What is collaborative journalism?
Over the past two years, the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University has deepened its work in collaborative journalism. We saw a need for research, knowledge-sharing, convening and promoting the excellent work that can come from journalism forged through partnership.
Some of the things we offer in this area include:
- Collaborativejournalism.org, the website the Center runs that aims to collect research, stories and information about collaborative journalism.
- “Comparing Models of Collaborative Journalism,” a research paper written by Sarah Stonbely, the research director of the Center, that takes a deep dive into the different ways that journalists forge partnerships. Next up, Sarah is examining the impact of collaborative projects.
- An annual national conference, the Collaborative Journalism Summit.
- An open funding call that funded six collaborative reporting projects across the country.
- A global database of collaborative journalism projects.
- A collaborative journalism newsletter. (We send that roughly twice a month)
We are contacted regularly by people who are interested in learning more about collaboration, who have a project they need funding for, who want training or guidance as they approach a collaborative project, or who have a collaboration that’s going off the rails — and we’re happy to consult on some of those topics or provide connections to experts in the field.
One of the most common questions we get is a general one: tell me more about collaborative journalism. We often point people to our website, collaborativejournalism.org, to answer that question, but earlier this year we released some other resources on this topic, too, that I think are worth re-sharing now.
We aimed to answer these questions: What exactly is collaborative journalism? And who’s doing it?
In May, we produced and released a 10-minute video titled “The State of Collaboration,” which answers these questions. And this summer, I did a presentation for 100+ Associated Press editors on the topic.
Below you’ll find that video and here is a link to the presentation. Please feel free to share widely.
Stefanie Murray is 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 grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. The Center is supported with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Local News Lab Fund of the Community Foundation of New Jersey and the Abrams Foundation. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, and in doing so serve New Jersey residents. For more information, visit CenterforCooperativeMedia.org.
