In the past five years, several public media journalism collaborations have emerged around the country. These collaborations have focused on reporting stories of interest to the regions, like the Gulf States Newsroom or New England News Collaborative. The news networks are state-focused, like journalism collaborations in Kentucky, Texas, and California. Public Media Company played a critical role in helping these journalism collaborations get started by working with the leaders of these start-up journalism enterprises to understand how to structure and build a sustainable business plan that all participating stations can support.
Collaborative journalism models in public media are replicating quickly, with the Ohio Newsroom being the latest state to announce a new statewide reporting network to cover the state’s most critical issues with more depth and intensity. This recent journalism collaboration was successful due to Public Media Company’s assessments and guidance.
Given that many of these journalism collaborations are working together for the first time, the planning can take several months. Then the journalism collaboration begins the process of implementing agreed-upon plans. All this time spent planning builds trust and a shared understanding of how powerful working together can be. Journalism collaborations with a stable, sustainable funding model and strong commitment from all participating stations ensure that reporting network, once built, will exist to serve the community for many years to come.
