In 2019, Wendy Dean, Simon Talbot, and Austin Dean wrote in the journal Federal Practitioner about an increase in clinicians leaving medicine due to “burnout.” The reality, they argued, was something different — the reason for so many resignations was the gap between their moral values of putting patient care first, and the inhumane reality of the American healthcare system. They defined this gap as “moral injury.”
In 2025, I believe that we’ll see this happen in journalism on an unprecedented scale. The only way to avoid it is to close the gap between our stated values and the common behaviors of our profession.
The values of journalism are clear: to provide an essential, reliable service that is trusted and beneficial to people’s lives, especially for those who need us most.
Our behavior, however, has often strayed from this goal. Much of our output is on media that is hard to access (newspapers, paywalls, using language and formats that are hard to understand without a college degree), writing stories solely for SEO and revenue generation, choosing narratives that don’t center those most impacted by a story, often legitimizing harm through a bias towards power, while presenting existing systemic problems as unsolvable.
In too many places, we’ve limited our ambition and outreach, focusing dwindling resources on doing less for fewer people. Working conditions for most journalists are hard enough; in the coming political climate, the moral injury that these choices inflict will be too much for many to bear in 2025.
Unless.
We need to change our actions to be closer to our values. This means taking a hard look at how we report, the tools we build, how we make our work accessible (and for whom), how we listen to and engage with communities, how we publish for and convene our audiences…and being prepared to make changes, always with the goal of being an essential, relevant, trusted resource that actively improves people’s lives. This is how we bring audiences back, and how we keep our colleagues from quitting in exhaustion and despair.
For many organizations, what I’m describing requires culture change. The “good” news is that things are now desperate enough for most that change is the only choice. And we don’t have to be pioneers in any of this. There are many community organizations that media companies can partner with and learn from, groups who are already trusted, relevant, and essential to different communities. That is, as long as you can persuade them to trust you.
There are many local news organizations already doing this work. Epicenter partners with local artists to raise awareness of issues among communities. Conecta Arizona uses WhatsApp, collaborating with local content creators to share essential information. Jersey Bee provides SMS updates highlighting free food distribution in the area. Charlottesville Tomorrow provides Take Action boxes on their stories, directing readers to make an impact on what matters most to them. The Kansas City Defender hosted a clothing drive. City Bureau pays local residents across the country to document public meetings. Documented (for whom I’m an advisor) publishes essential, multilingual information for immigrants in New York on WeChat, WhatsApp, and Nextdoor.
Each of these organizations is able to leverage the trust they’ve built to report community stories that larger, traditional newsrooms miss. They show up for their communities, and their communities show up for them.
But these are among the few exceptions. The majority of our industry remains at odds with its high-minded purpose, cursed by the norms that its legacies seem to demand. I’ve talked to several journalists who believe that their work is at best neutral, and sometimes actively perpetuating harm among communities where they should be seeking common cause. No wonder that journalists are less trusted than ever.
It’s not too late. We still have so many talented, thoughtful people who want to do great journalism that improves lives. But 2025 is going to be a tough year, for so many reasons. In order to better support our communities, to prove why journalism can be essential, and to keep ourselves and our colleagues from burnout and moral injury, we must close the gap between our values and our actions.
Andrew Losowsky is head of community product at Vox Media and co-founder of Perspectives.
