📞 How do collaboratives communicate?

After the riot at the U.S. Capitol in January, Melanie Plenda started a text chain. As director of the Granite State News Collaborative, she keeps the 17 outlets and several community partners involved on the same page. She sends daily email updates and holds monthly virtual meetings, but the possibility of pre-inauguration unrest at the New Hampshire State House called for more immediate communication.

"We wanted to coordinate and make sure we got the content," Plenda said, noting that working together helped the outlets, many of whom had to furlough or lay off staff over the last year, cover the breaking news event.

Collaboratives often get creative about how to communicate, choosing the tools and methods that suit their membership and needs. While text messaging worked well in that moment, Plena said she has otherwise adopted to minimize communication to avoid taxing newsrooms running on thin staff.

Other collaboratives have embraced hypercommunication tools such as Slack or even built custom systems.

There are as many ways to communicate as there are types of collaboratives, but there's one thing they all agree on: Communication is instrumental to their success.

"You have to over-communicate," said Dave Rosenthal, managing editor of Side Effects Public Media, a collaboration of eight public radio stations in the Midwest that focuses on public health. "You need to make sure you understand what everybody's priorities are and you talk through them at the very beginning. That's the most important communication you can have."

Read more from Ambreen Ali about how collaborative managers are keeping partners on the same page here. 

📅 Don't forget! Summit registration open

The Local Media Association, Solutions Journalism Network, First Draft, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: the 2021 Collaborative Journalism Summit is already shaping up to be quite the all-star event! We'll be announcing more speakers in the coming weeks but in the meantime: have you registered yet? If not, you're in luck; you can register right now!

📊 Did you know about ICIJ's Datashare network? 

ICIJ's Datashare platform is getting even more collaboration friendly. The free, open-source software is a great resource for teams of journalists who need to work together on the same documents, making the data easily sortable and searchable (the ICIJ team and media partners used the platform for the award-winning Luanda Leaks investigation last year.) And this year, ICIJ also plans to roll out the Datashare Network, a peer-to-peer document search system that allows reporters to privately request access to sensitive documents from colleagues around the world. The massive sharing of information will hopefully lead to more global investigations and collaborations. 

"Datashare Network takes trust and collaboration to another level," said ICIJ's Datashare product owner, Soline Ledésert. "By combining trust and technology at this level, we believe this new tool will enable even more powerful investigations."

🎉 Welcome these new collaboration managers!

We love seeing new collaborative roles pop up and and people being hired for collaborative management roles; it's further proof that the practice is growing!

The Carter Center's Mental Health Program recently appointed Kristyn Wellesley to lead a multi-newsroom collaborative that dives into the state of mental health insurance program from an investigative and solutions journalism standpoint. It's a perfect fit for Wellesley, a leader who has previously helped newsrooms work together on breaking news stories, including Hurricane Irma and the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The Local Media Association, which has seen incredible growth recently, is also expanding its team. Among the recent additions is Andrew Ramsammy, who fills the newly created content and collaboration officer role, and Penny Riordan, who takes over as director of business strategy and partnerships. 

🤙🏽 Wanna talk? Consider joining an open community call for collaboration managers and partners!

Missing those talks by the water cooler with your colleagues? Us, too. So join our monthly collaboration managers open community call! They take place the first Tuesday of the month on Zoom at 3 p.m. EST; the next one is Tuesday, March 2 at 3 p.m. EST.

During our next meeting, the Center for Cooperative Media (that's us!) will share the tentative schedule for the 2021 Collaborative Journalism Schedule to get your feedback. We'll also open the floor to any presentations you'd like to make, asks or offers you'd like to share and general updates from your projects. If you'd like to be added to the calendar invite, email abrahamb@montclair.edu.

👀 Look who's hiring

Have a collaborative job listing you'd like posted in our newsletter? Email abrahamb@montclair.edu to have it included. 

• The Center for Cooperative Media (that's us!) is looking for an Assistant Director for Programming and Membership. We're looking for someone to oversee and develop our New Jersey programming initiatives and national collaborative programs as well as grow membership of the NJ News Commons and NJ College News Commons.
• NPR is seeking a Collaborative Journalism Editorial Project Manager to support local-regional-reporting collaborations.

📚 What we're reading (and listening to): 

• LMA, Black Girl Media, ColumbusBlack, Buckeye Flame share goals for Amplify Ohio on a podcast hosted by Mike Blinder (Editor and Publisher)
• The Charleston Post and Courier launches a watchdog project to combat corruption and "news deserts" (Nieman Lab)
• Gannett, McClatchy team up to sell ads (Axios)