Collaborative Journalism Kit

"Collaborative projects and partnerships have increasingly been shown to improve journalism and its reach" - Center for Cooperative Media

This collection of guides and handbooks is intended to help newsrooms design and manage effective, equitable, and meaningful collaborative journalism projects in the service of audiences. The resources were created by the Center for Cooperative Media (CCM) at Montclair State University and Project Facet, two organisations that are working to support the effective management of collaborative journalism projects.

According to the CCM, "There are several different ways to look at collaborative journalism, but we define it broadly as the practice of executing journalistic endeavors using a cross-entity approach. This encompasses news organizations working together (and with other non-news entities) on reporting projects, partnering on audience engagement efforts, co-collecting and sharing data, or even teaming up to build technology that supports multiple organizations working toward a shared journalistic goal."

The kit includes the following guides:

• Building a Tool Set for Journalism Collaborations [PDF] [24 pages], by Heather Bryant, 2020 - This guide seeks to ensure that basic structural needs are accounted for when working in partnership with others. It offers a series of steps and questions to answer with partners in order to find and make use of the best tools for the work to be done.
• Collaborative Journalism Workbook: The Future of Journalism is Collaborative - Second Edition [PDF] [40 pages in English], by Heather Bryant, 2020 - Designed to assist with planning and managing the details and logistics of journalism collaborations, this workbook is structured to cover the four significant phases of a collaborative endeavour: (i) consider (when collaboration is the right path); (ii) design (to create the environment for success); (iii) manage (for efficient and effective work); and (iv) assess (to learn and improve the process and experience). This workbook can also be downloaded in French and Spanish [each 36 pages, PDF], here.
• Building Equity in Journalism Collaborations [PDF] [24 pages], by Angilee Shah, 2020 - This guide is meant for those who are making decisions about collaborative projects through the lens of the question: Does this collaboration give our organisation and our partners equity?
• Budget and Finance for Journalism Collaborations [PDF] [40 pages], by Shady Grove Oliver, 2020 - This guide explores the different ways in which news organisations around the United States have approached budgeting and finance for collaborative work. It discusses how collaborative models influence funding decisions, what some different funding sources are, how to seek funding, and how to structure and allocate budgets.
• Building New Partnerships for Journalism Collaborations [PDF] [24 pages], by Heather Bryant, 2020 - This guide is intended to speak to the work of finding, evaluating, and committing to partnerships with new partners. It explores what a healthy, equitable, and effective partnership with other news organisations or freelancers could look like.
• Meaningful Collaboration with Non-News Partners [PDF] [18 pages], by Heather Bryant, 2020 - Written primarily for journalists, this guide is meant to serve as a roadmap to successful partnerships with important stakeholders who are not news organisations or professional journalists. It builds on the work of Building New Partnerships for Journalism Collaborations (see above).
• Project Manager Playbook for Collaborative Journalism [PDF] [28 pages] - by Caroline Porter, 2021 - The goal of this playbook is to identify the role of the collaboration manager, the person who oversees the day-to-day operations of a journalism collaborative. As the author outlines, at a time when many journalism jobs are in flux, there is an opportunity to recognise and define the ways the collaboration manager role can help shape the future of the industry.