from the nascent regulation laws as Beijing, India, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the EU each lay down their specific laws. This is incredibly problematic for these U.S.-born platforms that have had the run of the global market and seek a one-world solution. They did not move fast enough. America needs to get ahead of this so the regulations that protect free speech, democracy, and the rule of law, prevail. These three tenets allow for a capital market and investment in a country. Without them, countries are devalued.
Data Will Become Portable
You may soon be able to “roll” your data with you. How far away are we from a digital bill of rights for which Tim-Berners Lee, who invented the Internet, is calling? Facebook already owns the lion’s share of much of the world’s social networking companies — Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp and has had a decade-long runway, along with Twitter, Amazon, and Google/YouTube to amass vast data on digital behavior from users across the world, with virtually no online privacy regulations in place.
In the same inaugural Senate hearing, Senators stressed that tech companies have a responsibility to protect user data and Zuckerberg agreed. “Around privacy specifically, there are a few principles that I think would be useful to discuss and potentially codified into law. One is around having a simple and practical set of ways that you explain what you are doing with data.” A year later, he further defined why data portability matters to Facebook: “Regulation should guarantee the principle of data portability. If you share data with one service, you should be able to move it to another. This gives people choice and enables developers to innovate and compete.”
I predict we are about to see much more advancement and transparency in how users remove and carry their data with them. Clarity on when information can be used to serve the public interest and how it applies to AI will also be a key focus for both Big Tech and lawmakers, along with the academy and social scientists in search of big data to solve world problems.
California’s new California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which went into effect in January 2020, is the only advancement in privacy laws. However, this is shifting and other states are ramping up. Similar to the GDPR in the EU in May 2018, CCPA allows residents to discover what personal information a business is collecting about them, their devices, and their children. New York has put its proposed New York Privacy Act (NYPA) on hold due to Covid, but if enacted in its current form, it promises to be even more expansive a measure than CCPA. Washington also tried to pass the Washington Privacy Act written but it failed for a second time, albeit the state legislature passed facial recognition regulation. Nevada passed a much milder privacy law than California. Regulation across the nation is inevitable.
Micro Targeting of Political and Ideological Ads Under Fire
Never before has a more sophisticated advertising machine existed. Algorithms and AI have allowed social media companies like Amazon, Netflix, Google, and more to predict our behavior, serve us our immediate needs, and filter our precise preferences based on our engagement habits, intimate interests, and personal relationships. This micro-targeting is minting money, having absorbed the majority of ad dollars from the traditional media market. Using micro-targeting advertisers not only sell you shoes, a trip, and a new car based on your behavior but most problematic for elections and society, they are able to refine and hyper-target to sell you a political ideology, often amped up with hate and division. Where this will be turbo-boosted is when IP-TV offers these same capabilities by the end of 2021.
The digital political ad industry has grown into a billion-dollar boondoggle over the past few years, surpassing $1 billion in early 2020. Many argue that political advertising on social media platforms has deeply divided our nation and a chorus of leading journalists lacking access to the platform data have begun poring over people’s Facebook feeds and pressuring Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to take a hard look at the destruction. Regulators in Australia, the UK, the EU, and soon the US under Biden have announced or signaled that micro-targeting around political and ideological ads is on the table. The categorization of what constitutes a political ad is vague and left with Facebook’s advertising moderators to sort out. How many of them? No one knows for sure. An added challenge is that people often consume digital content alone on a personal device, swept into their digital private world. Whereas when people listen or watch an advertisement for a candidate or medication on their household/ sports-bar/office TV, others around them ground them in a public-facing deliberation. External inputs help with our decision making and keep us grounded in reality.
Digital ads are also highly customized and tailored to specific micro-groups where an echo chamber further seeds discontent and conspiracy, unabated, as we saw with the rise of QAnon. Again in his 2019 Magna Carta of an OpEd, Zuckerberg called for regulation around political advertising. He often appears publicly to be pleading for regulations. “Advertisers in many countries must verify their identities before purchasing political ads… a searchable archive that shows who pays for ads, what other ads they ran, and what audiences saw the ads. However, deciding whether an ad is political isn't always straightforward. Our systems would be more effective if regulation created common standards for verifying political actors.” Yet with the continued absence of any laws, there seems to be little hewing of ideological baiting – sold as micro-targeted ads – by these publicly held companies. Twitter moved faster to implement “friction” as founder, Jack Dorsey, explained but for many, this is still not enough.
Regardless of the tech industry's promise that the use of AI will remove hate and misinformation, the industry lags behind media manipulators and purveyors of hate and fear, and their tech solutions have not arrived quickly enough. Regulators and civil society will press to resolve through laws in 2021 to quell the chaos given there are many more countries than America that hold elections. The risk is if the lobbyists deployed by big tech companies and advertisers foil the plot and this singular opportunity for us to get this right.
If You’re Not a Publisher, Are You a Data Bank?
The 20th Century media industry proved that the company with the advertising revenue owns the news, as I chronicle in Preserving America’s Thought Leader Magazines. Henry Luce, William Hearst, Conde Nast used their power to set the agenda until it was then usurped by the cable companies, ending the century with the arrival of the Internet. The early 21st Century appears to have adopted the same pattern of consolidated power, but at warp speed, with the unprecedented market-cap and ad-market dominance by Facebook and Google along with their fantastical reach across the globe. So is it really any different than the media owners of the 20th century? Back then, there were editors, The Fairness Doctrine, editorial standards, and no Citizens United that fostered an $11 billion industry for political ads, as we experienced this year. The new media giants have yet to accept their role as publishers and the responsibilities that come with owning a nation’s narrative.
This has led to a nagging question: If everyone is a journalist, who is a publisher? Section 230 allows for platforms to shirk libel and slander laws and general historic responsibility for ensuring a healthy information ecosystem, once regulated by laws like the Fairness Doctrine. If Twitter, Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, Reddit, Snap, TikTok, YouTube (Google) all refuse to accept their role as publishers and see themselves as apps, not newsrooms, and entirely different from CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, are they willing to accept their role as the massive banks of personal data?
The seesaw between being responsible for protecting user privacy and publishing quality information will continue to be a key area of investigation in 2021.
News Aggregation Will Improve
Will the improvement and reader-adoption of Apple News or a subscription-based Twitter news feed or other aggregation efforts finally solve how we funnel quality news into one place for consumer ease? Or will consumer demand for high-quality news from individual journalists on platforms like Substack, a virtual design-your-own-newspaper, gain traction? What price are readers willing to pay for this service? I predict that the aggregation of high-quality journalism through platforms like AppleNews Plus and Substack will also lead to the demarcation between “opinion writing” from “straight news” from “user-generated content”, as was once the norm. There will be a clearing of swimming lanes through consumer demand for high-quality newsrooms, vetted columnists, and niche writers. Rumors were circulated that Twitter may be interested in Substack. Substack tweeted an unequivocal no. I predict that users will tire of this mosh pit of news and will be willing to pay for a more high-quality digital feed.
Rolling Up of Local News Will Go Digital
On the last day of 2020, it was announced that Alden Global Capital wants to buy all of the Tribune Company. Alden currently owns 32% along with 11% of Scripps and all of Digital First Media with 56 dailies and 150 weeklies (circulation of 2.7M). The consolidation of local news in TV and digital print is clear: Sinclair, Nexstar, Alden, GateHouse (Gannett), NPR, and a few lone shining local stars like The Boston Globe, The LA Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Then what?
As more of the attention economy shifted to the national narrative, local news not only lacked the resources, it lacked the digital luster and networked effect on social media. I predict that 2021 will see new alliances in local news and a transformation of the local market by wheel and spoke national players. We are already beginning to see this expansion by ProPublica Local Network, Axios announcing it will open four local market newsletters in 2021, Chalkbeat for local education beats, and The Athletic for local sports beats spawning out across the nation. Traditional media have the existing railroad tracks, per se, that cover our nation. These national players that aggregate local include public-media owned NPR, member-led AP, and venture-owned Gannett newspapers and, if nimble enough, the likeliest paths to reaching local news deserts, but digital upstarts like ProPublica, Axios, Chalkbeat and The Athletic are running roughshod.
Cable news will also continue to play a role through local TV with Sinclair Broadcasting Group owning 200 local television stations in nearly 100 markets and Nexstar Media who last year bought the Tribune Media Company and is now the largest holder of local TV news stations reaching 69 million households with 197 TV stations in 115 markets. Warren Buffet also shifted his media investing from Lee Enterprises over the E.W. Scripps who recently used Buffet’s funding to buy ION Media firming up a stronger hold on local cable TV. I hear that we will see these stations will move into digital in a big way, especially as IP-Cable-hybrid TV allows for digital micro-targeted ads enjoyed now by social media giants. This will change the game massively. The winner may be local news in America if that $11 billion in political ads comes calling. I am not sure how that will hew in the political division.
Everyone is Under the Media Tent Now
Will other dominant digital companies move into the information ecosystem or will they shy away from the regulatory challenges? The recent movement in Hollywood shows a penchant for digital.
Amazon, Netflix, Walmart, Target, Disney are all collecting data on consumers and have the pipes to deliver content. While Facebook, Google, Twitter, and TikTok claim to be apps on top of the ISPs (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Comcast) who are often referred to as the pipes, what barriers to entry remain for other digital platforms to join them? What is stopping Walmart or Amazon from delivering you news?
As more and more companies become digital access points for consumers and hold banks of behavioral data, how is NPR any different from The New York Times or CNN or Fox or the Wall Street Journal, other than the content they serve? Today, everyone has the capacity to share stories in audio, video, or text. Everyone has access to consumers through a mobile device, TV, or computer. There is virtually no difference in access anymore other than the followers and content a media company serves up.
Will those who collect behavioral data to sell ads alongside the content and news they publish on their platform, find themselves in more difficult regulatory environments and PR nightmares? How do we cluster these groups when we think about media ethics? Who is now part of the information ecosystem and playing an outsized role in content dissemination that affects the health of our society? All of them? Where are the lines for publisher versus pipe? These are the questions that will play out in boardrooms and Congress in 2021.
As regulators set those lines in 2021, corporates will begin to behave differently and posture to fall under the tent that is most beneficial to their bottom line. Pipes? Publisher? Retailer? What will they be willing to give up to fall under a preferred regulatory tent? In 2021, we will likely see the clustering of digital giants versus one-stop big tech dominance. Differentiation will emerge and Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon (the data banks) will continue to shift away from Facebook, Google, and Twitter (the publishers) knowing that the role of publisher is one that requires deeper integrity and a more public-facing role along with more landmines than simply selling you books, groceries, and gear. Until the data regulators arrive. It will be an interesting year.
I am deeply concerned about our information ecosystem and we need more of us thinking about this. If you have an interest in the Future of Media Project at Harvard, do let me know. I believe this 2021 year will deliver hope. Governments in the western world are finally ready to solve this chaos. Entrepreneurs are ready to help find ways to bring quality information to people. It is the politicians who know they can game the system who need to be encouraged to think longer-term about the health of our society and the damage they wreak through election noise. It will take a combination of creative revenue models, sensible regulation, a more responsible political class currently using social media and the $14B US election spend to divide us, and consumer demand for quality information… but I do believe this year will be a turning point towards an eventual high-quality news ecosystem for all.
Photo by Taylor Heery on Unsplash
