The study “New Guests Crashing the Party: A Typology of Journalistic Collaboration” by Patrick Walters from Washington and Lee University examined the variables when journalists collaborated with groups outside the traditional journalistic field – such as  nonprofits, universities, think tanks, artistic groups, and citizen journalists. 

According to the author, collaboration has become a bit of a buzzword in journalism facing the challenges in the field. Collaboration means more than just working together. Per communications scholars (Keyton, Ford, and Smith 2008), collaboration involves structures and processes the collaborating parties use to solve problems. This study also considered collaboration as partnership among organizations – one of which is committed to journalistic values.

The method of the study was examining two collaborative projects in detail. They were  the Dallas Media Collaborative, a project involving 14 partners, and the Credible Messenger Reporting Project, which paired community journalists with professional journalists in order to explore gun violence and find solutions. In person and virtual ethnography, as well as 27 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were used. 

The partners in collaboration were classified as journalistic and non-journalistic, and if journalistic, either “new” or “legacy”. Citizen journalists and student journalists approach journalism with a slightly different set of values.

The collaboration typology by the author involved three variables 1) identity of partners, either highly similar or dissimilar, 2) level of integration, either high or low integration, and 3) commitment: long term or short term. The purpose of the typology was to break down collaboration into simpler components.

In conclusion, the author notes that without clear parameters and variables, the idea of collaboration may become meaningless. Thus, the framework provides better understanding when analyzing llaboration’s potential in reforming or transforming the field of journalism.

The article  “New Guests Crashing the Party: A Typology of Journalistic Collaboration” by Patrick Walters is in  Journalism Studies. (free abstract).

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