Considering a Possible Future for Digital Journalism

Developments shaping digital journalism seem to speeding up at the start of the 21st century. Social media enable radical new ways to gather and verify sources and information. Hardware and software power innovative storytelling formats, combining platforms and channels, adding interactivity to the news experience. And the global news industry is quickly becoming a networked industry, with startups and other forms of entrepreneurial journalism springing up all over the world. In this essay, I consider a possible future for digital journalism by briefly reviewing first findings from a series of case studies of 21 new small-sized journalism enterprises operating in 11 countries (spread across 5 continents). The overarching research question: seen through their eyes, what does the future of (digital) journalism look like? The answers are hopeful.