Q&A: Sumi Aggarwal on the importance of dedicated collaboration managers
Sumi Aggarwal is the chief strategy officer at The Intercept, and she has a deep background in collaborative journalism and investigative reporting.
As the director of collaborations at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, and ultimately the editor-in-chief, Aggarwal saw firsthand the necessity of dedicated collaboration managers in large investigative projects.
We caught up with Aggarwal to learn about her work at The Intercept and how the lessons she’s learned in collaborative journalism continue to inform her approach.
WF: How did you get involved in journalism?
SA: I got my first job in Portland, Oregon, working the overnight shift at a local, independent TV station there, KPTV. I bounced around from station to station for a little bit, and then I was at the Today Show for a couple of years, working as a booker. Then I found myself at 60 Minutes. Way before collaborative journalism was common, we did a collaboration with The Washington Post. We did a big investigation on FBI forensic tools, The Washington Post published it on their Sunday front page, and we did a piece for 60 Minutes — that was the first collaborative journalism project I had ever done. At that time, it was kind of a big deal for a paper like The Washington Post and a show like 60 Minutes to join forces, because they usually see themselves as competitors, particularly then. I didn’t know collaboration was going to be such a big part of my career going forward.
WF: What made you get into collaborative journalism at Reveal?
SA: Fast forward a couple of years, I ended up at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, leading Reveal Local Labs, which was all about bringing together local outlets in specific communities to tackle big investigative projects that any one outlet wouldn’t necessarily have the resources to do alone. It really was working hand-in-hand with outlets and being the person who was helping smooth all the edges — making sure that everybody was tackling the investigative process in the way they were supposed to, that everyone was contributing, that there was no friction, the fact-checking process across outlets was thorough, editing was happening smoothly — basically seeing it from beginning to end. Anybody who works in collaborative journalism knows the hardest part is herding everybody and all the moving parts of the project, getting it to the finish line. I got a real, in-depth exposure to the collaborative process while at Reveal.
In local markets, there aren’t a ton of resources to do big investigative projects. But we also know that audiences respond to that type of reporting, and that’s where they feel like the value of local journalism is — people want to really understand what’s happening in their communities. If there are fewer and fewer resources available to do these big investigations or data-driven projects, how do we help facilitate that kind of work in local markets? We quickly realized that you needed somebody who could be dedicated to the investigation and collaborative project, keep the trains moving, and make sure that disagreements were resolved before they became conflicts. It’s also about wrangling resources — if one newsroom is really good at data visualizations, and another newsroom is really good at data analysis, and another is fantastic at digging up sources, by joining forces, we can pull everybody together to do what they’re best at.
WF: What’s your role like now at The Intercept, and how have these experiences helped you?
SA: It’s the first newsroom role I’ve taken that isn’t purely editorial. It’s sort of a bridge role between editorial and business, helping with fundraising and launching new initiatives. One of the first things I worked on when I joined was a translation project around this impactful reporting on sexual violence in Ukraine. I believe we should always make sure the journalism we’re doing is being served to the communities we’re covering. We were able to make contact with an outlet in Ukraine interested in publishing it, and they were willing to do the translation. We also wanted to check to make sure nothing was getting lost in translation from our reporting. Ultimately, it was co-published in Ukrainian in partnership with Zaborona, in French in partnership with Mediapart, and in Italian in partnership with Internazionale. We had to put together a big effort to find translators who could review the translations these outlets were doing. There was a lot of back-and-forth and collaboration to make sure their translations were reflective of the reporting we had done. As a collaborations manager, I had never had to do that before, except for some Spanish language translation — it was new and challenging, especially in finding translators who not only could translate, but also understand the journalistic ethos we were trying to convey.
WF: What are some other projects that you’re excited about at The Intercept?
SA: We’ve relaunched the Press Freedom Defense Fund (PFDF), which existed a few years ago and was a litigation fund to help journalists, like Maria Ressa, who was one of the beneficiaries. That work went dormant for a while, but we recently relaunched PFDF, and we are working with journalists and newsrooms, providing them with operational and legal support. We have an audit we’re doing with small nonprofit newsrooms, where we’ll walk you through a list of everything you need to have or be aware of in this heightened threat environment to make sure your house is in order, from document retention policy to helping reporters with doxxing. We also have a special grant fund for reporters and newsrooms that might be facing litigation or operational threats. And we offer training and workshops on topics like AI — as AI systems become increasingly embedded in standard journalistic tools and applications, newsrooms face ongoing challenges in maintaining source confidentiality and content integrity. What you don’t know about your tools and their AI integrations could compromise your journalism and put your sources at risk. On May 14, PFDF is hosting a workshop designed to equip journalists with practical strategies to maintain control over their digital workflows (anyone can register for the free webinar here).
WF: I’ve also seen that The Intercept has some collaborations with student journalists. How has that been going?
SA: This past August, we were interested in following some of these issues that were going to come up in the election, but we didn’t have a ton of reporters in swing states. So, we paired up with a journalism class at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, taught by Erin Siegal McIntryre, whom I had worked with once when I was at Reveal. We took her advanced reporting class and turned it into a semester-long partnership. The students were investigating various issues surrounding the election, and we were editing and working with them and co-publishing the pieces. We paired up the students so they could collaborate together, and one of the pairs had a great piece on campus protests, looking at the way that universities were responding, particularly around punishments and the disparities in different responses. Another piece was about the race for North Carolina’s lead school superintendent position, and how one of the top competitors for the job actually homeschooled and did not believe in public education. We worked really closely with them on the approach to take, how to get comments, and doing a confrontational interview if necessary. It was a really valuable and fun partnership.
I taught for a couple of years, I was an adjunct professor at the City College of New York. When I was working with those students, it always struck me that despite journalism as an industry being strapped, we still have all of these students who are interested in being journalists and pursuing that as a career — they live in our communities and are an untapped resource. While a journalism education is good, I think the way you learn how to be a journalist is by doing and following more of the apprenticeship model. Again, you have to resource collaboration managers for these projects. Student journalists are learning as they go, and they need somebody who is going to be both an editor and mentor to them, making sure they’re getting the support and guidance they need. The students also leave the project with clips, and if they choose to pursue reporting after college, they now have clips published in a national news outlet. They also have built relationships, and for example, one of the students just pitched me on another piece, which is fantastic. That’s the best scenario for all of us.
WF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned in your career?
SA: It’s really easy when we’re all under pressure to be overworked, burnt out, and short-tempered. I think the thing I always come back to when I work with journalists is that, essentially, we are all very optimistic and idealistic people, because we got into this field believing that if we report on something and uncover wrongdoing, then things will change. I try as much as possible to come back to that and hold on to that, and remember we always have that in common. While there might be disagreements on how to get there when talking about a piece, at the end of the day, that’s what we’re all trying to get to, and that’s really important.
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Will Fischer is a journalist covering local and collaborative media ecosystems. He’s worked for Business Insider and New York magazine and conducted local news research for City Bureau. You can reach 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.
