NewsBeat

6 NewsBeat December 2016 I f you want an idea of what it's like to get news organizations to collaborate, try herding cats. That's how Tim Griggs describes it, anyway, and he would know. Over the past ten years, in big roles at The New York Times, the Times-owned Wilmington Star-News and, most recently, as publisher of The Texas Tribune, he's spent a lot of time navigating what he calls the "sticky, complicated process" of getting big and small newsrooms to work together on projects. And while the process isn't easy, it's clearly worthwhile — even vital — for many. "The tremendous financial pressure on the industry right now makes collaboration essential," he told me. "Where you find resistance to collaboration is where you're finding news enterprises hastening their own demise." Collaboration is at the heart of Griggs' new role at Montclair State Universityr's Center for Cooperative Media, which earlier this month named Griggs as head of its new Local/National News Partnerships Project. Announced in June, the project aims to explore ways to make it easier for national and local news organizations to work together — whether through efforts as ambitious as co- reporting projects or as simple as content sharing. The project's funding comes via the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the Democracy Fund. (Griggs, who will continue his work as an independent consultant for media companies while at Montclair, is also innovator in residence at Knight Center & School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.) While the Center for Cooperative Media hopes that the project's findings and efforts will have implications for organizations all across the U.S., it is, perhaps fittingly, starting local. Its early efforts will be focused on its home state of New Jersey, where it hopes to find new ways to help local organizations partner with their national counterparts. The center already operates a version of this idea with the NJ News Commons, a network of dozens of organizations that partner on stories and republish each other's work. Stefanie Murray, director of the center, said that New Jersey is a viable test bed for the project, thanks to its long history of being underserved by regional media companies, which have traditionally been based out of the larger markets of New York City and Philadelphia. "Historically, there have been few large media outlets or television stations that cover solely New Jersey," she said. "Our mission today is to support local journalism, and we think the best way to do that is through collaborative networks." The problem has gotten worse in recent years, as even those big media companies have downsized and reduced their focus on New Jersey, she said. Both Murray and Griggs agreed that it's a ripe time to launch the effort: Big or small, one thing that unites all news organizations today is that they all face constraints. No one publisher, not even those as large as The New York Times or The Washington Post, can do it all. Those big outlets may be able to reach a lot of readers, but they also each have their own coverage blind spots and resource limitations that prevent them from putting enough resources where big local stories are happening. Likewise, smaller, more local news organizations, while adept at on-the-ground coverage of local issues, often struggle with getting distribution and having enough cash to tackle more ambitious stories. While Griggs says he hasn't yet started conversations with potential partners, he knows going in that no two partnerships — and no two motivations driving them — will be alike. Some will be as simple as republication or syndication deals. On the more intimate side of the spectrum will be deals like the one The New York Times put together with the San Francisco-based Bay Citizen, which created the Bay Area Report, a biweekly two-page section of The New York Times focused on issues in the region. The effort's goal was not only to increase Collaborate or die: A new initiative wants to make it easier for national and local outlets to work together By RICARDO BILTON "Where you find resistance to collaboration is where you're finding news enterprises hastening their own demise."

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