Collaborative journalism projects – and notably cross-border journalism – have attracted a lot of attention recently. Outstanding examples such as the Panama Papers were widely noted by global audiences, but the audiences of national and local news organisations welcome the trend as well. In times of cost-cutting, joining forces across newsrooms and national borders is one way to enable high quality journalism. With regard to the fast-moving digitalisation, it seems indispensable for journalists to collaborate and search support – especially to be able to handle massive amounts of data.
The term collaborative journalism has no generally accepted definition yet, but it is clear that the trend to cooperate is challenging competitive thinking as the dominant mode of interaction in the field of the media. While the area is still evolving, there already seems to be a consensus on specific practices. One characteristic that certainly stands out is an ethos of mutually sharing resources and expertise, while pursuing the goal of enhancing the quality of journalistic research as well as audience reach.
Different types of collaboration can be distinguished along the features formal or informal, temporary or on-going, and in terms of the production of content by the collaborating partners in separate, co-creating or integrated working teams. This definition includes not only the cooperation between media organisations and single journalists, but also cross-disciplinary teamwork between journalists and engineers, or between media institutions and civil society organisations such as NGOs. Some media professionals and experts further include into their definition of collaborative journalism examples of journalists’ coordination of lawsuits to access information, shared trainings and mentoring programmes, or joint event hosting. There is no consensus yet in the profession about whether to understand the integration of the audience, also known as crowdsourcing, as a part of collaborative journalism.
