An essential part of making collaboration feasible for newsrooms is collecting as much information as possible about existing and previous collaborations so that we can glean as much wisdom as possible from what’s worked and not worked when newsrooms come together.
The Collaborative Journalism Database is the gateway to research and learning and we need your help to keep it up to date and as complete as possible.
At this point, more 160 collaborations, spanning more than 1,500 newsrooms around the world are represented in the database.
The database features all different kinds of collaborations, from temporary, content-sharing efforts to more integrated approaches where newsrooms shared content, data, and resources at the organizational level. We used the categories from Sarah Stonbely’s research paper on collaborative journalism models to classify each project into one of six categories, depending on how long the collaboration was and how the organizations involved worked with each other.
Other information in the database includes when the collaboration started, who was involved, a short summary of the project, funding sources, the tools that news organizations used (when known), and whether the collaboration had a formal agreement in place or someone in charge of the efforts.
When you look at the the collaborative journalism database, you’ll see it’s a work in progress — not every entry is fully filled out yet. (We’re working on that.) We’re continuing to contact organizations so that we can complete each record and also to add new collaborations as they happen.
And that’s where you come in. We are asking you to:
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Make sure your project is listed: We’re in the process of loading every collaborative journalism project we learn about into the database. If your project isn’t listed yet, you can submit it using this form — we’re editing entries as they come in and adding them to the database.
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Make sure your project is accurate: If you search the database and find your project, please let us know if there is missing information or if you can fill in any of the missing information. We're working with Heather Bryant to populate the database and you can email Heather (heather@projectfacet.org) with any information that should be included, or to fill in any of the missing data points.
Share the database with others: The collaborative news database is only comprehensive if we know about your project. We want ensure that projects from every part of the world and every size newsroom are represented. There’s a Medium post about the database and what we’re hoping to achieve. Please share this link, and let your colleagues know about submitting their information.
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