The Case for Collaboration

A conversation starter and resource produced by Discourse Media in partnership with Ashoka Canada

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We journalists are not natural collaborators. Our autonomy is critical to our work. We typically keep our sources and funders at an arm’s length. But with both revenue and public trust in decline, our sector needs help. Innovative organizations in every field are achieving more through collaboration than could be accomplished alone. Can journalism do the same? Join the conversation.

Who we’re learning from

While exploring these questions, we heard about many ambitious projects in Canada and elsewhere that are forging creative ways of doing impact-driven journalism by collaborating. Here are a few examples we are learning from:

  • The Atkinson Foundation is enabling deeper reporting on the relationship between work and wealth by partnering with the Toronto Star.
  • The Tyee Solutions Society is finding new approaches to supporting solutions-oriented reporting.
  • OpenFile was an ultimately failed attempt to collaborate with communities to inform reporting.
  • The Science Media Centre of Canada is attempting to improve science journalism by building bridges between general assignment reporters and scientists.

Further afield, we’re watching:

  • The Solutions Journalism Network is partnering with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation to help journalists access and use data about promising strategies to address health problems.
  • Climate Desk is a collaboration between media outlets who share the aim of doing better reporting on climate change.
  • The Institute for Nonprofit News (formerly the Investigative News Network) is identifying best practices for pooling resources to fund and disseminate journalism.
  • GroundSource is a platform to enable deeper engagement with communities typically left out of the media debate, a concept it is exploring through its Listening Post projects.

We will be profiling some of these in the full document to come. Have ideas of other projects we should learn from? Get in touch.

What do you think?

The Case for Collaboration is intended to be a conversation starter. Our research is still in process. We have published this early iteration, merely a skeleton of the resource to come, to provoke dialogue in hopes you’ll contribute your thoughts and experiences.

Get in touch:  @erinmillar