Questioning how collaboration can work
This post was originally published on Medium on Sept. 16, 2016.
No really, a literal list of questions I’m thinking about when it comes to collaboration. (By no means exhaustive, just the most prominent right now.)
General
- How do we define collaboration? (Actual joint work on a story, coordinated coverage of a topic, trading stories useful to each other, all of the above, etc.)
Before
- What is the primary hurdle for a newsroom considering initiating a collaboration?
- How challenging is it for most newsrooms to find appropriate partners?
- What is the level of challenge around finding and using the appropriate tools that work for all partners?
- What is the pain point in the planning process?
- What level of resources are needed for creating mutual agreements that guide the collaboration?
During
- How often does communication have to happen?
- How is trust established and maintained?
- How do we prevent imbalances in resources and skills from allowing the more powerful newsroom dominate their partner?
- How do we help ensure mutual benefits to partners?
- How can editorial workflows help the process rather than slow it down?
- How do partners adapt their normal editorial “chain of command” to include content/reporters from outside the chain?
After
- What kind of rubric can be used to assess the success of a collaborative project?
- How do we make sure that all parties get credit for the pageviews, attention and impact of a collaborative story?
- How can newsrooms casually and constantly stay connected about potential areas of future collaboration?
Note on republished posts: In an effort to consolidate and preserve my online work, I'm re-publishing my own writing on this site. Posts will stay live and archived on their original sites for the sake of preserving links (for as long as those sites are still live). Content produced for other publications will remain unique to those publications, but I will include links on my work page.
