Here's what you missed at this year's Collaborative Journalism Summit

ICYMI: Climate, COVID-19, the state of collaboration and more at 2020 Summit

The 2020 Collaborative Journalism Summit — our pinnacle event each year — was a virtual success last week. (Thank goodness.) About 750 people from around the world registered to hear from nearly 70 speakers about topics ranging from climate collaborations to COVID-19 work, U.S. 2020 election collaboration, shared information needs assessment, governance structures and public media networks.

We also snuck in a little bit of networking and a teeny tiny bit of fun. Here's a few things you missed.

THE STATE OF COLLABORATION: In this address, Center director Stefanie Murray outlined five current trends we are seeing now including:

Collaboration is increasing
Global work is growing
COVID-19 spurring partnerships
More ongoing, semi-permanent collaboratives forming.
Continued recognition for collaboration

(WATCH | SLIDES)

NORTH CAROLINA: Our opening panel talked about what's happening across North Carolina and why collaborative efforts seem to have taken root there. “We’ve put aside the ego, the competitive nature," said Glenn Burkins. "Let’s face it – we are journalists and we love to compete. There is a place for that, but there’s also a place for coming together and doing what’s best for the audience."
(WATCH | SLIDES)

CLIMATE COLLABORATION:

Carrie Porter opened with an overview of research underway studying environmental and climate-related collaboration. Mark Hertsgaard talked about Covering Climate Now's focus on large and mainstream media, and Allison Kopecki discussed how Climate Central has grown a large national network of meteorologists and journalists. (WATCH | SLIDES)

CORONAVIRUS: The spread of the new coronavirus around the world has spurred several effective collaborative efforts, which we explored during this session. Our moderator, Taylor Mulcahey from the International Center for Journalists, led a discussion about all the different ways newsrooms across the country are partnering and collaborating to cover the biggest story of our lifetime.
(WATCH | SLIDES)

We recorded and published all of the sessions from the Summit on YouTube. Here's the playlist.

We also hired Derrick Dent to illustrate each panel in real time. Check out his designs.

We created a playlist of chill beats to play during intermissions and breaks. Here's the playlist.

Want to follow along with the speakers during each session? Download their slides.

Organizing your own virtual journalism event or in-place conference?

We had already completed 75% of the planning for the 2020 conference by early March. Two of our staffers had flown down to Charlotte to tour the Queens University campus and Myers Park Baptist Church, where our sessions would be hosted. We had enthusiastic sponsors lined up, the venue booked, the food completely selected (down to the type of salad we’d serve at lunch), student workers recruited and at least half of the speakers confirmed.

Then mid-March hit, and state after state-ordered lockdowns in response to the emerging coronavirus pandemic.

In a matter of days it became clear that an in-person event in May wasn’t going to happen. We read about other journalism conferences postponing or cancelling altogether, but we decided almost immediately to host our conference online.

While we were quick to arrive at our decision, there are so many different factors to consider before deciding to do something similar. We hope this postmortem of the 2020 Collaborative Journalism Summit will help others who are looking to host their own in-place events.

HERE'S HOW WE DID IT

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What we're reading:

$4.7 Million Grant from Eric & Wendy Schmidt goes to NPR Collaborative Journalism Network (NPR)
5 lessons about sharing power in journalism collaborations (Local News Lab)
Newsrooms are huddling for warmth and finding a way forward: Lessons from the Collaborative Journalism Summit (EducationNC)
Partnership in-place: Lessons from a virtual panel on partnering to cover coronavirus at the 2020 Collaborative Journalism Summit (Colorado Media Project)
NYT teams up with 3 local newsrooms to investigate the racial divide in how COVID-19 has hit nursing homes (The New York Times)
The Philadelphia Inquirer is hiring a collaborative reporting project editor. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
New Hostwriter tool helps editors find journalists all over the globe (Hostwriter)
Detroit Free Press partners with state archives to collect coronavirus stories (Detroit Free Press)
The Discourse and APTN team up to launch new platform that will focus on local Indigenous news in the Okanagan (IndigiNews)
How Latin American Media Outlets are Collaborating on COVID-19 investigations (Global Investigative Journalism Network)
News Catalyst launches partnerships to help news organizations address product challenges (Medium)
CPI, CJI and local news orgs across the U.S. team up to report on mental health after natural disasters (The Center for Public Integrity)
From Rust to Resilience: Collaboration will examine what climate change means for Great Lakes cities (Great Lakes Now)
Three Oklahoma organizations launch Coronavirus Storytelling Project to help journalists who are facing difficult times (Oklahoma Watch)

MARIELA SANTOS-MUÑIZ
Collaborative journalism newsletter curator
Mariela graduated from Boston University with an M.A. in International Relations and International Communications, in addition to a B.A. from the Universidad del Turabo in Humanities in Puerto Rico. She is completely bilingual in Spanish and English. Find her on Twitter at @mellamomariela.