News coverage will give readers something to hope for

Publishers had a year that showed them engaging audiences is becoming more and more difficult. Data from the Reuters Institutes’s 2023 Digital News Report showed a decline in news interest and high levels of news avoidance.

We can have long discussions on why people are choosing to avoid the news and the effect of this on the news business, but where 2024 should take us is to recover journalism’s responsibility to listen to people and understand the role of media when the audience feels emotionally drained by news.

The data from the Digital News Report is clear. People avoid the news because they feel there is too much “toxic politics” — as one of the interviewees said — or negativity that affects their mood in daily life. We’re in the middle of wars and conflict, humanitarian crises, and a hot earth catastrophe, and I’m not saying the media must stop covering bad (or terrible) news. Still, that coverage needs to be accompanied by hope.

2024 should be the year of people feeling that the media is listening and understanding their tiredness, the year of telling stories about what “others like me” are doing to resist in the middle of this catastrophic world.

Positive news doesn’t mean a feature about dogs in Halloween costumes or a list of the best metal straws on the market. News outlets need to get involved in how their readers survive (and fight) this chaotic world and build a news agenda around a sense of hope.

The audience needs and deserves good coverage of world conflict and crises, but people also need the certainty that the tone used by news organizations does not imply there is nothing to do to get better. In 2024, the media should give people coverage about solutions, community fights, and hopeful and inspiring stories. In the middle of the chaos, there should be a commitment and acknowledgement to the personal agency of the audience and a willingness to publish stories about that, too.

News avoidance will keep growing if the media doesn’t transmit this balance to audiences. The coverage must be done with intention, close to people, and with a call to action on the role of each in the crises. It should be hopeful, explanatory, and constructive.