Newsrooms invest in editorial partnerships

"Increasingly, newsrooms are hiring for roles geared toward editorial partnerships. Grist, where I work as partnerships director, has had a role entirely dedicated to partnerships since 2021. Other newsrooms that have a role focused partially or entirely on collaborations include The 19th, the AP, Open Campus, Inside Climate News, The Trace, The Marshall Project, LAist, Canary Media, CalMatters, and the Better Government Association, to name a few."

"KFF News even has multiple dedicated partnership roles. I also heard from a regional nonprofit newsroom that plans to hire its first-ever partnership role in the next few months. There's enough of us in this growing niche that a group of us have banded together in a Slack group to share advice and challenges. We manage complex newsroom partnerships, track and promote syndications, and help distribute data to other outlets, among other things."

"While nonprofit news has largely taken the lead in the collaborative space, even for-profit newsrooms are expanding partnerships. In 2023, The New York Times launched a program to partner with local outlets on year-long investigations, and recently announced a new regional reporting center in collaboration with Deep South Today. Headway, a project of the Times, announced a gun violence reporting collaboration in November with Chalkbeat Philadelphia and Minnesota Public"

Newsrooms increasingly value collaborations and are committing funding to long-term partnerships despite economic turbulence. Multiple outlets now create dedicated partnership roles, including Grist, The 19th, AP, Open Campus, Inside Climate News, The Trace, The Marshall Project, LAist, Canary Media, CalMatters, Better Government Association, and KFF News. Regional and startup newsrooms also organize partnership strategies, exemplified by The Examination and NC Local. A growing community of partnership professionals shares advice through a Slack group and manages complex collaborations, syndications, and data distribution. For-profit organizations such as The New York Times have launched local-investigation programs and regional reporting collaborations.

Read at Nieman Lab