Nieman Lab Prediction 2025: Newsrooms Reinvent Their Political Journalism

In traditional newsrooms, political journalists tend to be those who call the shots. Even in the absence of statistics, it’s safe to bet that the majority of editors-in-chief used to cover politics before rising to the top job. This has shaped pretty much all of journalism. The “he said, she said” variety of news coverage that makes for a large part of political reporting has pervaded other subject areas as well. The attempt to give opposing parties a voice led to the so-called “both-sides journalism” which operates under the assumption that on the marketplace of ideas and opinions those will survive that serve the people best.

But the past few years have already demonstrated that this kind of journalism is not sustainable. First and foremost, it doesn’t serve humanity well in the case of imminent and severe threats like climate change or attacks on democratic institutions where bothsidesism is not an option. Also, newsroom metrics have shown again and again that audiences tend to be put off by news content that just amplifies opinions and intentions of decision makers without linking it to people’s lives. News avoidance is real and has been growing.

“What if reporting on racist, misogynist, dehumanizing opinions and comments has the opposite effect from what most journalists intend — normalizing propaganda and even making political candidates seem interesting?”

The result of the 2024 U.S. election and the rise of authoritarian leaning extremists in other democracies should have served as the final wakeup call for political journalism. What if the media’s calling out those who don’t respect democracy and its institutions doesn’t deter people from voting exactly those politicians into office? What if reporting on racist, misogynist, dehumanizing opinions and comments has the opposite effect from what most journalists intend — normalizing propaganda and even making political candidates seem interesting? And what if newsrooms who complain about political polarization have contributed their fair share to it themselves? Polarization has been a successful business model for journalism after all. These are hard questions that demand answers.

If they want to stay relevant in serving the public, newsrooms will have to double down on studying the impact of their political journalism and think about consequences. Otherwise, they will continue to preach to the converted and fail in their mission to inform people about real threats to their livelihoods. While there is no quick recipe to disrupt and reinvent political journalism, some of the following ingredients might help to develop an strategy and improve the result:

First, studying human behavior. There is plenty of research and evidence out there on how propaganda works, how those in or aspiring to power use the media to amplify it, and how people react to it. If journalists don’t want to be tools in the hands of those ready to abolish press freedom and erode democratic institutions, they better familiarize themselves with these mechanisms. Insights from communication and behavioral psychology should be part of all journalism education and shape newsroom debates. It has become obvious that values and emotions like a sense of justice, pride, shame, and fear shape people’s voting decisions often more than rational choice theory would suggest. Newsrooms must account for that.

Second, chasing data, not just quotes. For political journalists, quotes are data, for other people not so much. They deserve to know what happened, not what someone says they might want to see happening or intends to make happen once in power. Data journalism — increasingly improved by the capabilities of artificial intelligence — provides plenty of opportunities to paint pictures of the real world instead of the world of intentions and declarations. Political journalism can be more interesting when people see how politicians have actually performed in contexts where they were responsible. Needless to say that data journalism needs to be made engaging to appeal to a variety of audiences.

Third, connecting reporting to people’s everyday lives. Politicians have an agenda and journalists are often swayed by it; people are likely to have different ones. Observers might have been baffled that voters didn’t give the Biden administration credit for the strong state of the American economy, but apparently all many people saw before casting their vote was their rising cost of living. Most people care deeply about issues like housing, personal security, the education of their children, health, and care for aging relatives. Only, most of these issues are linked to citizens’ immediate surroundings, their communities. Unsurprisingly, local news tops the list of interests in all age groups when asked for their journalism preferences, as the 2024 Digital News Report revealed. But with diminishing investment in local journalism, many of these topics have been under covered in recent years. A disconnect between political journalism and people’s lives has emerged that needs to be remedied.

Fourth, choosing appropriate formats. Modern newsrooms target different audiences with different formats on the platforms these audiences engage with. Political journalism is still too focused on the audiences that they have traditionally served. It is often made for well-educated groups and decision makers. If newsrooms really want to reach people beyond the community of like-minded news consumers, they need to explore how these audiences can be attracted. There are high hopes in the industry that artificial intelligence can assist in making journalism more appealing and inclusive by transcending formats — converting content to text, video, audio, interactive chat, or even graphic novel by the push of a button. It is too early to tell how this will affect news consumption and audience figures in the real world, but many media leaders expect opportunities for stronger news uptake.

Fifth, learning from other fields of journalism. Political journalists tend to be aware of their importance in the internal hierarchy. Many of them feel proud to do “the real thing” instead of covering entertainment, sports, personal finance, and the like. This might help them to digest the fact that colleagues in other fields score higher in the audience metrics department. But it’s exactly these colleagues political journalists could learn from to improve their own game. They could ask the science desk how to best deal with data and how to break down complex matters in digestible formats. They might get some advice on humanizing stories from those reporting on sports or celebrities. They could learn from investigative reporters how to pace oneself when seemingly sensational material is at hand and how to cooperate with others. And they could practice churning out one or the other service story. In fact, the whole newsroom should be interested in improving political journalism, since at times politics is part of most subject matters.

If journalism wants to maintain its legitimacy, relevance, and impact — particularly in an age when artificial intelligence will make content production ubiquitous — it needs to urgently rethink political journalism. Making it appealing to broader audiences and attracting them to engage with it might be no less than a matter of its survival. Many media leaders are aware of this. Chances are that in 2025 newsrooms will finally rethink the paradigm of political journalism.

This text was published by Harvard University’s Nieman Lab in their Journalism Predictions for 2025 series. 

Climate Journalism Needs to Mature from Topic to Mindset

Scenes like this are probably familiar to many: At a preparatory meeting for an event later in the year one participant suggests that it could revolve entirely around climate change reporting. One of the participants, an editor-in-chief, is skeptical: “Won’t this be a little old by then?” The reflexes work, the man has done his job. Be fresh, be surprising, don’t ride anything to death  – everyone who is trained in the daily business of news has internalized this way of thinking. It is called news for a reason after all. But how does that fit with an earth-altering development that manifests itself mostly in slow motion and only at times with the force of catastrophes? Newsrooms have not yet had to cover anything like that, a for the most part unpredictable process which challenges our way of living and doing business right down to the smallest personal habit.  

Wolfgang Blau knows all about these reflexes. Few media managers are currently dealing as intensively with the demands and difficulties of climate reporting as he is. The former editor-in-chief of Zeit Online, who pursued his career at the Guardian and the publishing house Condé Nast, is currently focusing on the demands and difficulties of climate reporting. Being the co-founder of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, he pinpointed the hurdles to overcome for those who want to report on climate change seriously and effectively in a lecture. The list is long.

In conversations with media people around the world, Blau identified operational but also cultural and ethical challenges. The compulsion to highlight the latest news, the fixation on disasters, the lack of expertise among reporters are the best known. Nic Newman’s media leaders’ survey “Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions,” also reflected on some of these. In the 2022 edition, the nearly 250 editors-in-chief and top managers from around the world complained about two things in particular: First: There is a lot of good climate journalism, but the readership does not take to it to the extent they always claim in surveys. Second, there are too few experts in newsrooms, and the scientific culture is weak.

One of the biggest difficulties, however, that few are aware of who now dutifully identify topics, commission stories, develop explanatory formats, hire climate reporters, or set up special desks, is: Excellent climate journalism requires an entirely different mindset, explicitely a commitment to the very subject itself. It does not regard sustainability as just another topic to be dissected from an observer’s perspective alone, but as a goal. The preservation of the natural foundations of life would then be equivalent to the preservation of democracy and human rights to which independent journalism is committed.

Only, the problem is: At a time when some declare impartiality to be a religion and confuse pluralism with relativism, those who take climate journalism seriously tend to come under general suspicion. Those who openly strive for sustainability are accused to follow a green political agenda. Many owners, business managers, funders, and even quite a few editors who are committed to the journalistic principle of objectivity are therefore reluctant to follow suit. In addition, a corresponding attitude deeply interferes with personal lifestyle. It is comparatively easy to behave as a good democrat. Living as a responsible citizen of the earth places considerable demands on everyone and also raises many unanswered questions.

Blau argues that climate change requires a similar rethinking in the industry as digitization. There’s something to that, because it’s also down to the nitty-gritty: digital journalism requires a different attitude than classic print or broadcast journalism. Instead of assuming the position of the head teacher, as in the past, modern journalists are concerned with the needs of the users. Editors study and know their audiences, and ideally serve them so precisely that even demanding material is gratefully accepted – not just the clickbait scolded by digital skeptics. The goal is to build trusting relationships between senders and recipients. In climate journalism, it becomes something like a triangle: Users are supposed to engage with often uncomfortable facts and ideally derive consequences for their own actions: behave differently as consumers and/or get politically involved in preserving the planet.

This is where problem number two arises: Journalism that deliberately aims to change behavior comes under suspicion of activism. And yes, journalists who care about strong, independent reporting should be suspicious of the campaigning nature of activism. But can climate reporting that accomplishes nothing be good climate journalism at all? When it comes to the big issues like democracy, equality or even sustainability, something that could be called activating journalism is necessary. It is precisely in this balancing act that constructive journalism finds itself, which is sometimes accused of being activist. Constructive journalism works primarily against the audiences’ feelings of powerlessness. According to surveys, one in three people regularly avoids the news, mainly on the grounds that it leaves them behind helpless and/or in a bad mood.

What could climate journalism look like that doesn’t do that? The French news agency AFP, for example, has reorganized its entire newsroom into “hubs,” including one that deals with the future of the planet in all its facets. Every story needs a climate dimension, says AFP editor-in-chief Phil Chetwynd. Ritu Kapur, founder of Indian news platform The Quint, also believes looking ahead is crucial. Doomsday scenarios don’t go down very well with audiences, she says, but anything that involves people and the impact of climate change and strategies against it on employment, growth, mobility, and lifestyle. A big hit with the Quint-audiences was: How can the ecological footprint of a big traditional wedding be minimized?

Good climate journalism definitely needs to become a cross-cutting issue. Every reporter, every commentator should critically examine in all assignments what impact events, new products, projects, or political steps have on sustainability and climate protection – whether that’s the Olympics, new car models or transport projects. Correspondents must address was digitization does to energy consumption, they still do this far too rarely.

Problem number three arises from all of this: the contradiction between commentators’ demands and the media’s own role model function. Media companies, which are often medium-sized and financially strapped, seldom excel in practicing sustainability. While it has become increasingly common in many other industries to calculate and document the ecological footprint of products and processes, this is rarely seen with publishers and their newsrooms. This mirrors a common trait, witnessed also in other areas, for example gender equality or diversity: There is a gap between flaming commentary on the one hand and corresponding, transparent action on the other. Only a few companies have understood that this puts nothing less than their very credibility at stake.

So, what would help climate preservation is an activating journalism, supported by a commitment and mindset that is reflected in the entire organization, its products and practices. So much for the ideal. If you want or need to start a little smaller, start with a qualified, energetic, and outspoken climate correspondent. But he or she should have a seat at the table every day, not just in case of floods, storms, or fires. 

This column was first published in German on 16th February 2022 by Medieninsider.