Collaborative journalism

Collaborative journalism is a mode of journalism where multiple reporters or news organizations, without affiliation to a common parent organization, report on and contribute news items to a news story together. It is practiced by both professional and amateur reporters.

Collaborative journalism involves the aggregation of information from numerous individuals or organizations into a single news story. Information is gathered through research or reporting, or added when readers examine, comment and build upon existing stories. Stories from the mainstream media are often built upon. Depending on the system of collaboration, individuals may also provide feedback or vote on whether an article is newsworthy. A single collaborative news story, therefore, may encompass multiple authors, varying articles, and ranged perspectives.

Professional and amateur reporters may work together to develop collaborative news articles, or mainstream media sites may gather amateur blog posts to complement reporting.

"Most user-generated content isn't content, but conversation. Cultivating community is a decided practice. It boils down to the social contract you make with your readers-turned-writers. If they trust that their effort and words will be appropriated appropriately, while providing social incentives for participation, it can very well work."

Collaborative journalism emerged through the internet in the early 2000s, and developed gradually through various online outlets. As examples, was founded in 2003, and NewsVine in 2005.

The Panama Papers project may be the largest example of a journalistic consortium to date. It began sometime in 2015 (date?) when Bastian Obermayer, an investigative reporter with the south German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, was contacted by an anonymous source and offered the trove of 11.5 million electronic documents from Mossack Fonseca, the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm detailing a web of secret offshore deals and loans worth billions of dollars, and details of tax avoidance designs in numerous countries. The newspaper's editors decided they could not handle the massive volume of information alone and initiated a collaborative journalistic consortium including more than 140 journalists and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity.

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