Method Journalism

[Commentary] With the launch of new site after new site in 2014, it's been a fascinating time to watch digital media try to figure itself out.

Amid the turmoil of disruption, buffeted by tech companies' control over information distribution, but aware of new fields of possibility, the past few years were filled with defending legacy brands.

There are some exciting sites and they're doing great work, and they are also making mistakes and doing weird stuff as they find their identities. But the more I thought about what's different in this era of media relative to earlier ones: none of these sites is focused on an area of coverage. They are, instead, about the method of coverage.

In a world where traditional beats may not make sense, where almost all marginal traffic growth comes from Facebook, where subscription revenue is a rumor, where business concerns demand breadth because they want scale… a big part of the industry's response has been to create sites that become known by how they cover something rather than what.