I took a lot of unexpected time off to take care of family and then to transition to a new city and job during 2025. Most of my writing before that break are still grappling with what was keeping news—in both form and function—from having more impact. My thinking crystallized once I was able to move away from the daily work of a newsroom. Posts from the second half of the year focus on defining the essential functions of news as a first step in increasing the news' social utility.
Post 1: Goals for 2025 (I stuck with them!)
Post 2: News should seek to accompany people through tough information
Post 3: A detour into how news contributes to risk perception
Post 4: Honest questions about the emotional impact of the news
Post 5: How to join News Futures, and why you should
Post 6: From transaction to relationship
Post 7: The value of adapting lessons from a medical decision-making to news
Post 8: News is still incoherent about what advocacy is and isn't. Can 2016 help?
Post 9: Why impact is hard to predict
Post 10: How to develop a harm matrix
Post 11: Should news have social utility
Post 12: How much social engineering should the news try to do?
Post 13: Introducing the essential functions of news
Post 14: Rethinking the essential function of record creation
Post 15: Rethinking the essential function of record correction
Post 16: A conversation with Robert G. Picard
Post 17: The essential function of meeting information needs
Post 18: Musing on public interest
Post 19: Discerning whether record creation or investigation is called for (original post. A shorter tool is in the frameworks and tools section)
Post 20: A conversation with Nicole Lewis
Post 21: Nixing narrative shift