At this point in the coronavirus pandemic, each year is starting to feel more similar to the one before than we all might like. But despite the rise in case counts at the end of December and a certain sense of deja vu that came along with it, 2021 was different from 2020 in important ways — we’ve got ample vaccines, at least in the United States, and it seems possible to imagine a year that won’t be defined mostly by the virus and its associated political and policy challenges. Will 2022 be the one? Twelve Washington Post beat reporters and columnists walk us through the ideas and arguments that will define the next 12 months.

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The third year of the pandemic will be as unpredictable as the first two

Year Two of the pandemic ended with dismaying news: Another new variant, potentially more transmissible than delta, had quickly hopscotched across the globe. Hospitalizations and deaths were nowhere near last winter’s levels but cases were still alarmingly high — in the United States, the seven-day average of daily cases reached a record Tuesday, at 266,889.

What does that mean for the world’s third year contending with the coronavirus? If experts (and reporters) have learned anything, it’s never to make predictions about the virus — or underestimate it. Time after time, it has outsmarted the world’s top scientists and found new ways to infect people. And with numerous unanswered questions about the omicron variant, it remains unclear what exactly to expect, except that we aren’t going back to the pre-pandemic version of normal anytime soon.

The Biden administration is discovering that vaccines alone will not bring this pandemic under control, especially with a wide swath of the country refusing to get vaccinated, even though the shots are free and easily available. Omicron has infected many people who are vaccinated and even those who are boosted. The administration’s vaccine mandate for all businesses with more than 100 employees faces several legal challenges and may not survive the courts; it heads to the Supreme Court in January. Officials are leaning hard into booster shots — which have been shown to help protect against severe effects from the omicron variant — urging all adult Americans to receive one.

While officials have put more time and money into other tools to manage the pandemic, including rapid tests and antivirals, the country faces challenges on both fronts over the next few weeks. Antivirals will be critical in treating those who do become infected, but omicron can evade some of the most effective existing treatments. Two new easy-to-use pills were recently authorized by the FDA, but the most effective of them is expected to be in short supply over the coming weeks. Rapid tests can help prevent outbreaks from spinning out of control, allowing people to resume their daily activities more safely, but a surge in demand driven by omicron has caused shortages and backlogs. We also know how effective masks can be.

The coronavirus isn’t going away, and it probably never will. The goal is to have the risk be more akin to that from the seasonal flu: Vaccinated people may contract it but face nearly no chance of hospitalization or death. The good news is that we have come a long way from 2020. The vaccines have protected us even in the face of new variants; more treatments have recently been authorized and are on the way; research shows that masks help us protect one another; tests are becoming easier to obtain. We have to get through the omicron wave first, but federal officials hope that by using all these tools, we can soon bring cases down and learn to live in our new normal.

– Yasmeen Abutaleb is a national reporter covering health policy, with a focus on the Department of Health and Human Services, health policy on Capitol Hill, and health care in politics.

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Climate change will keep getting worse. Our response won’t cut it

2021 was bad for the planet. 2022 will be worse. This sad inevitability of our warming world has become undeniable: Since humans continue to pump carbon into the atmosphere, global average temperatures will continue to rise, and weather disasters will continue to become more extreme. People should be prepared for every heat wave, wildfire and storm to set records, for every summer to be hotter than the one before.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that the world’s window of opportunity to meet its most ambitious climate goal — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels — is closing. In 2022, the United Nations panel will focus on how humanity can adjust to the changes we’ve caused and map out our remaining options for averting further catastrophes. The continuing La Niña climate pattern, which tends to exacerbate drought in the American West and amplify storms in Southeast Asia, will test governments’ abilities to respond to disasters and force people to reconsider where and how they live in climate-vulnerable areas. After the Glasgow climate summit delivered lackluster results for hard-hit nations, the developing world will be pushing even harder for rich countries to promise more financial support at November’s meeting in Egypt.

In the United States — the top source of greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere — the success of climate efforts could depend on whether Democrats implement their agenda, particularly the imperiled Build Back Better program. With the party facing an uphill battle in the midterm elections, this is their best chance to spend big on upgrading infrastructure, reducing emissions from buildings and switching the electrical grid to renewable energy. If these measures deliver the new jobs and lifestyle improvements advocates have promised, that could build support for the programs even if power in Washington changes hands. But first, they have to pass the Senate.

– Sarah Kaplan is a climate reporter covering humanity’s response to a warming world.

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Yes, elections will have consequences — and so will the battles over how to run them

Barring some unforeseen event, the biggest political story of 2022 will be the midterm elections. Countless ones and zeros (and some actual ink) will be spilled as outlets like The Washington Post explain the issues, candidates and voter moods that will help shape President Joe Biden’s next two years in office.

But this may be the first election in generations in which what happens at the ballot box isn’t as important as what happens before votes are cast and what happens afterward, as officials tally the results and certify them (or don’t). And that’s a consequence of GOP maneuvering since November 2020.

Former president Donald Trump has been rewriting the DNA of the Republican Party, so that baseless and outlandish claims that he was cheated out of a second term are now an article of faith. (No, counting mail-in ballots after Election Day isn’t fraudulent. No, North Korean boats didn’t deliver ballots via Maine.)

More important, though, is that Republicans are acting on what’s come to be called the “big lie”: Trump acolytes have been installing his supporters in positions with control of state elections, passing laws curtailing electoral practices they blame for Biden’s victory and enlisting candidates who profess to believe the falsehood that 2020 was rigged. Some, like former senator David Perdue, R-Ga., who’s now running for Georgia governor, have proclaimed that they wouldn’t have certified Biden’s victory.

At the same time, except for a few lonely voices, the GOP has whitewashed the Jan. 6 ransacking of the Capitol, which interrupted the certification of Biden’s victory and reset the republic’s “years since a peaceful handover of power” calendar to zero.

That’s why what happens before anyone casts a ballot — restrictions on voting opportunities, citizens improperly purged from the rolls, aggressively gerrymandered districts — will require attention. And it’s why what happens after voting stops — officials invalidating results out of loyalty to the former president, not to their oath of office — will demand scrutiny.

Every day brings new evidence of how deeply and widely, if often incompetently, Trump’s campaign to undo the election results ran in 2020. The biggest political story of 2022 will be whether this time, it works.

– Olivier Knox is national political correspondent.

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Fancy restaurants and casual chains will thrive. The places in between won’t

Even before the pandemic, some food industry analysts believed that we’d already seen the end of the golden age of dining out in America — that rising labor and food costs, significant ground ceded to third-party delivery companies, and shifting consumer tastes were stymieing innovation and squeezing profits. Reeling from #MeToo and racial-inequity scandals, the restaurant industry was in a period of reckoning and reinvention when, in March 2020, everything screeched to a standstill.

Now the industry is back-ish, but many things will never be the same.

Dine-in visits to restaurants were down 49% in the 12 months ending in October 2021 compared with the pre-pandemic level in the year ending in October 2019, according to the market research firm NPD Group. Off-premises orders (carryout, drive-through and delivery) represented 50% of casual restaurants’ sales before the pandemic; now that figure is 80%. That’s here to stay — online ordering and window pickup dominate Brian Treitman’s restaurant, B.T.’s Smokehouse in Sturbridge, Mass., for example, leaving his dining room, for which he still pays rent, largely a vestige from another time.

So far it doesn’t sound like a loss, right? Assuming sufficient to-go containers, it just means swapping out where people consume food. Not exactly. The pandemic, coupled with an inequitable distribution of federal assistance, created winners and losers. The losers — many mom-and-pop restaurants, with a substantial portion of proprietors whose first language isn’t English — are not able to compete on wages or keep their menu prices commensurate with those of deeper-pocketed peers. Many will go out of business.

There’s still a customer for high-end “experiential” restaurants. And quick-serve chains will continue to flourish. But even these categories will face problems and flux. With so many restaurant jobs open, fewer kitchen workers are willing to endure the high stress and low pay of prestigious “stages” (the industry word for internships), which will diminish the pipeline of talent. And for quick-serve, labor shortages will expedite a turn toward kiosk ordering, touchless payment apps and robotics in food preparation. Rising rents will force many restaurants to operate all day, but the continued allure of remote work means they’ll keep losing breakfast and lunch business to the sandwich hastily eaten over the sink. ​​For those who believe that food is mere sustenance, this should cause little chagrin, but for those of us who view it, at its acme, as an art, signs point to creators having fewer tools and fewer venues in which to showcase their work.

– Laura Reiley is the business of food reporter.

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Soft pants are going back to the office with us

Nearly two years into the pandemic, the garments we once jokingly called “soft pants” are just pants. Jeans have gotten roomier, and elastic waistbands have become a staple in dressier pants, which aren’t as dressy anymore: transitional clothes for our transitional times.

Earlier in 2021, when things seemed brighter, optimism trickled down into fashion headlines: Sweats were Out! Dresses and heels were In! The notion of “revenge dressing” — dressing up to make up for lost time, and to spite a virus that has no feelings — took hold. But then: delta. And after that: omicron. Return-to-office dates are being pushed back once more, and winter workwear is accumulating a second season of closet dust among those fortunate enough to be able to work remotely.

So now the question is no longer what we will wear post-pandemic, but whether there will be a post-pandemic at all. We seem doomed to exist somewhere in the murky middle for at least another season, and hybrid work arrangements may keep us in the soft-pants space even longer.

Rather than whiplashing back to expensive and impractical clothes, forecasters are seeing people dressing more for the version of themselves that they’ve discovered over the last 22 months. Lorna Hall, director of fashion intelligence for trend forecaster WGSN, thinks formalities have already been eroded away by months of Zoom. “During lockdowns, many of us have seen the person behind the persona we built up via office dress codes,” she says.

Retailers seem to be hedging their 2022 bets with the best of both worlds. Key phrases are “elevated loungewear” (coordinated sets in luxe fabrics) or “relaxed suiting” (slightly oversize and slouchy suits with forgiving, four-way-stretch fabrics) or “workleisure” (bike shorts paired with button-downs; nap dresses; house shoes).

“Construction and tailoring will come down to the fibers, fabrics and functionality that maintain the level of comfort we’ve all come to appreciate,” says Leslie Ghize, executive vice president of consumer insight agency TOBE TDG. Instead of day to night, versatility has become more about couch to cubicle.

Among those pandemic discoveries is mortality: Life’s too short to wear uncomfortable clothes, but it’s also too short to wear boring clothes. That might mean playing with gender norms, or wearing brighter colors to signal hopefulness, or deciding to never again press our toes into stilettoes. As for that “revenge” attire, remember the timeworn breakup advice: Living well is the best revenge.

– Maura Judkis is a features reporter for The Washington Post.

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Our dogs are going to miss us so much

The pandemic gave a whole lot of dogs what they love the most: time with and attention from their beloved humans. And dog owners benefited, too — some got to squeeze in precious moments with aging pets, a few learned how to communicate with their canine pals in thrilling ways, while others got to be dog parents for the first time, bringing them joy and routine during a pretty bleak couple of years.

But now workplaces are opening up again. And that doesn’t bode well for dogs.

People struggling to cope with their pandemic puppies alongside in-person work and school have already returned waves of dogs to shelters. Other dog owners are seeing behaviors related to separation anxiety — destruction, peeing inside the house, moping around.

The departure of their owners may be especially rough for rescue dogs, says animal behaviorist Marc Bekoff, a co-author of “Unleashing Your Dog: A Field Guide to Giving Your Canine Companion the Best Life Possible.” “A good number of those dogs have had difficult lives,” he says. For them, their owner leaving could remind them of previous abandonment. “If your dog’s gotten used to having their owner around — or has only known a life where their owner was around all the time — long periods of absence naturally makes them upset.”

Pet parents determined to keep their dogs in good spirits in 2022 are going to be looking for ways to help them work through those feelings of abandonment. Already, rental behemoth Airbnb is expanding pet-friendly options for folks who can’t stand to leave their pets behind any more than they have to. Expect to see more accommodations of that kind from companies — and, perhaps, employers — looking to adapt to the needs of pet owners and their anxious pups.

Inevitably, though, many of us are going to have to get used to being away from our pandemic companions, just as they’re going to have to get comfortable with more regular separations from us. It’ll take time and attention — Bekoff encourages people to keep a close eye on changing behaviors, noting that “just because a dog is happy to see you when you come home doesn’t mean that the dog was content during the day.”

– Kari Sonde is the editorial aide for the Food section, where she helps with recipes, cooking questions and food styling.

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The economy will see uncomfortable — but not crisis-level — inflation

The great financial challenge of 2021 was reviving the economy. In 2022, the challenge will be to keep inflation from wrecking the rebound.

As prices continue to soar not just for cars but also for gas, utilities, food, housing and home goods, it’s becoming increasingly clear that inflation will be higher for longer than anyone wants. Economists expect the rate of price increases to come down from the highs of 2021 — 6.8% for the 12 months ending in November, for example — but they don’t envision it returning to the 2% range that’s considered normal until late 2023 or beyond.

That means we should brace for a year characterized by uncomfortable, but not crisis-inducing, inflation. And American businesses, consumers and policymakers will have to adjust.

The playbook for dealing with uncomfortable inflation isn’t obvious. In the late 1970s, when the nation suffered double-digit price increases, the Fed hiked interest rates to an unprecedented 20%, plunging the economy into a recession but eventually rectifying the situation. Today’s Fed won’t act so dramatically, but it is already signaling three rate hikes in 2022. Doing so without triggering a stock market panic or job losses will require careful maneuvering by Fed chair Jerome Powell. (It would also help if President Biden lifted some of the Trump-era tariffs still in place on thousands of foreign imports, which would lower some prices.)

Republicans will continue to place the blame on Biden for spending too much on pandemic relief aid. That’s a contributing factor, but the bulk of the problem involves a simple mismatch of supply and demand: Demand for cars, dishwashers, couches, kitchen sinks and other goods surged in 2021 as factories around the world struggled to reboot from the pandemic, and the kinks in supply chains will take a while to work out.

Americans are spooked about inflation, but most haven’t curbed their spending yet. The big concern is that workers will demand higher and higher wages, and companies will keep raising prices, creating a spiral that is hard to stop. To forestall that outcome, policymakers have to convince consumers and business leaders that high inflation is not here to stay — a challenge that involves psychology as much as economics.

– Heather Long is an economics correspondent.

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The art world will learn to love the blockchain

Ever since a digital collage by Mike Winkelmann, a.k.a. Beeple — who was virtually unknown to art insiders before 2021 — sold at auction for $69.3 million, talk about NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, has permeated every aspect of the art world. The big question hovering over 2022 will be: Are NFTs a passing fad, or will they change art forever?

NFTs are not the new photography. That’s to say, they’re not so much a new artistic medium as a financial instrument. Think of them as a digital certificate of authenticity that exists on a decentralized ledger — a ledger that anyone can see and that cannot be tampered with.

Above all, these virtual commodities create a notional scarcity. Digital artists, whose work exists as easily copied computer files, can now point to a single version of their work as the “authentic” one, creating an asset that can more easily be monetized.

But NFTs can be minted from physical works, too. In fact, the British Museum, the Uffizi and the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg are among the museums that have minted NFTs from works in their collections by Monet, Van Gogh and Leonardo da Vinci. Obviously, if you buy these NFTs, you’re not buying the physical work. You’re buying a unique digital collectible that can be traded as such. Other entrepreneurs are minting works by Banksy and Keith Haring as NFTs and then fractionalizing them — selling them off as shares. And all that’s just the beginning.

Whether any of this solves existing problems is up for debate. But there is no doubt that the hype around NFTs has attracted a new class of wealthy collectors and entrepreneurs — “crypto bros” — who are willing to throw their money around.

Of course, the cryptocurrency folks are playing a bigger, longer game. But in the process, they are doing their best to shake up the art world. They’re not just creating new ways of doing business and forcing tough questions about the opaque and often convoluted workings of the art market. They’re also bringing attention to new artists. Many are mediocre. But some, previously unknown, have turned out to be excellent. Museums are paying attention. And forward-thinking collectors appear keen not to be left behind.

– Sebastian Smee is an art critic at The Washington Post.

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Sorry, you have to pay attention to crypto now

You wake up to your representative in Congress tweeting “gm” — the good-morning greeting that marks someone as an insider among cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Your hometown sports star has changed their avatar to a “Bored Ape,” blockchain-based status symbols that have sold for more than $1 million. Your relative in El Salvador says bitcoin is legal tender there and wants to know if you could send money to their Chivo wallet from now on. Melania Trump is launching an NFT platform. Kim Kardashian is shilling a new token on her Instagram Stories.

All of these things happened in 2021. And if you were a “no-coiner” hoping this whole crypto bubble would blow over before you ever had to learn what a blockchain was, how to say “DAO” or “DeFi,” or what Web3 has to do with the metaverse, I have bad news: You’re ngmi. (That’s “not going to make it” in crypto lingo.)

Over the last year, cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin began to break into the financial mainstream, blockchain-based NFTs (non-fungible tokens) sparked wild speculation on digital art, and Facebook renamed itself Meta to signal a focus on the “metaverse,” a virtual reality that it sees as the future of the Internet. In 2022, those trends will collide with an impact that will resound far beyond tech and finance, as crypto culture becomes so ubiquitous that even those who think the whole thing is a scam will be compelled to pay attention.

Skeptics will argue that bitcoin is an environmental disaster; that altcoins are risky and poorly regulated; that Web3 — a more decentralized version of the Internet — is mostly hype; that the metaverse sounds like a nightmare; that the entire crypto project has yet to prove it can solve a pressing societal problem that wasn’t already addressable through other means. The whole thing is a bubble, they’ll say, and it’s bound to pop.

They may be right. But at this point, so many actors have so much invested in it — including the Silicon Valley moneymen who decide what ventures get funded — that the bubble is sure to get much bigger before it bursts. And by the time it does, it will have sucked up so much air and displaced so much of what’s around it that the mark it leaves behind will be indelible. So it’s time for even those who hate the idea of crypto to learn enough about it to develop an informed critique — and the ability to differentiate between its benign and malign applications. In 2022, skepticism of crypto is absolutely warranted, but ignorance of it no longer is.

– Will Oremus writes about the ideas, products and power struggles shaping the digital world for The Washington Post.

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Big artists will return to arenas, but streaming concerts are here to stay

The long, weird lockdown brought us Neil Young playing from his living room and Yo-Yo Ma propping up his cello for Instagram spots. Now comes the real test. With the coronavirus lingering and vaccine mandates in place at most arenas, a slew of big-name performers have decided they’re going to tour in 2022, including Billie Eilish, Justin Bieber, Lorde, Louis Tomlinson and Bad Bunny. Indie-rock icons Pavement will reunite for the first time in a decade, and Elton John’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour” relaunches in late January in New Orleans. Will audiences be willing to go elbow-to-elbow for a “Tiny Dancer” singalong? So far, no-shows are way up, even for pricey arena concerts. Will legacy artists, usually the most dependable at the box office, feel comfortable touring? Some have already said no. “Creating superspreader events is not really what I want to do,” says Young. And what about everybody else, the countless artists who can’t pack a dome but rely on ticket and T-shirt sales to offset paltry streaming-music royalty checks?

There’s another side to this. Of necessity, lockdown brought so much to our screens, some of it quite beautifully made, from Bob Dylan’s staged production to the streaming network Melissa Etheridge launched. Online concert sites are ratcheting up quality and content, with Nugs.net leading the way. If you just want to listen, high-resolution audio has finally become consumer friendly through Qobuz, Apple and Amazon. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) And there’s Oda, the audio-only music service that launched to provide live shows by an eclectic roster of artists ranging from folkie Jessica Pratt to minimalist pioneer Terry Riley. That’s the in-home part of our test. Will presenters continue to innovate at-home options and make them more than the B-grade, secondary alternatives they’ve been in the past? And will audiences pay for these alternatives once the novelty is gone — or once they can return to live shows?

– Geoff Edgers, The Washington Post’s national arts reporter, covers everything from fine arts to popular culture.

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Politicians aren’t done fighting over schools

The damage inflicted by the pandemic on American schools isn’t over, and neither is the fierce backlash over the racial reckoning in education. In the coming year, expect both to be fodder for politicians.

Fresh off a win in the Virginia governor’s race, Republicans have seized on education and “parental control” as winning issues in the midterm elections. The GOP’s case will center on displeasure over pandemic-driven restrictions, including school closures and mask mandates, as well as the racial equity work underway in thousands of districts. Depending on whom you ask, pandemic restrictions and racial equity work have nothing to do with each other — or are deeply intertwined. What’s clear is that the pressure on schools on both fronts will intensify.

It’s a rough time for education even without politics: Schools have struggled to transition back to classrooms after months of remote learning, with periodic quarantines, teacher burnout, staff shortages and last-minute closures. There has also been a surge in violence as students readjust to the school setting. A November mass shooting in Oxford, Mich., has many still on edge.

Republicans blame Democrats for coronavirus-related school closures and what some voters see as overly restrictive rules. “People think Democrats closed schools and didn’t care, didn’t think it was bad, didn’t think there was any downside to it. So they’re taking those frustrations out on us,” said Brian Stryker, a Democratic pollster.

Meanwhile, many school districts have increased their focus on racial equity and systemic racism in policies and curriculums. While many parents of color and other advocates see this work as overdue, the political right decries it as “woke” politics. Legislation limiting how teachers can talk about race in the classroom has been passed or is pending in states across the country.

Voters worry that the focus on race is superfluous at a time when, thanks to the pandemic, children have fallen behind in math and reading, said Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster. He sees education as a critical issue in many of the 36 governors’ races in the fall of 2022, as well as thousands of contests for state legislature and school board seats. “This is an issue that has legs,” he said. “I don’t think it’s over yet.”

– Laura Meckler is a national education writer covering national trends, federal policy and the Education Department.

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Americans will play it safe with their vacations

Travel in 2022 will look a lot like it did at the end of 2021: confusing.

As the world’s crash course on the Greek alphabet continues with the identification of new coronavirus variants, so will whack-a-mole border closures. Vaccine passports and testing requirements may keep some opportunities available to travelers, but evolving restrictions may derail plans at any moment. A destination that looks like a safe bet one month might be under lockdown the next.

As a result, most Americans will continue to play it safe and stick with domestic travel (plus trips to nearby international destinations with few-to-no entry requirements, such as Mexico). Since many have developed a taste for the great outdoors, we can expect another summer of packed national parks (some still requiring advance reservations for crowd control) and limited availability for campsites and beach houses.

No matter where they decide to go, routine flight cancellations, delays and rescheduling will continue inconveniencing travelers. Along with the usual culprits — bad weather, crew scheduling complications — the coronavirus will also be to blame. Once upon a time, airlines could predict traveler behavior well enough to plan schedules with a high degree of certainty. With such unpredictable factors as emerging variants, new vaccine eligibility, staffing shortages and demand surges, airlines are having a more difficult time accurately projecting future flights.

Travel advisers recommend hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. In 2022, your trip itinerary isn’t complete until you have a contingency plan. There’s trip stacking, a financially risky pandemic trend wherein people (usually highly organized travel professionals) book multiple trips for the same time period, in case their first option falls through. There’s also accepting that certain trips just won’t pan out. Buying travel insurance is one way to mitigate risks, such as getting sick and stranded abroad or needing to scrub plans at the last minute. In 2022, only one thing is certain: Avoid nonrefundable bookings at all costs.

– Natalie Compton is a staff writer for The Washington Post’s new travel destination, By The Way.

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Local news outlets will keep shrinking — and experimenting

A seemingly never-ending pandemic, midterm elections, climate disasters: In these times, we could really use a robust corps of local journalists covering how their communities have been affected.

But the fortunes of the local newspaper industry will continue to decline in 2022, with journalists in remaining newsrooms stretched thin. Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund with a reputation for deep cost-cutting and selling of assets to get higher-than-average profit margins, bought the legendary Tribune Publishing Company in 2021 and immediately offered buyouts companywide. Many top editors departed. According to the unions representing Tribune’s journalists, newsrooms shrunk by an average of 20%. Alden, already the nation’s second-largest publisher of newspapers, has now set its sights on another major newspaper chain, Lee Enterprises. It insists that it wants to “support newspapers over the long term.” Critics call it a “vulture fund,” and reporters at the unionized Lee Enterprises newsrooms publicly oppose a takeover. Lee’s board has rejected Alden’s first offer, and the hedge fund countered with a lawsuit. In 2022, shareholders could face a vote on whether to sell the chain.

The situation has been dire for years. Ad revenue has been declining since 2005. Local papers struggled to adapt to the Internet, and other hedge funds swept in. About 6,000 newspaper jobs and 300 papers vanished between 2018 and early 2020, according to a University of North Carolina study.

But 2022 will also be a year of new ventures and projects. Nonprofits such as States Newsroom, which covers state governments, will expand to states such as Alaska and Nebraska. Brand-new outlets will launch, such as the nonprofit Capital B, which aims to provide “high-quality civic journalism tailored to Black communities.” Legacy newspapers like the Chattanooga Times Free Press, facing the increasing cost of printing papers, will continue their programs of giving free iPads and one-on-one training to every subscriber.

We don’t know whether any of these experiments can make up for the loss of local newspapers and their brand of civic watchdog and community reporting. But at least some concerned — and creative — people are trying.

– Elahe Izadi covers media for The Washington Post.

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