20 Ongoing Trends That Will Continue in 2020

Each year we identify a set of ongoing trends that have a longer shelf life and will impact the following year.

Here are the ones we think significant for 2020. In some cases, the trends below will have a paragraph of explanation and in other cases, just a headline is enough.

1.   News fatigue. We typically stay away from making predictions about politics but as the election gets closer, Americans are likely to feel overwhelmed by hourly news notifications on their phones and Fitbit or Apple Watches -- the term we've seen is "ringxiety" -- to the extent that they will shut down and look for content that will distract them. There will also be a contingent who will be more motivated to seek out updates but we haven't identified a clever term for them. We don't think there will podcast fatigue in 2020 but that could come, since the glut of podcasts, no matter how compelling, does not yet seem to be abating.

2.  Short news cycles. In a recap of news from 2019, an article mentioned the longest government shut down that ended Feb. 2019. But so much happened in 2019, that a bunch of us in the office had forgotten about the shutdown. Shorter news cycles mean that a lot of news that would have once been significant and memorable gets forgotten as we get hit by more recent news.  

3.  "News deserts" will continue to grow as more news outlets cut back the amount of news they produce, lay off staffs, reduce the number of days they print, etc. News deserts were once limited to rural communities but now large cities are feeling the loss of some outlets.

4.   Fake news and disinformation will continue, probably increase in 2020.

5.  The credibility of news media is under attack. For marketers, reaching customers while they are overwhelmed by disinformation/fraud and when the media is not seen as credible (whether on the right or left), will become harder and more complicated. This is not a political stance. The point is that marketers are going to need to find more effective ways to reach customers at a time of fragmentation and low trust.

6.   Social media will continue to undergo scrutiny and it won’t look good. 

7.   Cord-cutting will continue to attract the media's attention. With so many streaming services, cord cutting won't be cheap but will be a bit easier due to TVs that make it easier -- but not yet seamless -- to binge on the shows you want, regardless of which streaming services you subscribe to.

8.  Most tech reporters at newspapers will continue to focus on FAANG: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

9.   Elon Musk and Tesla will continue to attract undue amount of media attention. 

10. Driverless cars still won't be ready. 

11.  Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality still won’t be everywhere.

12. Blockchain and bitcoin will continue to get media coverage but most consumers still won't have much contact with bitcoin and won't understand how Blockchain affects them.

13. Corporate boycotts & consumer boycotts will continue. Corporate boycotts are when companies pull their ads from specific shows, hosts or networks to protest something said or done. 

14. 3-D content and 3-D printers will still not be as popular as they are cool.

15. Student debt and healthcare will continue to be big issues.

16. Climate change will be an issue. Especially in the wake of the wild fires in Australia and elsewhere.

17. Drug pricing will continue to get a lot of attention. 

18. STEM will continue to be important. 

19. More small colleges will merge or close. Nearly 20 small private colleges in New England have shut down in the past five years, and we expect more as education goals evolve due to declining enrollment and resulting budget problems. There’s also more competition for better-known colleges. Expect more colleges to emphasize career readiness. (Probably because the cost is so high, it’s hard to justify pursuing fields that don’t lead to a career.

20. The future continues to look cloudy – as in cloud computing.

There certainly are more ongoing trends. Let us know us know if you think we left out anything significant. If you want more detail about some of the trends for which we did not provide detail here, check out our blog, where have mentioned some of these quite a lot.

4 Additional Media Trends for 2019: including "News Fatigue"

We live in a media-centric world. And by "we," we certainly mean Birnbach Communications but we also mean Americans. That's true even as:

• Traditional media has been facing a tough time because their business models have been failing, despite a significant uptick in the demand for news.
• Digital media isn't the sure thing it was once thought to be, despite the lack of traditional media's baggage (like lack of printing presses).
• Local media outlets have been shutting down, despite the common wisdom that hyperlocal was a solution.
• People aren't reading newspaper content on paper (but on screens) or watching TV shows on TV (but on screens).

Last week, we issued our top five media trends that included: the rise of streaming content; the age of mass media is dead; the broken business model and the rise of "news deserts"; social media under scrutiny; and more apps will try to fight/block fake news.

But we have more -- yes, more -- media predictions. Keep in mind that some of these are based on predictions we made for 2018 but it's important to note that we believe this trends will continue, which is why they didn't make our top 5 but why we're included them here:

1.  The shorter/faster news cycle is distracting Americans and causing news fatigue. We're suffering from news fatigue -- overwhelmed by news notifications on our phones that seems to buzz every hour. There’s never enough time to process significant news before we’re buzzed by the next alert (that may not be relevant). News is so pervasive it overtakes previously non-politicized events like sporting events, entertainment industry award ceremonies, family holiday meals, etc. That buzz is so addictive that people actively check social media to get the latest shocking news. Even reporters who don’t cover politics flood their social media timelines with political news (regardless of their political beliefs), making it harder to get their attention when pitching them. The 24/7 distraction also makes it harder for people to pay attention to your story – so it may take more touchpoints to break through the clutter.
2. The incredible shrinking newsroom. A decade ago, most newsrooms used to employ more reporters to cover the news, and the amount of pages that newspapers and magazines had to fill was larger. Today, news reporters have to cover more news with fewer resources and less space. Locally, at the Boston Business Journal, a terrific weekly, staff reporters typically file four or so stories a day, may have a weekly newsletter they produce and then must write a longer article for the weekly printed edition. Radio reporters now also have to write up a print story for the website in addition to producing their stories for the radio. All of this is to say that there are fewer reporters and they have to produce much more. This makes it challenging for them to take meetings, cultivate sources, uncover stories that need to be told. According to the UNC School of Media and Journalism's Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, the result of all this is that "Many newspapers have become ghosts of their former selves, both in terms of the quality and quantity of their editorial content and the reach of their readership." (See credibility issues, below.)
3. The credibility of news media is under attack. There is at least one area of commonality between liberals and conservatives: each group has key media it favors (due to confirmation bias, i.e., their echo chamber) and those outlets whose reports they disagree with and don't believe. Americans increasingly hate either Fox or CNN; the New York Times or Wall St. Journal, for example. With Trump and others calling articles they don't like "Fake News" or "the enemy of the people," and people on the other side pointing to Hannity (who had said he wouldn't campaign for Trump but then came out on stage at Trump's last rally before the midterms), etc., the problem is that the credibility of journalist and media outlets across the spectrum is now being questioned.  That's a real problem for PR functions and agencies who work with reporters, editors and producers to tell their clients' stories. If there are those who disbelieve the New York Times or Wall St. Journal, will they believe your organization's news in those or other outlets? Seems doubtful. 
4. The war on screen time. There will be greater acknowledgment that we’re all on screens too much throughout the day. It’s a problem for everyone, not just adults. We expect more people – suffering from news fatigue, will turn off notifications on their phones so they don’t get interrupted/distracted as much. And somewhat ironically, there will be apps, like Apple’s "Screen Time" and Google’s "Family Link," a parental controls app, that will help you manage your screen addictions.

We've previously mentioned news fatigue in posts about living in the "Age of Anxiety" and are including it in our 2019 set of predictions because we think both will continue (we're not out of the anxiety woods yet and were going to continue to suffer from news fatigue for some time to come.

We will post more of predictions over the next few weeks. Let us know what you think.