How TV news stations collaborate: A growing necessity in the age of digital and streaming
Sharing data, regular cross-company communication, and working outside of TV are three key trends
In 2023, journalism collaborations continued to proliferate. Most media outlets in the U.S. have embraced partnership as budgets and resources run thin, from newspapers and magazines to digital publications and public radio stations.
But what about commercial television news? Though perhaps less evident — commercial TV hasn’t played a major role in some of the U.S.’s most prolific collaboratives to date — all of the major networks (Fox, CBS, ABC, and NBC) and TV groups (Nexstar, Sinclair, Scripps, and Gray) are developing sophisticated structures of collaboration within their own organizations, and also seeking partnerships with digital media outlets outside of TV.
Collaboration exists in commercial TV news, and like for other media outlets, it is increasingly necessary. Michael Depp, the editor of TVNewsCheck, has been tracking collaboration in TV for years and charting these shifts in the broadcast business.
“There has always been collaboration between network news operations and their affiliates,” Depp said. “What’s new in the commercial TV broadcasting world is the scope, complexity, and volume of collaborations. It’s outside of their own newsrooms, it’s across their whole groups, and various national news-producing entities inside of these companies.”
In the age of digital and streaming, TV news stations need to create a lot more content for several different mediums. Gone are the days where the majority of people are tuning in to the local evening newscast, or the primetime national news program. Now, people expect to get news all the time, anywhere they want — on their phones, from social media, and in video, audio, or written formats — and TV news stations are being stretched to meet these needs, just like every other media outlet.
“You have to make more now,” Depp said. “Newsrooms only have a finite amount of reporters, and they have to make different versions of every story — social iterations, multiple edits of the same package. So how do you get the most ROI out of every story that you do?”
Collaboration is one of the best answers to this question. In late 2023, Depp and TVNewsCheck convened two major events with industry leaders, featuring panels on the specific subject of collaboration. Depp hosted “Collaboration and the future of content creation and monetization” at TV2025 in October and “Building the architecture of more collaborative content creation” at NewsTECHForum in December.
I listened to both panels and followed up with speakers and related sources to outline a few of the major ways that TV news stations collaborated in 2023.
Three distinct types of collaboration emerged. For the most part, collaboration within TV ownership groups (across local stations and national networks) is more common than across news organizations. Though there are many more instances that I couldn’t capture, the examples I’ve outlined are emblematic of how many broadcast companies are thinking about and executing on partnerships. I write more about each in the sections below.
- Sharing data: How CBS and ABC power collaborative investigations between local stations and national outlets
- Communicating regularly: How Fox and Scripps structure ongoing collaborations for local and national news coverage
- Working outside of TV: How Gray and Scripps collaborate with ProPublica on impactful multimedia packages
To learn more about collaborations in TV news, visit TVNewsCheck, and check out our collaborative journalism database. You can also fill out this form to have your TV news collaboration added to the database.
Sharing data: How CBS and ABC power collaborative investigations between local stations and national outlets
The most common way that broadcast companies collaborate is among their local stations and national outlets. For example, CBS owns 28 local stations in 17 major media markets (not counting the additional 200+ CBS affiliates in smaller markets), and there are often collaborations between those local stations and the national CBS News unit.
Adrienne Roark, president of content development and integration at CBS News and Stations, explained that CBS has also recently developed a Local News Innovation Lab tailored to facilitating joint investigations, with a specific focus on data journalism. A perfect example of the Lab’s impact showed in October, when it coordinated a data-based investigation between the local stations to report that 9 in 10 car thefts nationally go unsolved.
“The Lab collaborates directly with each station to help them understand the data and develop their stories,” Roark said. “Each market received a customized package with an insert that showed how many local car theft cases go unsolved.”
Providing this data allowed the individual stations to further investigate car thefts in their own region, leading to local stories in Boston, Sacramento, Denver, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Miami, and Minnesota. This type of collaborative operation allows for reporting that might not be possible otherwise, as most local stations don’t have their own data teams.
Putting it all together, national consumer correspondent Ash-har Quraishi led a CBS News story that highlighted the local reporting from the Lab and CBS Stations to display all the findings in one big package. It’s an impressive collaboration that leverages CBS local reporting across the country — capturing the nuances within each market, directly from those local reporters — while also telling a story that’s of national relevance.
John Kelly, vice president of data journalism at CBS News and Stations, joined CBS in November to further grow these collaborative data-driven efforts. Kelly was previously at ABC, where he was the director of data journalism and led similarly ambitious investigations connecting local and national news.
In a time where journalism budgets are extra tight, Kelly believes that partnering is the best way to make the most out of available resources and expand the reach and impact of reporting. At ABC, his data journalism unit spurred a collaboration called “Our America: Trouble on Tap” between national ABC News, local ABC Stations, and National Geographic.
The three-part documentary series was built off local data that examined unsafe drinking water for a growing number of Americans due to environmental impacts like pollution, climate change, and aging infrastructure. Kelly’s data team conducted analysis on the major sources of contamination and provided local markets with their findings — chemicals like PFAS in North Carolina, lead pipes in Chicago, and droughts and flooding in California.
But the collaboration didn’t stop there. Kelly explained that he’s always interested in working with every potential platform or channel that might be available. ABC is owned by Disney, who also owns National Geographic — a perfect partner to lend more storytelling, authority, and reach to ABC’s environmental investigation. Disney also owns Hulu, and the three-part documentary series became available to watch on the streaming service, further expanding the viewership possibilities beyond what a traditional TV news station would be capable of.
“Any great local investigative story can become a national investigative story, or a long read for digital, or a documentary film,” Kelly said. “The key is working to know the potential partners and then keeping lines of communication open with them all to take advantage of opportunities to expand the reach of important stories and investigations.”
Communicating regularly: How Fox and Scripps structure ongoing collaborations for local and national news coverage
In addition to high-impact investigations driven by data, many TV news stations have structures in place to facilitate ongoing collaborations between their local and national news operations.
For example, Fox has LiveNow, a 24/7 national streaming news service that is powered by 28 Fox local TV news stations in 17 markets. According to Emily Stone, vice president of digital content and LiveNow, the concept was created in the pandemic to broadcast more news directly from local stations about health information to a national streaming audience.
Stone explained that the local Fox stations don’t send pre-created content packages to LiveNow for streaming purposes; rather, LiveNow meets with each of the stations to understand what is happening in their markets on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis and then books local reporters who have uncovered stories of national relevance for live spots.
This requires a sophisticated system of ongoing communication. It’s led to a bi-weekly meeting with what Stone calls “LiveNow champions” — essentially, a single person at each local Fox station (in some cases, two people) who is the main point of contact for LiveNow. It’s similar to having a dedicated project manager, which the Center has seen be an effective element of collaborations time and time again.
There’s also a Slack group with the LiveNow champions, and the two-way communication helps both parties. The local stations understand how to get their stories on to the national streaming show, and LiveNow can help plan out their programming and get a better idea of what’s coming.
“I’ve worked in three of our local newsrooms and I know how insane it can be when there’s breaking news,” Stone said. “By having one person, or a small group of people, it really streamlines the communication and doesn’t interrupt anything.”
The collaborative structure proved incredibly useful this past August. When former President Donald Trump turned himself in to Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, the local Fox station had already committed to broadcasting an Atlanta Falcons pre-season football game, and wouldn’t be able to broadcast in real-time. But LiveNow stepped in.
According to Stone, her team worked with the LiveNow champion at the Atlanta station, as well as the news director there, to formulate a coverage plan. Typically, LiveNow would’ve booked an Atlanta reporter for a quick hit. Instead, the roles were reversed, and LiveNow was given access to three Atlanta reporters (plus the station’s helicopter) to work alongside the team’s own digital journalists.
“We effectively became their way to produce several hours of their coverage until all of their control rooms freed up,” Stone said. “By teaming up, and having our digital journalists work with their reporters, it added so much value. For LiveNow, it was the most viewed day that whole month.”
A similar approach to communication and collaboration works for Scripps. The E.W. Scripps Company has a local TV presence in 47 markets, and also runs Scripps News (formerly known as Newsy), a 24/7 live news network available online and on streaming services.
According to Dean Littleton, senior vice president of local news at Scripps, the company is investing more resources in local stations — for example, in Lafayette, Louisiana, the number of reporters is increasing from four to 12 — and the challenge has become finding ways to surface the original reporting around the company.
One of the main solutions is collaborating with the national Scripps News platform on a daily basis. Cameryn Beck, senior director of local news strategy at Scripps, is dedicated to bridging these gaps and making the most use of Scripps’ resources on the local and national level.
“By participating in daily editorial meetings and various planning meetings, I am the conduit between the local stations and the national network,” Beck said. “I’m able to add more granular perspectives and information to a story occurring in one of our markets. Working together, we can also better leverage our resources to tell the best stories in the most efficient way possible to serve our communities.”
Beck explained that one of the best examples of this collaborative approach was on display in May, when Title 42 expired and impacted immigration laws at the U.S.-Mexico border. Scripps News reporters joined forces with local journalists at Scripps stations in Phoenix, San Diego, Tucson, and Corpus Christi, providing more perspective and coverage from multiple border states to show the greater impact of the event.
According to Beck and Littleton, those learnings and the success of that collaborative approach has informed more national coverage where Scripps can leverage their local stations, from the UAW strike and Hurricane Idalia to the looming government shutdown and high gas prices.
“We’re collaborating ahead of time and planning so that if six reporters are involved, each reporter has a different angle,” Littleton said. “As a viewer at home, your experience is much more rich and robust than what it was before.”
Working outside of TV: How Gray and Scripps collaborate with ProPublica on impactful multimedia packages
Though less common than the structures of collaboration set up within large TV news companies, there are increasing examples of TV news and other news organizations working together on impactful collaborative reporting.
Kengo Tsutsumi, ProPublica’s partnerships editor, is at the center of several notable collaborations with TV. Tsutumi’s role is akin to a collaborations manager, as he keeps tabs on what ProPublica editors and reporters are working on, and determines if it makes sense to reach out to partners for collaborative reporting opportunities.
In late 2022, as Tsutsumi got involved with ProPublica’s Train Country series investigating railroad safety, he knew that partnering with a TV news outlet would be the perfect collaboration. ProPublica reporters Topher Sanders and Dan Schwartz were finding that in many small towns across the country, trains were stopping for hours or days at a time, blocking emergency vehicle routes and children’s paths to school.
Tsutsumi reached out to Lee Zurik, the vice president of investigations at Gray Television’s InvestigateTV, a national news show that is powered by Gray’s local TV stations in 113 markets. Tsutsumi felt that the story was inherently visual and could benefit from Gray’s broadcast journalism expertise. Plus, Gray had local TV stations in many of the smaller markets where these train stoppages were occuring, meaning that additional connection could help ProPublica’s coverage better reach the affected communities.
In early 2023, InvestigateTV sent reporter Joce Sterman and photojournalist Scotty Smith to Hammond, Ind. — one of the towns where ProPublica had been reporting on train stoppages — and what they saw shocked them. Zurik explained that Sterman called him with ethical concerns, as they were shooting live video of children crawling under trains that could move at any time. Zurik and Sterman talked it over, and decided that the video was powerful, and needed to be reported out.
“To see it in video, which is one of the first things that Lee’s team brought to us, it just took the project to a completely different level that we would have never been able to bring it to,” Tsutsumi said.
ProPublica’s story and InvestigateTV’s video package were only possible because of this impactful collaboration. As national interest grew surrounding the Norfolk Southern train accident in Ohio, ProPublica and InvestigateTV continued reporting on railroad safety, landing interviews with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and influencing local and national lawmakers and union leaders with their investigative findings.
“The best part of collaborations across mediums is that you have different ideas,” Zurik said. “We learn from each other and the stories are better because of it. We are stronger when we work together, the journalism is better, and the product is seen by more people.”
After the partnership with InvestigateTV, Scripps News also reached out to Tsutsumi about potential opportunities to work together. Tsutsumi had that in mind as he was talking to Maya Miller, an insurance reporter at ProPublica looking into the story of a Michigan man named Forrest VanPatten who died after his insurance company repeatedly rejected paying for his cancer treatment — a violation of state law.
Miller told Tsutsumi that a local TV station had interviewed VanPatten a few days before his death. That local TV station turned out to be the Scripps affiliate in Grand Rapids, Mich. Tsutsumi reached out to Kate O’Brian, president of Scripps News, to build a partnership. There had been a whistleblower at the insurance company, Priority Health, who had given ProPublica access to emails about the case. Scripps News reporter Catie Beck followed up with a compelling 60 minutes-style video expose with the whistleblower, as well as video interviews with VanPatten’s family.
The result was a heartbreaking, impactful depiction of VanPatten’s story, and it’s a case that resonates with many others across the country, as ProPublica has proved in its Uncovered series. The video journalism from Scripps News offered that additional human element, allowing people to see and hear VanPatten in his final days, as well as the whistleblower and VanPatten’s surviving family. It’s led to Michigan regulators cracking down on insurance companies covering more cancer treatments, Scripps has further reported.
By collaborating with ProPublica, both Scripps and Gray were able to pursue investigations with more resources, leading to increased visibility and impact. And for ProPublica, the same was true — it would not have been able to provide those rich multimedia elements or reach local audiences in so many smaller markets without Gray and Scripps.
“We believe that, frankly, it’s a tough time for journalism organizations across the board,” O’Brian said. “The more we share, the more audiences see how important journalism is. We really do believe if we partner up, across competitors, it’s better for the greater good.”
Will Fischer is a journalist covering the intersection of technology and media. He’s worked for Business Insider and New York magazine and conducted local news research for City Bureau. Follow Will on Twitter @willfisch15 or email him at willfisch15@gmail.com.
About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a primarily grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism and support an informed society in New Jersey and beyond. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, the Independence Public Media Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, Inasmuch Foundation and John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For more information, visit centerforcooperativemedia.org.
