Partnerships with a purpose: This year’s CJS will highlight collaborative journalism with positive community impact
The 2025 Collaborative Journalism Summit is set for May 15–16 in Denver
Since the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University started hosting the Collaborative Journalism Summit in 2017, the event has grown every year.
Even during the pandemic years we were attracting a widening group of people interested in talking about different ways that journalists could work together —and with outside partners—to improve their journalism and ultimately help make their communities a better place to live.
We solicit pitches for the conference and largely build the schedule based on what attendees want to see — it’s a participant-driven event. We usually get between 40 and 60 really great pitches from people who want to showcase their collaborative projects, share tools, discuss workflow, and discuss other logistical aspects of running successful journalism collaborations.
This year, for the first time, I’m proud to say that we have decided to give the Summit a theme: Partnerships with a purpose: Collaborations that produce positive community impact.
Over the years, we’ve consistently seen that one of the reasons journalists engage in collaborations is to widen their impact. Although many collaborations started 10 or so years ago simply as a matter of sharing scarce resources, many journalists today work in partnership largely to expand audience reach and impact. This year we want to highlight those collaborations that specifically have positive community outcomes in mind and have been able to make a difference with their work.
One of last year’s keynotes at our conference in Detroit was Candice Fortman of Outlier Media, who is a national leader when it comes to true service journalism — work that intentionally and tangibly benefits the people Outlier serves.
Rather than being a passive information-sharing service, Outlier collaborates with the people of Detroit and other partners to help Detroiters live better lives.
I also take inspiration from MLK50 in Memphis. Its tagline, “Justice Through Journalism” teases its mission: The nonprofit’s storytelling focuses on the intersection of poverty, power and policy, examining the “systems that make it hard for workers to make ends meet and interrogate those who profit from the status quo.”
One of MLK50’s most widely known investigations, “Profiting from the poor,” in collaboration with ProPublica led to the wiping of nearly $12 million in medical debt for 5,300 patients of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare. It has also examined affordable housing, public transportation and lead in recent years.
We believe that more journalism in the United States will begin to focus on tangible, positive community impact. It’s time to move beyond just reporting and hoping laws get changed, or calling a legislator’s comments to maybe make policy change impactful. Real impact is not measured in page views, subscribers, or increased revenue — it’s measured by positive community outcomes.
Do you have an example of a collaboration that led to positive community impacts? Pitch it! We want to hear from you and feature your work at the 2025 Collaborative Journalism Summit. Use our pitch form here. You can also use the pitch form to nominate people you’d like to hear from.
Hope to see you in Denver!
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Stefanie Murray is the director of the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University. Contact her at murrayst@montclair.edu.
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.
