What is collaborative journalism?

Technological progress and the paradigm shift from traditional media towards online media have altered the way journalists develop their stories, but also the relationships between news organizations, journalists and the public. Newsgathering, production and distribution are typically integrated in an online environment because of the networked technologies such as RSS (Rich Site Summary). This networking philosophy has instilled the newsrooms, strengthened a networking attitude and given birth to collaborative journalism.

Collaborative journalism focuses on the aggregation of information from diverse, non-affiliated sources and exploits all resources to ensure that a single story is complete, unbiased and newsworthy. Journalists are not in the same newsroom. In reality, they all work for different media companies, and they have barely even met in person. However, their collaboration adds value to their work, making journalism more interactive and less polished.

This new form of journalism emerged in the early 00s and is highly encouraged by social networking media that have greatly influenced the news industry. Two typical examples of online outlets of collaborative journalism are Wikinews, launched in 2003, and Newsvine, launched in 2005. Wikinews is a free online news source with a similar layout and style to Wikipedia, where any user can write. Newsvine is a collaborative news website that collects its content from its users as well as from mainstream sources such as The Associated Press. Users contribute their knowledge through writing articles, posting links to external websites, and commenting on content submitted by professional journalists and lay users.

Besides, journalists have also become heavy users of Twitter, sharing messages on the stories they are covering to build up their articles. This whole new group of people represents a new cluster of journalists, who are empowered by technology to collaborate and, ultimately, accomplish much more than, what otherwise be the effort of a traditional journalist, affiliated to a news organization, and perhaps horrified to take a step forward to become the prevailing editorial intelligence on the Web.

Acquiring the technical skills required to collaborate with citizen journalists on editorial and excel in collaborative journalism is not a real challenge. Well experienced journalists, who work under the same protocols for ten years or more, are well aware of the news-gathering and reporting process. Particularly, in collaborative journalism, journalists have at their disposal a simple web interface to keep track of their sources and save time on checking their emails and voicemails.

Besides, collaborative journalism enables journalists to make their readers their actual sources with the use of a Publish2 Tip Form. By embedding a tip form to each story they publish, they both allow and encourage their readers to comment on it, thus converting them into collaborators. Readers love to submit comments and contribute opinions to journalists' reports. Besides, readers can always post their findings and news from their neighborhood, thus enriching the story. Journalists follow up with their readers/sources to look deeper in their findings and improve the story. In effect, they get more and better reporting with the help of the community, thus bridging the gap between traditional journalism and citizen journalism under the umbrella of collaborative journalism. In that way, journalists alongside with their readers become the news distributors.

Even more important than the technical skills is to realize that collaborative journalism encompasses the elements of conversation and interaction. Most of the generated content under collaboration of multiple journalists is dialogue, interaction, discussion, and exchange of information. In the context of collaborative journalism, all parties involved contribute their perspective consciously and it's the journalists' decision to cultivate community aiming to reach their readers and meet their needs to retain readership. Particularly for journalists, the more active they are online and the more social activity they have, the better for their work both editorially and commercially.

Regardless of its immense expansion, collaborative journalism has also received a great deal of criticism. Traditionally, journalism is associated with newspapers, TV broadcasts or online websites, where news is doubled-checked by editors, who have used trusted sources and have been unbiased in getting the story right. Collaborative journalism is not always trusted, mainly because is a product of collaboration of a community of journalists and public readers, who can edit, change, or even erase a story depending on their sources, which cannot be doubled-checked or fast-checked. For many journalists, but also lay people, this puts journalistic integrity at stake. Besides, some stories require privacy as they develop. With collaborative journalism this is practically impossible.

Despite of the chalenges it poses, collaborative journalism plays a significant role in the media landscape of the 21st century. However, instead of being competitive  it can be complementary to traditional media thus contributing immensely to the transformation of journalism. Online media and traditional media can do different things, but when it comes to tackle on a issue, they can cooperate effectively to produce a great story.

Conclusively, collaborative journalism is a relatively new form of journalism that seems to be doing quite well for the moment. Journalists act in real time focusing on news reporting, collaborate with each other and produce higher quality news than just one journalist doing the reporting. Considering that news organizations are open to collaborate with other websites and use all sorts of reliable sources portrays a shift in their organizational culture towards a more reader-oriented strategy that aims at pointing readers at useful content anywhere on the Web.