Comparing Models of COLLABORATIVE JOURNALISM

Comparing Models of COLLABORATIVE JOURNALISM September 2017 The Center for Cooperative Media The School of Communication and Media Montclair State University Principal investigator: Sarah Stonbely This report was produced by the Center for Cooperative Media. It was written by Sarah Stonbely, edited by Heather Bryant and Stefanie Murray, and designed by Heather Bryant. Web and social media presentation was designed by Joe Amditis. The report is available online at collaborativejournalism.org/comparingmodels. Copyright 2017. All rights reserved. For information on reproducing pieces of this report, please contact the Center for Cooperative Media at [email protected]. Center for Cooperative Media School of Communication and Media Suite 2109, Montclair State University 1 Normal Ave., Montclair, NJ 07043 2 About the Center for Cooperative Media The Center for Cooperative Media is a grant-funded program based at the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, which it does through professional development and training, networking, coaching for entrepreneurial and independent news organizations, research, events, and by coordinating and advocating for editorial and business collaborations. The Center for Cooperative Media’s flagship program is the NJ News Commons, which is a network of more than 180 publishers in the state of New Jersey. The Center’s focus with the NJ News Commons is on growing and strengthening New Jersey’s local news and information ecosystem. The Center has regular and project-based partnerships with several organizations whose work complements our own, such as the Local Independent Online News Publishers, the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Center for Investigative Reporting, Solutions Journalism Network, Free Press and many others, as well as major platforms including Facebook and Google. The Center’s work is supported by funding from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Democracy Fund and Rita Allen Foundation. 3 4 Contents Pg. 7 About this project Pg. 9 Foreword Pg. 11 What is Collaborative Journalism? Pg. 17 Why Collaborative Journalism now? Pg. 20 Six Models of Collaborative Journalism Pg. 22 ............. “Temporary and Separate” Pg. 26 ............. “Temporary and Co-creating” Pg. 30 ............. “Temporary and Integrated” Pg. 34 ............. “Ongoing and Separate” Pg. 40 ............. “Ongoing and Co-creating” Pg. 46 ............. “Ongoing and Integrated” Pg. 50 Three Collaborative Journalism Vignettes Pg. 50 ............. The Reentry Project Pg. 52 ............. The Detroit Journalism Cooperative Pg. 55 ............. Ohio Valley ReSource Pg. 59 Discussion: Tensions and Opportunities Pg. 63 Appendix A: Collaboration Variables Pg. 64 Appendix B: Interviews Pg. 65 Bibliography 5 6 About the project The Center for Cooperative Media believes that collaborative journalism is a promising practice to help support the sustainability of journalism in the digital age. While collaboration may be anathema to journalists who are used to competition, we have observed that successful collaborations sacrifice neither quality nor independence; rather, working together produces content and reach that would not be possible for newsrooms working alone. In early 2017 we began collecting information about collaborative reporting projects from around the world. Our goal was to synthesize this data to produce a typology of collaborative reporting models that would be of use to practitioners, funders and academics. In May 2017, the Center organized and hosted an international symposium on collaborative journalism and cooperative news networks. More than 175 people gathered at Montclair State University for the Collaborative Journalism Summit to discuss the logistics of partnerships, hear about successful collaborations, and listen to keynote presentations about the Panama Papers and Electionland projects. We presented initial findings from our research on models of collaborative journalism at the summit. This white paper is the final product of that research. In August 2017 the Center distributed $42,000 in grants to six news organizations to support collaborative reporting projects as part of an open call that was funded by Rita Allen Foundation and Democracy Fund. These efforts are tied together by the Center’s intention to continue to support a community of practice around collaborative journalism as one of its flagship programs. If you want to know more or get involved, email [email protected]. Special thanks The Center would like to thank the many people who agreed to be interviewed for this research or otherwise provided information. 7 8 Foreword For journalism in general, but for local news and information providers in particular, the last decade has been one of resource scarcity, uncertainty, and rapid technological development. In the U.S., as in many Western democracies, consolidation and cost-cutting have resulted in dramatic losses for local journalism in all but the largest cities (e.g. Shaffer and Doherty, 2017; Starr, 2009). Within this context, many surviving local journalism outlets have turned to collaborative journalism as a way to share data and stretch limited resources, while also providing what are often more comprehensive stories to bigger audiences. As many are realizing, the digital age has created technological affordances that make collaboration easier than ever before. This report identifies and compares six models of collaborative journalism that span collaborations from the hyperlocal to the international levels. We provide examples of each model, and discuss common costs and benefits for each. Identifying and describing the different models of collaborative journalism is of use to journalists, funders, and scholars alike. Further, the project points to a bright spot in journalism, and highlights one of the ways that news and information providers are finding their way forward in the digital age. 9 10 What is Collaborative Journalism? A Brief History In some sense all journalism is collaborative; there is usually at least a reporter and an editor, and perhaps a photographer, videographer, or visual data person. Moreover, collaboration among reporters or between newsrooms has been practiced in different forms for more than one hundred years. One of the earliest journalism collaborations was among the newsrooms that made up “the wires” in the mid-nineteenth century. “The birth of the wire service industry as we know it,” Shmanske (1986, p. 61) wrote, “occurred in 1846 when six New York daily newspapers joined to form the Associated Press. The purpose of this union was to cooperate in receiving news, that is, to share all news that came in and split the expenses evenly.” In the twentieth century, especially after the advent of the penny papers, competition between outlets was the norm. “Every era of journalism features forms of competition and cooperation,” Graves and Konieczna (2015, p. 1970) state. “The professional and economic logic of news in the last century made the former more visible than the latter.” Yet even during the height of profitability in the late twentieth century, when competition, not collaboration, was the most salient relationship between newsrooms, it was common practice for journalists on the same beat to collaborate by sharing notes, swapping tips, and in general helping each other out (Graves and Konieczna 2015, p. 1971). Formal collaboration during that period was most common within an organization, rather than between. For example, Cable News Network (CNN) was formed in 1980, and codified intra-newsroom sharing – between the national headquarters and its television news affiliates – with CNN Newsource, in 1988. Gannett’s USA Today Network, which gathers content from local newsrooms across the country for packaging in the national edition, was re-booted in 2015 to take advantage of the latest technology for sharing content.1 There was also sharing between smaller newsrooms and organizations; New California Media (now New America Media) began developing collaborative reporting projects in the late 1990s “as a way to combine the strengths of ethnic media, and the intimate knowledge (including language skills) of 1 Mashery, “Driving Real-World Enterprise & B2B Results with APIs,” accessed at https://www.mashery.com/sites/default/files/Mashery%20Powers%20Enterprise.pdf. 11 What is Collaborative Journalism? diverse communities – with those of mainstream journalism (particularly investigative reporting and knowledge of public policy and politics).” 2 At the local level, newspaper chains have been “collaborating” for decades; small suburban weeklies shared content with the large metro paper and vice versa. However, there is a qualitative difference in the consciousness and intentionality with which collaborations are now being undertaken. The attention from outside organizations, and their money, makes a difference. “There’s a lot of introspection” about collaboration now, and the organizations funding it are trying to learn lessons and see what works and what doesn’t, says Denise Young, who holds the title “executive editor of collaborative journalism” at an upstate New York public radio station. She, and others like her, are part of a nascent cohort of journalists whose main focus is to manage multi-outlet collaborations. The current excitement about collaborative journalism began in the mid-2000s, when publishers,

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