This week’s action: Think big about how a partnership with an outside organization can serve your community.
In addition to collaborating with non-news experts to help inspire new ideas or problem-solve, journalists and researchers can collaborate on or pitch projects together. This approach can offer many benefits, including funding, structured support and methodologies, and concrete data or findings.
This approach can be mutually beneficial. Journalists — skilled at asking questions — can push researchers to refine the questions they pose, while researchers can structure findings that can be directly applied to the choices within news leaders’ control.
In Colorado, successful academic/public media collaborations are growing. The Colorado State University Center for Public Deliberation has partnered with local newsrooms in the past and is now working with several Colorado-based public media outlets on Above the Noise, a statewide project focused on helping local newsrooms build civic capacity and engage their communities more productively.
National organizations may also collaborate with local organizations, such as when More in Common and The Kansas City Star worked on understanding social connection in the metro area.
Although this type of collaboration requires longer-term planning, the ensuing support, expertise and insights can create impactful and enduring solutions and frameworks for local news.
Try it out
- Start here: List researchers or non-news experts you have an existing relationship with, or any you follow that are trying to solve the same problems, even if they’re not through a journalism lens. Consider local universities or academic institutions.
- Take action: Seek out an opportunity to collaborate. Existing programs, frameworks or fellowships are a good place to start, but don’t be deterred if nothing aligns with your goals — grab a cup of coffee with a non-news expert to see how your interests may coincide.
- Reflect: Based on your research and outreach, what could a partnership look like for your newsroom or community? Are there existing collaborations between other news outlets and non-news experts or outside organizations in your area that you might be able to join?
Dig deeper
- How the Center for Public Deliberation and the Fort Collins Coloradoan worked together to reimagine the local opinion section using expertise from public deliberation and psychology
- Reflections on a civic science journalism collaboration from the Center for Cooperative Media
- Recommendations to enhance how news leaders and non-news experts inform each other’s work
