Every year, I say I’m going to get through the massive number of predictions that Nieman drops in December and every year I fail. Here are some that look most interesting.

Frontline’s Raney Aronson-Rath on what is probably the biggest takeaway from the election: the end of shared truth. Similarly, An Xiao Mina says the disinformation and surrealism of 2020 “isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary”.

Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman write that reclaiming local news is going to be key to rebuilding trust and slowing misinformation.

Nicholas Jackson says blogging is back but better. I want to believe! Similar, Ben Werdmuller thinks the web can bloom again.

Francesca Tripodi doesn’t think breaking up Google or Facebook will solve our information problems but we might finally stop thinking of their sites as public squares. Nikki Usher doesn’t think media companies should count on an anti-trust dividend as a result of breaking up the monopolies that sucked up all the ad revenue. Kind of related: Burt Herman on post-Facebook digital communities.

John Ketchum wants to see more founders of color. Tonya Mosley says true equity means ownership.

Logan Jaffe sees history as a reporting tool. (See the _Kansas City Star_’s decision to investigate its own history as an example.)

Richard Tofel, president of Pro-Publica, calls for more reporting on how government works, less on the horse race of politics.

Taylor Lorenz reminds us that influencing isn’t easy.

“Let’s be honest: Crime coverage is terrible. It’s racist, classist, fear-based clickbait masking as journalism.” That’s a fantastic lede and argument to defund the crime beat.

Jer Thorp wants to tear down the idea that storytelling with data must be bound to programming or even computers. Somewhat related, Julia Angwin wants data journalists to show their work.

“The year of MAGAcal thinking” is a pretty good headline.

If 2020 was the year of journalists going independent and countless newsletters blooming, Garance Franke-Ruta says 2021 will be the year or rebundling.

A former Wall St. Journal publisher calling for the reform of Section 230 makes me nervous.