Question:
How could collaboration increase revenue in journalism?
Journalists are increasingly collaborating, with both traditional and new partners. For example: reporters and developers create new tools to collect and distribute information, major news outlets collaborate on big stories to increase impact, independent investigative sites share resources to bring better coverage to communities across the country. Working together wins praise for improving content; how can collaboration increase the revenue news outlets earn?
Topics: Community Distribution Questions Revenue Technology
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138 answers so far.
In my experience at Beliefnet, collaborations with big media companies were valuable — but always indirectly. We partnered with ABCNews and Peter Jennings, for instance. It brought us a little bit of traffic but not much. What it did do, though, was enable us to class up our brand and improve the quality of our advertisers, and thereby fetch higher CPMs. I’ve also heard of non profits saying that partnerships with fancy media brough little direct revenue but greatly strengthened their pitch to foundations and other philanthropists, most of whom are looking for signs of impact.
Steven,
Great point. Collaborations have many benefits, including showing the company you keep and who considers you a peer. Can you describe some of the collaborations?
Beliefnet had a major partnership with ABC News and Peter Jennings. Beliefnet provided reporting and advice about religion coverage and got on air exposure in return. We also provided website support for several of their specials (i.e.Search for jesus). We did joint polling with them as well. We created the ‘belief watch’ page for Newsweek. They got our content; we got branding and exposure. We created a major survey on the state of american spirituality with US News. In no case, did Beliefnet get paid. But by getting the exposure and branding in major media, Beliefnet itself became a credible, prestigious “major media brand.” We then reflected that reality in our pitches to advertiser and other potential business partners and were able to sell ads at higher rates.
Hello and welcome to today’s live chat with Michael Skoler – a VP at Public Radio International, and a highly accomplished journalist who has turned many visionary efforts into reality.
Michael, thank you very much for being here! Let’s start with the State Integrity Investigation, a 1.5 million dollar project done by three organizations: PRI, the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity. How did you decide how to share the grant revenue, and when in the process did you start talking about that?
All 3 partners built the proposal and the budget together so we could submit to foundations for support. We each figured the resources we would need. So sharing money was built in from start.
SII’s goals are listed as:
To examine states’ commitment to government integrity and shine light on what’s working and what’s not.
To convince state officials to improve their laws and practices. The State Integrity Index highlights “best practices” in state government and can serve as a basis for policy reforms that address the unique challenges facing each state.
To inspire the public to become interested and invested in ensuring honest, effective state government. The Investigation offers many ways for people to become involved – following news about state integrity, emailing report cards to officials, sharing experiences with state government, proposing solutions, and connecting with local “good government” groups.
How will you measure the return on the investment?
We have very specific metrics around reach, engagement and actions taken. One innovation is that the partnership involves 2 journalism organizations and one policy organization. That allows our policy partner to work with civic and advocacy and government folks on crafting reforms to improve state integrity. So we will also measure how many reforms are introduced in how many states.
Laws changed are often a measure of impact of journalistic work. Thinking about revenue, do you believe that proving this work changes something will make it possible to, say, turn this experiment into a regularly funded project (a steady source of revenue)?
Just a side answer here – we have a tool that allows people to email their state’s report card to their state officials and we are measuring how many do that. You can see this at stateintegrity.org
Yes, we have just started discussions about how to continue the project so we can re-rate and rank state governments regularly. The dramatic buzz and engagement that occurred when we released the report cards makes a strong case for new funding.
We have already seen actions taken in 5 states that cite the Investigation – we have a page on the stateintegrity.org site that follows reform initiatives.
There seems to be an increasing effort on measuring the success of reporting by measuring what people do with the information. How do you think that will connect to revenue? (Back to the question above.)
A bit of cross posting… let me take this further. Besides grants, are there ways you can imagine building collaboration into a business model for news organizations? So collaboration leads to increased commercial revenue?
Two ways. First, how it affects “revenue” in the sense of funders. Funders increasingly want more than just reach metrics so they can calculate their own ROI. So news orgs have to get better at tracking the actions taken as a result of their work… and that expertise will make new funding easier. (more)
Second, I believe strongly that the best new revenue model for news involves creating a community around an issue or topic and then serving that community in a variety of ways. I wrote an article about this recently in Nieman Reports:
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102622/Community-A-New-Business-Model-for-News.aspx
So creating a community (social media) around coverage can then lead to products and services. Think of creating a guide to choosing schools that comes from a news organization’s coverage of local education. I would pay for that when I move to a new place.
Here’s an example of collaboration in a biz model, though not from news. Red Hat is a billion-dollar revenue business that works tightly with the Linux developer community. Red Hat sells support for Linux. The community builds and adapts Linux as volunteers. Red Hat benefits and expands the job opportunities for the community by expanding the use of Linux by businesses. Red Hat also gives back to the community with events, support and staff time.
I remember that Nieman article, and I would also point people to Dan Grech’s comments in particular on a previous JA forum on local news sites and revenue. He runs a Miami public radio station, embedded in the Miami Herald newsroom, and he helped a local storytelling organization turn a profit at an event they had been afraid to charge for before.
The example you give about special school reports …. that wouldn’t have to be a collaborative effort though, right? At least not in the sense of collaborating among news orgs to create content – the way a lot of collaboration has been defined.
an example from news. We built the Public Insight Network on a franchise model. It’s a citizen sourcing network. We built the tools and then offered them as a fee-for-service to other news org’s. Other news orgs use the tools to build stronger relationships with their audiences, which results in more voluntary contributions to the non-profit newsrooms that use it.
OK, stick a news org into the Red Hat example. If the (imaginary) Front Street Forum) is Red Hat, who is its partner?
Where is the revenue in the PIN model? Are the increased voluntary donations really trackable to the effort and offset the cost?
It could be a collaboration, or not. Each partner has to bring special expertise. For a schools report, a news organization might team with realtors to sell the reports, for example.
The org where I created the PIN gets fees from newsrooms that use it (and APM gets other benefits, too.) The newsrooms build relationships with their community of real partnership in news gathering, which we found, at least anecdotally, convinced people to contribute money during pledge drives.
We’re coming up on 11:30 – let’s head briefly into philosophy. In my conversation yesterday with Keith Hammonds of Ashoka, I quoted Ashoka’s research director asking “what if entrepreneurship could be reimagined as collaborative?”
If journalism were reimagined so the first way you thought about journalism was a collaborative effort – how might that change journalism? How might that change the revenue possibilities? What would the risks as well as the benefits be?
Back to Red Hat for news. A news organization could gather data on its community and then sell that data in aggregate (not with personally identifiable info perhaps) to businesses that want to tune products or services to the community. The public collaborates in sharing news and needs, the news org collaborates with the biz community, and the biz community pays fees and gets insight to better serve the community. That’s a quick example of how it might work.
Big question. If journalism were truly collaborative, then you increase the number of stakeholders in it, which provides new ways to serve people and earn revenue. Creating value is basic to creating revenue. So if you start with a collaborative model, you start with thinking about how to create value rather than how to create news. That changes the perspective and the opportunities. Look at PatientsLikeMe, which serves a community of patients who want to share and learn from others with the same disease. Its revenue model is to gather insight from the community and sell that insight to companies that create products for those patients. If journalism thought about stakeholders as much as about the news it wants to report, then I think you will see creative new businesses.
Michael, thanks so very much for you time and your insights!
One area I find ripe for innovation is news and data-based gaming. I think there is revenue there. I experimented with that with Budget Hero and Consumer Consequences.
Hey don’t go yet then — tell us more. What did you learn?
You are welcome.
Still here. Games are fun and they can provide huge insight into problems. I think we can consider creating games that help people do things in life. Some help you decide how to cast a vote – not sure if people will pay for that. But what if a game helped you question the tax assessment on your home, or helped you simulate starting a business. That might be something that you would pay for… and which would require real data about how the government and business laws in your state work.
Lots of leads and ideas. Thank you again!
Happy Friday – in an hour, join PRI’s Michael Skoler in a live chat on this thread and make it an even better day. Michael has a long history working in collaborative efforts.
In 2002 and 2003 he helped create the Public Radio Collaboration, which coordinated public radio stations around the nation creating a week of coverage focusing on a single topic. He later started the Public Insight Network, which draws on the expertise of more than 150,000 citizen sources to help inform dozens of newsrooms. Now a vice-president of Public Radio International, Michael, among other things, manages PRI’s role in the State Integrity Investigation. SII is a collaboration among three organizations, PRI, the investigative news organization Center for Public Integrity, and policy group Global Integrity.
He’ll be here from 11 to 11:30 Pacific. You’re welcome to join the conversation with any questions or to share your own experience.
Keith’s example about having someone in each group as the project manager who owns the relationship(s) and talks to the other project manager(s) a lot, with a lot of the work being dealt with in internal meetings / individuals work products is similar to how I’ve participated in coalitions of organizations working to advance a specific cause in the non-profit world.
For everyone else who is collaborating, is this how you structure work as well or do you have different models? Are other models more/less effective?
Hi everybody! And a warm welcome to Keith Hammonds, director of Ashoka’s News & Information Initiative, former executive editor of Fast Company. He’s joining me for a live half hour conversation to explore and imagine the possible financial benefits of collaboration.
Keith, let’s go back in time first. What kind of reporting or straight business collaborations did Fast Company do while you were there?
Hi Emily and everyone. As for Fast Company, this was 4-10 years ago, and our model was pretty traditional. Not nearly as many collaborations as now. One that I worked on was a content partnership with Monitor Group to produce the Social Capitalist Awards. Monitor created the research methodology and we did the journalism.
Any money involved in that?
No exchange of money. Monitor invested several 100k in staff time, which was significant! But no cash.
Why do you think collaboration has become a trend now? Many people point to the lack of resources due to the financial constraints journalism is in, yet many also enter collaborations not expecting or even considering joint work to be evaluated on whether it increases revenue. Why not?
Part of the movement clearly is about creating cost efficiencies. A content partner can bring expertise, perspective, and reporting and lower cost; same for back-office or advertising collaborations. There’s real leverage there. More important, I think news organizations recognize that they have to experiment and innovate rapidly and flexibly. The marketplace is changing too quickly to do everything yourself. Innovation happens faster and better with the right partners. That may not be measurable in short-term revenue, though.
Real leverage, but sometimes hard to measure or quantify, as people on this thread have pointed out. Both from your experience at Fast Company, and from where you sit now directing Ashoka’s News & Knowledge Initiative, how do you decide when a potential collaboration is worthwhile?
Some of the criteria are pretty concrete: Is there a shared vision, shared goals? Are our strategies and assets complementary: Do we each bring something to the table that promises leverage for the other? And do we like each other? 😉
And there are more intangible questions: Can we identify a market need, five (say) years out and derive a strategy to meet that future need? If we can identify the strategy, but we don’t have the resources in-house, who can bring those to the party? That’s the higher-risk, higher-value question.
As you look for news and information projects to fund through the Ashoka initiative, how important is collaboration? How important is earning revenue, particularly developing non-grant streams of revenue?
We look hard at sustainable strategies. Typically, Ashoka funds a social entrepreneur Fellow for just three years. We want to be 90% sure that that investment is going to bring the entrepreneur to a point of operational/financial sustainability. Philanthropic support can be part of the model — but we look for the probability of other sources emerging.
Can you give me an example of a journalism project that is collaborating and has collaboration as part of a revenue stream model?
And personally, I believe that news entrepreneurs have to have a value proposition that delivers economic results.
Beyond “buy my content” you mean? I would love an example of a journalism project that has collaboration as part of its revenue stream model. And I wanted to point to this blog post a couple months ago by Ashoka’s research director, asking “what if entrepreneurship could be reimagined as collaborative?”
Should journalism be reimagined as collaborative? How would that change journalism? How would that change the revenue possibilities?
Sure. Some are explicit, others less so. The Association of Local Newspapers in Poland, run by Dominik Ksieski (http://gazetylokalne.pl/) is a cooperative of 100 independent papers threatened by state-controlled competitors. The Association is a national advertising cooperative — so, the revenue piece — and it also provides journalist training, legal support, and policy advocacy at the national level.
Here’s another example: Periodismo Social (http://www.periodismosocial.org.ar/) is a citizen-sector organization in Argentina. The entrepreneur is Alicia Cytrynblum. Alicia has forged a network of 14 regional newspapers who agree to collaborate on coverage of social issues. The editors meet once a year to define a shared editorial agenda — and then monthly, they shared sources, reporting, and resulting coverage around that month’s topic: housing, water, whatever. The coverage gets front-page play, and the critical mass gets a lot of attention — so newsstand sales regularly increase for that Sunday’s papers.
(We’re hitting our half-hour mark – I hope you can stay for a few more minutes!)
Sure. We’re working on a project now that’s very promising. Next month, Ashoka will launch a pilot project with a national media organization that links its journalistic content with Ashoka’s platform for engagement, called Changemakers. Our partners’ editors will put buttons on selected stories that lead to a co-branded platform on our site: Readers who go there will be presented with a portfolio of engagement opportunities related to the original story — everything from “Read more” to “participate in a chat” to “get involved in this online competition.” Or ultimately, “Start your own project,” where they’ll be presented with a suite of tools and resources. (more)
The big idea is to create a new, higher-value relationship between publisher and audience. Readers who are activated by content to actually participate in change-making activities should have higher loyalty and brand affiliation. And they should be worth more to advertisers and sponsors — not least because the activities on the Changemakers site will be highly measurable.
That may fall in the category of partnerships with non-news organizations that Ben Werdmuller brought up earlier in this conversation.
Keith, thank you very much for contributing to this ongoing discussion. Since we’ve gotten a little out of synch here, let me re-post the question inspired by Ashoka’s blog, above:
Should journalism be reimagined as collaborative? How would that change journalism? How would that change the revenue possibilities?
And I’d like to slip in a final question for you as you can get to it. In our live chat Tuesday, Trevor Aaronson of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting mentioned that collaborations are always more work. More coordination, meetings, calls, cat-herding. Any tips on how to minimize that but maximize the return?
A lot of that has to do with picking the right partner, per my comment above. If you agree up front on vision, goals, and strategy, then effectively you should function as a team, like any internal team. Of course, you’ll never get perfect alignment — and that’s what creates extra work. On a practical level, we’ve found that shared documents like Google Docs work wonders in co-creating strategies. And we designate one person on each side to be project manager; those two people talk *a lot* to determine the project activities, then a lot of the work gets done at our respective internal team meetings. So we only have messy all-hands calls every few weeks.
Thanks for having me, Emily.
Thank you so much!
Greetings all – reminding you today’s live chat with Keith Hammonds starts on this thread in about thirty minutes. We’ll tap into his experience with collaboration and revenue as former executive editor of Fast Company and his current position directing Ashoka’s News & Knowledge Initiative. This is an open conversation, you are more than welcome to join in with questions for Keith or share your own experience.
Michael raises an interesting point where he shares below “We are not about selling eyeballs to advertisers. I think our audience appreciates that and makes them more likely to donate.” An idea that runs parallel to public interest journalism/audience loyalty are consumer protection efforts.. Examples: enivornmental watchdog groups that have influenced how markets perceive value. Or consumers shunning brands that greenwash or violate human rights of workers. In journalism, ideas have been surfacing around nutritional labeling of news products to help audiences know what’s in their information diet. Could existing outfits like EEF, Free Press, State Integrity Investigation, FOIA folks (etc.) band together to explore a consumer protection angle to up demand for quality AND provide tools for the public to ID deceptive journalism practices?
Lisa,
Open government and FOIA concerns have always had a close, collaborative, even symbiotic, interrelationship with public-service journalism. This is not new. Journalists who write about the environment, health and safety concerns and consumer issues know this, as do their sources in and out of government. Because of the need for journalistic independence, many of those alliances will never be formalized. Also, there is an additional imperative for those of us in the advocacy side of the open-government community to remain ever mindful that access is important for all citizens in a functioning democracy, not just journalists.
I like the idea that the State Integrity Investigation could be viewed as helping provide a label showing whether people are getting their money’s worth from their state tax dollars. Transparency in gov is often about allowing citizens to know the quality of the services and laws they are receiving and what they are paying for them… and whom they are hiring at what price.
Thanks for the comments Ken and Michael. Ken, to clarify, the suggestion is to collectively help reframe the role of journalism in society as a consumer protection, which from observation is an opportunity to explore. With all due respect for informal alliances given the need for journalistic independence, can you imagine a situation where journalists, news organizations, or support organizations such as the ones I cited would band together to promote a common message or advance a shared information campaign for a consumer right to accurate information? It’s a reframing opportunity, the structure more of a collaborative body or coalition. Here’s an additional example – from the environmental movement.
Working together, disparate environmental groups and consumer groups, to cite just two examples, have changed policy and markets. Could a collaborative public education effort in the news industry help the public identify a greater stake = value = $ support to protect their access to information? Accurate information? Could that kind of work affect policy or help reshape – and increase – the market value on journalism?
I do like the consumer protection frame in many cases. Talking about the benefits of journalism to “democracy” is too vague. Of course consumer protection only covers a small fraction of what good accountability journalism does but it’s a part that should be well understood by residents. Could expand it to say it protects consumers from harm, taxpayers from wasted tax dollars, the environment from pollution, and schools from corruption and mediocrity
That’s not a bad frame at all, but you’re right, it does not encompass everything that journalists do. Not all questions of public policy, private industry and social issues boil down to economic efficiency — getting a good return on your dollar. Some collective choices the polity has to make come down to competing values. How do we want to structure our society? Sprawl or smart growth? Billboards or trees? Teach to the test or art classes? House the homeless or let them eat cake? Dogs on the beach or not? There are no right answers. There are public debates. Money is only a part of each question. If we try to reduce the value of accountability journalism down to an econometric equation, we run the risk of leaving out the intangible benefits of these community discussions for which there may never be an actual or virtual monetary payoff. People are many things in their lives. Consumers, sure. But also voters, neighbors, family, co-workers, even custodians of nature.
Hi everybody, welcome to this live conversation, a chance to go deeper on this thread into two publishers’ experience with collaboration and hear what they’ve learned about the associated revenue possibilities. You are always welcome to join in with your own questions and experience. Just log in to the JA to comment.
Trevor Aaronson is associate director of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, a bilingual news organization he co-founded two years ago. FCIR has been involved in different types of collaborations, including some that do and some that don’t involve money changing hands.
Michael Stoll is executive director of San Francisco Public Press, a startup that aims to do “for print and Web what public broadcasting does for TV and radio.” Collaboration is at the heart of the news organization’s structure.
Trevor, to start off, can you give us an example of a collaboration you’ve done that didn’t involve money, and another that did?
We all want to do better journalism, and collaboration is a great way to increase the quality and distribution of our reporting. But FCIR is a business, and we view collaboration as a business relationship. In some cases, it makes sense for us to partner with a traditional media outlet to produce together a collaborative report. No direct revenue there. In one case recently, we partnered on a grant to fund the joint effort. In other cases, the collaboration is a collaborative-transactional hybrid — we produce journalism together but FCIR may generate revenue from the partner for specific expertise we provide, such as data journalism. Because FCIR is small shop producing reporting in two languages that covers a large state, we can’t use a one-size-fits-all policy. We negotiate collaborations individually, keeping in mind that FCIR wants to see the greatest distribution and impact with its journalism while ensuring our business model is sustainable.
As an example of a collaborative report, we partnered with the Miami NPR affiliate, WLRN, for this report on extraditions — http://bit.ly/IlEOsp — which recently won a National Headliner Award Best in Show for both of our organizations. No direct revenue involved. But with the same organization — a collective of NPR affiliates in Florida — we are now working together on a grant-funded project in which we partnered together in the grant application and share some of that revenue.
When do you decide a collaboration has to have a revenue component to be worthwhile, and when is some other benefit – like increased audience – okay? What are other benefits besides those two you might look for?
And Michael, can you describe how and explain why San Francisco Public Press is built on collaboration?
The Public Press does two things: Original reporting (under-appreciated beats and team investigative projects) and content sharing with as many as 30 nonprofit local public media and civic organizations. In a way these streams are increasingly merging as we do more projects that require close coordination and story planning from the start. It’s definitely cost-positive.
We are now doing collaborative reporting with at least three or four news organizations simultaneously, and usually do that with project-specific funding from foundations. That allows us to do a big cover story for $1,000 to $2,000. If we were doing it alone we would be spending five to 10 times that much. And we would have much smaller reach.
The last collaboration we did, on human trafficking (http://sfpublicpress.org/trafficking) was a collaboration with New America Media and a bilingual newspaper called El Tecolote. There were seven reporters involved, including two from NAM. The project was the cover story in the San Francisco Public Press’ Spring 2012 edition as well as El Tecolote’s February edition, and went out to more than 30 NAM affiliates. It also appeared in several newspapers in India and the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion.
So you save money – yay – and you get more reporting going into the story – double yay! Are there other ways to increase the financial return on all this joint work? Do you ever talk about everyone charging for a joint story?
We are now building collaborations into every quarterly edition of the print newspaper, because this allows us to greatly magnify our reach. Currently we are developing a project about suburban sprawl and population growth. We are working and meeting weekly with editors from Earth Island Journal (based in Berkeley) and Bay Nature, both environmental magazines with specialized audiences but a lot of trust in those niches.
It’s a hard to give specifics. But, for example, if a partnership gets our journalism in front of audiences that we can’t on our own get in front of — radio and television being two good examples — then direct revenue becomes less important. Exposure to those new audiences can be hugely valuable to FCIR. By contrast, some of our partnerships with metro newspapers always have revenue components. Ideally, we’d generate revenue (either directly or through grants) and gain audience exposure in a single collaboration — but that isn’t always possible.
That gets at the heart of a point Ulrich Nettesheim, a leadership expert who also lectures at the Haas School of Business at Berkeley raised last week in this thread. He asked:
“In what situations generally do the benefits of collaboration (financial, quality of the story, reach of audience, etc.) outweigh the costs of collaboration? And is that question part of the dialogue early enough in collaborations so participants (management and the journalists) can make informed choices about when and when not to collaborate?
Michael and Trevor, when do you talk about money with collaboration partners? And what do you say?
We do a wide range of collaboration styles. Last fall we “collaborated” with the Center for Public Integrity on a story on how juvenile justice was going the “restorative” path in San Francisco and other cities. It was part of a larger package of stories by CPI on the increasing numbers of expulsions and suspensions in schools across the country. They paid two freelance writers and a photographer to do it. We ran it in the newspaper. Both organizations did the editing.
Michael makes a point that is important to us in collaborations. A part of our mission is to produce investigative journalism that reaches minority and Spanish-language communities in Florida. We can’t do that without collaborations with ethnic and Spanish-language media, and while we don’t generate direct revenue from these collaborations, we do believe these collaborations make our organization more attractive to foundations interested in assisting with development in these communities.
http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2011-12/bucking-a-punitive-trend-san-francisco-lets-students-own-up-to-misdeeds-instead-of-gett
And when you do talk about money with collaboration partners? And what do you say?
Sometimes answering Nettesheim is difficult. In our experience, collaborations always mean more work — more coordination, more emails, more meetings, more egos, more cat-herding. If we have a great story we want to reach the largest possible audience in Florida — and a diverse, bilingual audience — we may choose to jump into a collaboration that may cost us, because we believe the story quality and distribution will have longer-term revenue benefits for us. However, if we can’t justify the collaboration that way, then we have to ask ourselves: What’s the benefit to FCIR of doing this collaboration?
We only do collaborations when we think the whole of the reporting skills is more than sum of its parts. For instance, on our current project about sprawl, an editor at Bay Nature Magazine has already been writing about the concept of environmental “carrying capacity” in the Bay Area. So that fits naturally into our story package and amplifies its impact. Bay Nature doesn’t have much money either. So it’s kind of “to each according to need, from each according to ability.” Richer organizations generally pay poorer ones. It balances out. We collaborate only with nonprofits, so we’re not talking mega-bucks.
Oh, and the most important criterion of all: We all have to enjoy working together. The best feeling in the world is when you collaborate on reporting and editing a story, and then co-publish, and your partner comes back to you a month later and says, “That was exhausting but I had fun and learned a lot about how to do a team project. I want to do it again.”
But I think Nettesheim should give journalism organizations credit for being mission-driven groups. We’re not producing tangible products from which we want to squeeze the largest profit. Sometimes, as cliche as this sounds, it’s all about the story and wanting to get it out there to the largest possible audience. And that makes revenue questions complicated ones.
How much bucks are we talking anyway? Can you both give us a sense of what your operating budgets are, how much of your resources you put into collaboration, how much you get out of it?
Do you have good tips for tracking the value?
People are reasonable. More and more organizations are realizing that if they don’t collaborate, their competitors will, so they’d better experiment. One of our most unexpected collaborations was with KQED Public Broadcasting. They gave us a little sweetener from a larger grant through the Knight Networked Journalism Program. But mostly we do it for exposure. And what exposure it is. If we’re on a story they don’t have we call into the newsroom and they interview our reporters on air for a two-minute spot on the evening news. Benefits both orgs. Now, the program is currently unfunded, but I hope they get another grant to continue to do it, or continue even without staffing the coordinator position half-time as they did.
Here’s a double barreled one for you both as we wrap up: You’re both fairly new and fairly small. Is any of the experience you have had with collaboration scalable?
Also, in your wildest imagination, what are collaborations that you think COULD bring in revenue that you’d like to try?
For every dollar we have, 30 cents is coming from earned income — collaborations and transactions (such article reprint fees or data services). The other 70 cents are coming from general operating grants. The higher the earned income, the better, obviously. And when we look at collaborations, we’re really keeping that in mind: Can these new collaborations help us increase revenue, and if they can’t, can they expose us to new or larger audience? And that’s critical, because that exposure has tremendous value. But how do you track it? Sure, I can tell you with precision who goes to our websites, thanks to Analytics. But it’s hard for us tell you with specificity — and, as such, value it — the size and influence of the audience that hears our journalism on Florida NPR or reads it in the Miami Herald or in Spanish-language newspapers. It’s a key problem facing nonprofits like FCIR: How do you fully measure and value a fragmented audience on multiple platforms?
We had a budget of $75,000 last year, which largely went to rent on our downtown 640-square-foot office where I sit now and printing of the quarterly broadsheet edition, which we sell for $1 in about 50 retail locations. Much of the rest goes to paying freelance writers and photographers, but a fair amount of content comes from partners, volunteers and college interns getting credit. We spread it out and we make stone soup. In a way I think we’re much more efficient and therefore effective than most of the larger nonprofits — one reason the foundations ought to get to know what we do and invest in watering the sprigs instead of throwing millions of dollars at grandiose experiments that promise the world and then collapse.
I do think collaborations are scaleable, and I think projects such as Carrie Lozano’s to produce best practices will be incredibly valuable in the future. And I’m really excited to watch what Center for Investigative Reporting/California Watch is doing with YouTube, partnering with traditional media and independent filmmakers to share revenue from a specific YouTube channel.
RE imagining revenue … that’s an interesting question and it depends on how you frame it — what your business model is. We’re mostly funded by individual members paying as little as $35 a year. It’s based on the public broadcasting model that predicts roughly 10 percent of your audience, however large it is, will pay you something to support good community journalism. So the more we get the word out, the more people see that we’re doing civic-focused impactful reporting they can’t find anywhere else, the more community support we get. We don’t take advertising on principle, so we’re not going to write puff pieces on Dow Chemical or anything. It is hard to work this way but our business model relies on public trust, not fast bucks.
Thanks a lot to you both – we’re past our half hour mark now, but I did slip this double barreled one in above that I’d love to hear you respond to before you go or when you can.
Is any of the experience you have had with collaboration scalable?
And – in your wildest imagination (we’ll restrain for reality as per your experience in a second), what are collaborations that you think COULD bring in revenue that you’d like to try?
(Also for Michael, this one zipped by: do you and your partners ever talk about everyone charging for a joint story?)
RE scalability … I think the public broadcasters need to lower the drawbridge and take some of the more serious and professional news-gathering operations into their newsrooms. There are some great experiments at doing that, but others remain somewhat reserved and fear that their economic or journalistic positions will be compromised. But public broadcasters could all stand to expand their local news staffs, since a lot of what they do is “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Antiques Roadshow.” What’s missing, and what public radio in particular could expand, is local news. That’s what these local startups are all about. Win-win.
Ok, there you go! Thank you both VERY much! And a note to all conversation participants, you can post questions for Trevor and Michael here and they’ll get notified by email.
Or tell us your story for others to weigh in on.
Please join us on Thursday at 11 for a conversation with Keith Hammonds, currently the director of Ashoka’s News & Knowledge initiative and former executive editor of Fast Company. We’ll get some more specific insights on collaboration and revenue from his past experience and his current work looking for ways to support collaborative news/information work that contributes to social good.
We love the idea of a barter economy, since so much of what we do is volunteer anyway. When you have a collaborator with millions of dollars set aside for news, then we ask for a little bit to help keep the lights on. But more important than that so far has been establishing a relationship of trust with collaborators who may be leery of letting someone not on their staff take direction from an editor at another newsroom, or go on assignment with a photographer they don’t know. We do have significant syndication income, in the tens of thousands per year, and some of that qualifies as collaborative work and some is simply giving orgs the ability to reprint. We’re in the early days of this experiment. But we’re not yet economically sustainable, so we are relying on the goodwill of wealthier partners, and trying to convince them over time that we actually provide great value to their organizations and enhance their journalistic or civic missions. We will continue to look for these opportunities under every rock, because it’s better than selling soap and cell phones in pop-up ads on our website or inserts in the paper. We want to remain a noncommercial public trust.
Trust is a key currency in journalism! But cash does make certain things possible, and as publisher Diane Lund said in an earlier JA conversation, she is working to convince readers that content isn’t free.
Trevor and Michael, thanks again!
We don’t take advertising on principle…
Curious, the principle being?
As correspondent, staff reporter and editor at more than half a dozen mainstream newspapers and magazines in my career, most of the money I have earned came indirectly from advertising. So I am not pure as the snow. But I have worked for certain publications that were outright corrupt in selling news content to the highest bidder. Beyond that, most ad-based publications pander subtly to their advertisers in one way or another. There are Cars, New Homes and Business sections in most Sunday papers, but no Public Transit, Rentals and Labor sections. This is just a fact of life that most journalists take for granted. Being ad-free gives us a chance to challenge these long-held assumptions about how to frame issues important to the community. We can check our journalistic guts. We can ask the readers. We may be surprised by the answers we get.
Beyond that, new models and mashups of models need to be tried. There is no such thing as clean money, but the greater the diversity of revenue models that news startups try, the greater the chance that some of them will emerge as the next sustainable community institutions. Many, but by no means all, public broadcasters and mission-driven magazines don’t take advertising for some of the above reasons, relying instead on grassroots support. Many people thought public broadcasting couldn’t work, but it has more than 70 years of experience to show that it cannot only work but it can thrive and be a meaningful alternative to the typical commercial broadcasting dreck. The Public Press is a hybrid of the newspaper circulation revenue model with the “pledge” model of public broadcasting, casting back a few decades to before the corporations owned Big Bird.
OK, interesting… as I’ve mentioned before, from a UK background we simply don’t have the whole foundation-based funding model to fall back on… Those tiny pockets that are of a mind to give – Nominet Trust, Rowntree Foundation – are in the seriously hard to get places for certainly the ‘hyper-locals’. But am curious, still.
Is part of the reticence down to a lack of control? That opening up your ad space to the networks merely invites the prospect of a Dow Chemical dropping an ad into your community’s space? Have a look at http://www.greenerleith.org If it’s green and it’s Leith (a left-leaning suburb of Edinburgh) – or, ideally, both – then Alistair allows the ad; if its Tesco (Walmart, DowChemical, etc..) then he refuses…
Are there never advertisers who would resonate positively with your audience and yet not be seen as a corrupting influence on your best intentions? Please, bear in mind, I’m still a beat sports writer too; *having* to monetise my own website at http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com Not just the ad tech guy pumping his wares… best etc
Yes, there are all sorts of interesting models popping up, ad-based, ad-free, few ads, only ads you like. We’re just one flavor. More flavors, more balanced diet. But specifically we are pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a public trust, a nonprofit and a community-run resource. We are not about selling eyeballs to advertisers. I think our audience appreciates that and makes them more likely to donate.
Hello all – just a reminder that our live chat on this thread starts in about an hour. I’ll be talking with Trevor Aaronson of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and Michael Stoll of San Francisco Public press about how their experiences illuminate the connections between collaboration and revenue. This is still an open conversation, you are more than welcome to follow along or join in with your own questions for Trevor and Michael or share your own stories.
Here’s a piece I wrote on Collaborating for Dollars, summing up Collab/Space, some of this board, and other learnings. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/04/collaborating-for-dollars-how-to-raise-revenue-with-others115.html Hope it’s useful. Grateful any comments there or here.
Dorian, that’s an excellent summary – identifying both models to mimic and real challenges – particularly the liability issue, as was evident from the Collab/Space conversation.
If anyone has examples of ways media companies have attempted to limit their exposure to partners’ mistakes – written agreements, conversations, post-mistake reaction, I think people would love to hear what you know.
Dorian, thanks for putting that together. A correction on this sentence: “In one example, a group of local websites that reach different neighborhoods around Chicago are banding together and increasing their ability to sell throughout the region with one sales staff.” That effort is shutting down, though hopefully some learnings will come out of it that will enable more such experiments. It’s a worthwhile model to explore.
For a non-profit news org, collaboration with academic research centers is a very promising model.
There’s a natural convergence of interests. Many academics a looking for ways to make their research more accessible to people in their local communities, and journos can benefit from enlisting the academics as actual *participants in* news gathering. I’m not talking about a reporter interviewing or quoting a researcher for reaction to a news story. I’m saying pick a major enterprising story idea, find researchers who share your interest, and write a joint grant proposal. Then do the work together and share the credit.
There is likely to be grant money other there that neither organization — research center or news org — could land on its own.
A side benefit, for us journos and them academics, is skill transfer and a heightened understanding of the other’s discipline. Academics may get a little more colloquial, and journos may get a little more numerate.
That’s a very creative variation on being housed at an academic institution! Steve, have you seen any examples of that? (Or are you about to break that ground?)
Made me look back at what Joe Bergantino told us about the revenue benefits of a different kind of academic/journalistic collaboration. Overhead and – crucially – brand name to build up a revenue stream from training.
It’s a bit different from Joe’s situation at Boston University, though I must say that Joe’s entrepreneurship has influenced my thinking in many ways.
I’m envisioning the formation of smaller, targeted partnerships by research topic rather than a full-scale affiliation with an institution. I don’t know of examples of it in real life. But I will say that the joint grant revenue probably would have to come *after* you’ve created your 501c3 and launched a branded product. It’s not a principal source of seed funding.
And yes, I’m working on all of the above. Fingers crossed…
Hi Emily:
Have a look at http://vimeo.com/13180915 then go to http://www.GoJournalism.ca. This project was made possible with seed money from Algonquin College in Ottawa, Canada, with commissions from the local daily Ottawa Citizen and hyperlocal startup OpenFile Ottawa.
Joe, that’s a great resource for Ottawa (and maybe more, later.) Community collaboration, raising revenue for journalism! BIg hat tip, as you mention on the site, to spot.us. Per Steve Suo’s idea of journalists collaborating with professors, has that happened through GoJournalism – particularly given the college seed support?
All of the freelance and student journalists who have filed through GoJournalism have worked with me in one form or another, though not so much in a editor/mentoring capacity. I have mostly been the agent between the writer and the client(s). We have seven “peer editors” who volunteer to work with the writers if requested who are veteran journalists.
What do you think about Steve’s idea: “pick a major enterprising story idea, find researchers who share your interest, and write a joint grant proposal. Then do the work together and share the credit.”
…[1] pick a major enterprising story idea, [2] find researchers who share your interest, and [3] write a joint grant proposal. [4] Then do the work together… and [5] publish/share the credit.
So the time-frame would be? And we’re back to grants and hand-outs again…. oooh, which reminds me, have my competition form to fill in… 😉
http://www.nesta.org.uk/areas_of_work/creative_economy/destination_local
Who says we can’t do a Knight?
And my ideal collaborator? The Church of England. For the last 900 years, owners of the highest roof space in nigh-on every rural/local community in the UK.
Beyond collaborations between declared news organizations, I think there’s a lot of scope for profit through collaborations with non-news organizations.
The CIR’s YouTube channel is an interesting example of this: where you’d normally see an ad, there’s a great big “donate” button. Of course, for-profit organizations are free to arrange advertising or other arrangements. If you’re producing long-form video journalism, for example, why not partner with Netflix or Hulu? Those might not be traditional TV stations, but they’re replacing a standard television experience for more and more people.
The consumer web is awash with companies which specialize in reaching very wide audiences in innovative ways, and monetizing those connections. Making use of those in a strategic way could future-proof distribution strategies, while reaching new audiences and allowing you to concentrate on creating great content.
Great points, Ben.
I think the big question with broadcast is whether you can really recoup the actual costs. Even with cheaper, more accessible tools. Broadcast remains budget intensive.
Recouping broadcast costs does seem to be an issue: http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/broadcast-news-breaks-audience-decline-trend-but-doesnt-profit-from-it-pew-says/212403
Given the costs associated with broadcast, is it still an effective medium for organizations where profit is a motivator? Could a better profit be made by embracing other distribution methods? And even if there isn’t a direct profit, does news attract a particular kind of viewer that increases overall profit when measured in a more holistic way?
Speaking for myself, I’m a cord cutter. I watch pre-recorded news video, for sure, and tune into Al Jazeera’s English broadcasts online. (As far as I know they’re the only channel I can access live over the Internet in the US.) Because I’m accessing online, the news channels presumably know much more about me and can derive a higher advertising price by targeting to me. Could that be part of the solution?
The Investigative Reporting Workshop published a piece today about how they partnered with us (The Investigative News Network) with data on national broadband access: http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/workshop-news/workshop-expands-its-publishing-partnerships/
What the publishing partnership achieved was greater reach for IRWorkshop, and more attention both on a national and local scale. It doesn’t directly translate to more revenue, but increased visibility is a good start for both foundation and philanthropic support.
Jessica, thanks for the link to the piece and the notes on how you characterize what was gained by collaborating. I’m curious if you see foundation/philanthropic support that you guys target calling out collaboration as a requirement of funding, or more along the lines of bonus points for expanding the reach?
Jessica,
‘It doesn’t directly translate to more revenue…
See below… but same silo; just collaborating with data-miners as opposed to fellow story tellers… and in my experience deep data folk are even less likely to sniff out a *direct* collaborative buck, than us journalists.
Maybe it’s the whole UK experience; we don’t have a Knight Foundation, a philanthropic support base to call on. We’re on our own trying to make this thing work, cash-wise.
Whilst on the one hand it may offer greater comfort for US journalism collaborators, equally – to my mind – it could then drift towards a ‘comfort zone’ where seeking out new *direct* revenue streams is not an immediate worry.
We’ll just keep talking to ourselves, etc…
best etc
Having managed several large-scale public media collaborations, and having followed the field of journalistic collaboration very closely for several years (including most recently as the editor of MediaShift’s Collaboration Central site), I don’t think there are many (any?) examples of news orgs making money from a collaboration. I’d be happy to be proven wrong but I will be shocked if we hear those case studies.
That said, as Mark and Jo Ellen suggest, collaborations can yield benefits that can be leveraged to generate revenue… journalistic excellence, audience growth/increased distribution, etc. I see collaboration as being akin to social media in this way: It’s something you need to embrace these days to do business better, but it’s time-consuming. So the question becomes, not, “how can I save or make money by doing this?” but “how does doing this help me achieve key business goals more effectively?”
That said, measuring the economic value of collabs (like social media) ultimately comes down to measuring the sum of short and long term revenue and cost savings — this excellent article on social media metrics elaborates on this pt: http://bit.ly/qm0Q5U
Didn’t actually mean to reply to Amanda… more the thrust of Jo Ellen’s thoughts:
The opportunity cost is high for all members, as many are creating a special landing page in order to feature these collaborative tools along with their own coverage. There is no immediate financial benefit…
And I’m *not* product punting.
But isn’t the point about new collaborations yielding – ideally – greater financial reward, the fact that journalists collaborating with other journalists is never going to yield a return, because when it comes to revenue-generation we’re all as clueless as eachother? We all suck at making bucks. Making waves, fine. Bucks? No chance.
We’re in the content-generation business and for as long we stick in that silo, there will be no immediate financial benefit…
Collaborate with new partners: a local fashion/design college? Sell bespoke May-day T-shirts for the event? Whatever… But step outside the comfort zone that is fellow story-tellers.
Amanda–when you say “making money,” are you talking about making a lot of money or just getting paid for the work? It seems that there are many times when media organizations can’t do certain projects unless they get them funded. The Changing Gears project at WCPN (where I used to work), Chicago Public Radio, and Michigan Public Radio is a good example. Three radio outlets shared three reporters, and an editor covering the changing economy of the industrial midwest. The collaboration itself was what CPB funded, and that did, actually generate revenue for the collaborators. But it was public radio, so it’s not as though anyone was getting rich. At the same time, though, at The Civic Commons, we’ve participated in plenty of collaborations, some of which were revenue gains, some revenue neutral and others just at huge costs. But with all of them, we do try to think through what’s at stake and if a project comes at a significant cost, we have to anticipate that the other benefits you outline will outweigh the resources we devote to it.
Dan – good question! By “making money,” I meant: generating a profit (whether it’s $100 or $100,000) as a direct result of collaboration. So, not just getting an editor funded who then supports a collaborative project (i.e. getting outside funding to cover expenses), but being able to step back at the end of a collaboration and point to revenue that exceeds project expenses. It sounds like you actually do have some experience being part of revenue-generating collaborations?? I’d love to hear more about those examples…
Amanda, that’s a terrific link you posted: http://bit.ly/qm0Q5U
I’ve pasted a key couple of grafs below. Replace “social media” with “journalism” and what do you think?
“You don’t participate in social media to only drive business outcomes. I cannot stress that enough. If that is your primary objective you are going to suck at it (and the above metrics will reflect very efficiently how much you suck).
But.
A small percent of the people in your company / brand’s social graph will come to your main digital outpost (usually your company website) and choose to do business with you. Some of them will buy something, others will sign up for your email marketing list, others still will order a catalog or write reviews for products on your site or sign up as an affiliate or create wish lists or marriage registries or phone your call center to order something or… stay with me…. buy your products or services in your supermarket / store / real world thing.
And you know what all of those things are? Macro and Micro Conversions!
And you know what you can do with macro and micro conversions? You can measure Economic Value!”
Amanda, we operate mostly in the engagement sphere, and when we work with media organizations to do funded projects, basically, we try to build the budget with all our costs in mind, including some of the indirect costs (maintenance and improvement of our web environment, for instance). We’re a non-profit project, and we devote a lot of resources to community benefit type things, but when we have a project with a real budget, we try to be realistic, and not just give our stuff away. But, at the beginning we gave a lot away, and, frankly, we still do today.
Dan… I’ve been working in public media, both as a full-time employee and as a consultant/freelancer, for 11+ years, so I’m definitely familiar with the “engagement sphere”! I thought you were saying that you’d worked on some projects that actually netted you a profit, though… guess I misunderstood.
Interesting thread. At VTDigger.org, collaboration sometimes saves us money (we share resources) or it gives us access to a new audience (marketing), but as for money … we hope to make $12,000 this year on distributing content (weekly news briefs, radio soundbites). That might partially pay for our part-time copyeditor’s salary and represent about 6 percent of our overall budget. Still, I think it’s a revenue source that is important because it is a triple play — shared resource, marketing and a little money (that could grow overtime). So far, it fits with the rest of what we do and isn’t that time-consuming in the doing. Getting it going takes time, but once it was set in motion and the rules were clear, it has been fairly easy to maintain.
Anne, what do you mean by “the rules were clear”? Can you share an example about what conversations you had, how rules evolved, and whether you actually wrote things down with your partners or not?
Also, I’d love to hear your take on Dorian Benkoil’s first point in his “Collaborating for Dollars” column this week on MediaShift, about making the pie bigger so everyone gets more to eat. Do you feel like you and your partners are growing the pie?
Mark and Mark…
With regard to bullet point four and an ad network that allows sales staff to sell across a raft of sites – collaboration in a commercial as well as editorial sense – you’re basically describing what the v3 Addiply does.
The ‘Start Selling Now’ doorway on the new beta site… https://beta.addiply.com allows just that functionality of cross-publisher sales on a transparent and automated commission sales basis with the individual publishers still enjoying veto on any potential ad secured by a third party seller.
For me, collaborating as individuals but *within* a greater, supportive network is going to be one of the keys to our success going forward.
And, apologies, always conscious of making a product pitch; hopefully, it’s as much about the thought process behind the journalistic journey that has been Addiply that might serve a wider purpose here.
Best etc
I think there are many ways that collaborations can result in increased revenues, but not always in direct ways. Here are a few ideas on how that might work:
> In a content-sharing collaboration, one publication would run stories from a different publication and could serve ads into that story on their site, which could increase inventory and ad revenues.
> In a co-reporting collaboration, each publication could end up with more and stronger stories, which could result in more readership, more page views and more ad revenues, potentially.
> For non-profits, collaborations could lead to more awards, more recognition, more distribution and more impact for stories. That could lead to more donations, memberships and foundation interest for funding.
> A group of like-minded sites could band together to create an ad network that encompasses all the sites, allowing each sales staff the opportunity to sell the inventory of the entire group of sites, or a subset of that. The revenues could be split accordingly. This could interest more advertisers who want to reach a larger aggregate audience.
I’m sure there are many other examples.
These are straight forward and helpful examples, Mark. In particular, your fourth bullet about an ad network. This idea has always interested me in terms of economies of scale and leveraging for traffic.
Mark Glaser – lot of possibilities here! Any case studies you know of to share – where people are tracking and showing a collaboration/revenue connection?
I am not convinced the main benefit of collaboration is or will be financial. In our work at The Media Consortium, we have seen the main benefits to be: increasing the quality of the story (esp local/national), increasing user accessibility to the story (via multiplatforming or bilingual collaboration) increasing audience reach (our outlets’ audiences don’t overlap), and most of all, increasing impact (mainly through working with advocacy/policy organizations).
In terms of the collaboration cost, we find that when more than 3 organizations collaborate, it’s most efficient to have an intermediary–in this case, the Media Consortium–to navigate different cultures and negotiate terms. We cover that cost through grants, which we can obtain precisely because of the impact and reach benefit.
There still is an opportunity cost for collaborators. Especially given the fact that media have diminished capacity these days, this is where most collaborations collapse in our experience. Potential participants simply can’t juggle their day-to-day with a new or different opportunity. Once organizations receive the benefits of collaborations, however, this hurdle becomes much lower.
Jo Ellen, do you think there SHOULD there be a financial benefit, given the struggle journalism is having to finance its work? I’d also love to hear a case study (as I asked Mark about, above). Could you tell us a story about collaboration the Consortium has helped navigate, particularly any financial issues? I’m thinking about the “informed choices” that Ulrich references below.
Of course, we all are looking for financial benefit, but I agree with Mark that except in certain cases, the financial benefits of collaboration are more likely to be indirect.
Right now, we are working on this kind of collaboration. Media Consortium members are going to offer multiplatform national CNN-style coverage of May Day with a live TV show featuring skyped reports plus in-studio commentary, an interactive map showing actions and linking to Media Consortium reporting, a storify for breaking news on the day, and a coordinated social media program. The collaborative cost on this is high for Free Speech TV (offering the TV show) and the Consortium itself. The opportunity cost is high for all members, as many are creating a special landing page in order to feature these collaborative tools along with their own coverage. There is no immediate financial benefit.
and I’m out of space, so see the next comment
The benefits of the May Day collaboration are tangible, however:
Members believe the quality of reporting will be higher;the user experience wil be better; we will be fulfilling our collective missions of reporting the news, educating the public, and creating impact; and outlets believe there will be a strong marketing (visibility) benefit.
If the day goes well, this effort could create a collaborative model for the entire independent media sector, a grassroots model that creates the same level of audience reach and impact as national cable news while preserving the niche audiences, diversity, and independence of the individual media involved. It’s truly a break-the-model idea. Looking forward to reporting back on it on May 2…
I’m looking forward to seeing how that goes! Can you see then building advertising into it perhaps? Or some other way to turn a topnotch content model into a sound financial model?
I tend to agree with Jo Ellen here: If there is a financial benefit via collaboration – fantastic. But I don’t think revenue should necc. be the driving force behind it. There could be a more indirect financial benefit via saved costs though.
Hey Jo Ellen, this sounds like a great effort! Any chance you’ve been working with the folks at http://theuptake.org ?
Based in Minneapolis, it’s almost like a C-SPAN for citizen journalists, they send volunteers with cameras to do live coverage of public affairs events that should be broadcast but aren’t. In many situations they’ve had broadcasters pull from their feed because they were on the ground before professional reporters could show up. Happy to pass along an introduction if need be 🙂
From the great discussions we had at Collab/Space where the discussion centered on collaboration within and between organizations, I left wondering in what situations generally do the benefits of collaboration (financial, quality of the story, reach of audience, etc.) outweigh the costs of collaboration? And is that question part of the dialogue early enough in collaborations so participants (management and the journalists) can make informed choices about when and when not to collaborate?
Hello everyone – welcome! At Collab/Space, I heard people talk about successful content collaborations, and a lot about the challenges and costs. What do you think is the return on collaboration?
Do you think about revenue when you collaborate on content? How could joining with others strengthen everyone’s bottom line?
We ask how “could” collaboration increase revenue because we want to broaden the space to imagine the possiblities as well as identify the barriers.
What are the experiences you’ve had? Pose questions to others who may have tested things you’d like to try, point to examples you know about, offer answers to help others avoid pitfalls, challenge assumptions, discuss the practical steps involved in collaboration and find other people exploring new pathways. How do you think collaboration could increase the revenue news outlets earn?