The future (and present) of journalism is collaborative, not competitive

Journalism has long been a competitive field, with newspapers and broadcasters racing to be the first, the best, the most trusted and profitable.

However, as revenue and readership have declined over the last 25 or so years, more media outlets are teaming up through sharing content, holding audience engagement events and even collective fundraising.

The collaborative coverage of the Panama Papers involved more than 100 media partners in nearly 80 countries and picked up a Pulitzer Prize; and anyone who’s heard about the drying Great Salt Lake likely learned about it from the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a group of 21 educators, scientists and media organizations that have drawn attention to this environmental crisis in Utah since 2022. Catalyzed by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation through Solutions Journalism Network’s Local Media Project, the collaborative is now supported by grants from organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited and the Bur Oak Foundation.

In the 2½ years after the collaborative launched, the number of stories about the Great Salt Lake increased 20-fold. In addition to expanding coverage, the collaborative has organized workshops, multimedia content, newsletters, public writing initiatives and even a university journalism course. 

The Institute for Nonprofit News found that an increasing number of its members are turning to collaboration to increase capacity and reach. In 2024, nearly 80% of its organization members partnered on at least one collaboration, up from 75% in 2022, according to its 2025 INN Index.

Pooling for dollars

Pooling resources in fundraising is nothing new. World-famous pizza chain Domino’s has partnered with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital since 2004, raising $145 million for the Tennessee-based hospital by inviting customers to round up their purchase totals at checkout. Help Maui Rise, a grassroots collective formed in response to the 2023 wildfires, connected donors directly with Hawaiian families who lost their homes, providing an alternative to donating to large nonprofits.

It works in journalism, too. MinnPost and Sahan Journal collaborated on a fundraising project in 2024 to commemorate World Press Freedom Day. The two Minnesota-based newsrooms shared a pooled fund that would provide a match to both outlets for any gift donated to either of them. They raised a combined $12,500, including matching grants.

Funders such as the Knight Foundation have been pushing for more collaboration among news organizations. The goal is to strengthen the journalism ecosystem, not just individual outlets.

“We need more collaboration in this city,” LaTrice McClendon, Detroit program director at Knight, told television, print and radio leaders gathered in July for a summit called Local News Crisis and the Impact on Michigan Communities. “I love to see the different local media organizations working together, but we can do better. As we invest, we are looking to make sure that folks are collaborating because we want sustainability in Detroit,” McClendon said. “We’ve had an amazing amount of growth. We want to see sustainability, and how we see that is through partnerships and collaboration.” 

For its part, Knight, along with MacArthur Foundation, Pivotal, Ford Foundation, Schmidt Family Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in August announced they would commit nearly $37 million to a bridge fund to help stabilize public media stations at risk of closure following federal funding cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Local collaborative projects are appealing to foundations and also will be necessary for the sustainability of public media, Tracy Baim told the Independent News Sustainability Summit in St. Louis in September. “So if there is an editorial project that is potentially going to get funded, doing that in collaboration with other newsrooms, I think is more likely to get funding” and public media stations should be part of the collaborative funding discussions, said Baim, executive director of Press Forward Chicago, a local chapter of the national Press Forward initiative.

It’s essential to note that much of the foundation funding is allocated to support operations that enhance sustainability, not editorial coverage. To be completely transparent, besides building tools to help journalists find grants, I also serve as director of the New York & Michigan Solutions Journalism Collaborative. The bulk of the collaborative’s funding since its launch in 2020 has gone toward operational expenses and to produce joint projects, a business model followed by many journalism collaboratives. However, more recently, like others groups, mine has begun exploring ways revenue can directly benefit individual newsrooms

Philanthropy also can’t replace the revenue the industry has lost in the last two decades, Melissa Milios Davis, network director for Press Forward, told the Michigan news summit. However, “the great thing that philanthropy can do is create some energy, some innovation capital, some ability for journalists and local businesspeople who run media companies to try new things. I love hearing some of the CEOs talk about how they’re partnering. Deep-dive investigative work can be a lot easier when news outlets work together.”

Resources

Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Guide to Collective Fundraising (Institute for Nonprofit News)

Collaborative Sustainability Guide: How to Earn Revenue to Grow and Thrive (Center for Cooperative Media, The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and Solutions Journalism Network)

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Cite this article

Williams, Monica  (2025, Nov. 13). Want financial backing for your news organization? Collaborate with others. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/want-financial-backing-for-your-news-organization-collaborate-with-others/