diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 7141a326..1c67bfb3 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 # CHANGES IN blogdown VERSION 1.14
 
+- For R Markdown posts, the default rendering method has been changed from `html` to `markdown`. If `options('blogdown.method')` is not set, it will be set to `'markdown'`. This option will also be set in `.Rprofile` for newly created sites via `blogdown::new_site()`. Users who have already set this `blogdown.method` option will not be affected. The motivation for this change is that `markdown` output often works better with Hugo themes and is less surprising, even though the `html` method allows for richer Markdown features because of Pandoc (thanks, @SebPouliot #737, @austinwpearce #591).
+
 - When rendering Rmd posts that involve time-consuming and intensive computing while serving the site, the `hugo` process can die (for unknown reasons). Now the `hugo` process will be suspended before rendering Rmd posts, and resumed after the rendering is done. Hopefully this will keep the server process alive (thanks, @XiangyunHuang, https://d.cosx.org/d/423509).
 
 # CHANGES IN blogdown VERSION 1.13
diff --git a/R/render.R b/R/render.R
index 2845f27c..fe72ef0b 100644
--- a/R/render.R
+++ b/R/render.R
@@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ build_site = function(local = FALSE, run_hugo = TRUE, build_rmd = FALSE, ...) {
 }
 
 build_method = function() {
-  methods = c('html', 'markdown', 'custom')
+  methods = c('markdown', 'html', 'custom')
   match.arg(get_option('blogdown.method', methods), methods)
 }
 
diff --git a/inst/resources/Rprofile b/inst/resources/Rprofile
index a255290f..84c7d72f 100644
--- a/inst/resources/Rprofile
+++ b/inst/resources/Rprofile
@@ -15,6 +15,6 @@ options(
   blogdown.serve_site.startup = FALSE,
   # to disable knitting Rmd files on save, set this option to FALSE
   blogdown.knit.on_save = TRUE,
-  # build .Rmd to .html (via Pandoc); to build to Markdown, set this option to 'markdown'
-  blogdown.method = 'html'
+  # build .Rmd to .md; to build to .html (via Pandoc), set this option to 'html'
+  blogdown.method = 'markdown'
 )