Basil Jarrett | This is what happens when you collaborate

In almost every area of life, the race to be first seems to trump everything else. Especially so in journalism, where the need to be first to break a story reigns supreme among reporters and editors. This has only been exacerbated with the advent and growth of social media platforms which provided not just professional journalists, but anyone with a Twitter account and online access, with a place to quickly spread news – real, fake or in-between.

And you can’t really fault newsrooms for this, after all, journalism is a fiercely competitive occupation, marked by strong rivalry among individual reporters and editors. This is understandable. Journalists guard their sources and their stories jealously, often from their own peers and stablemates. Being first, and not necessarily being the best to cover a story, brings professional rewards and accolades. And because most news houses bet their survival on the advertising revenues that come from attracting loyal followers and audiences from among a finite viewership, listenership or readership, it becomes a zero-sum game among newsrooms. Add to the mix, the short attention span of audiences today, particularly the Twitter generation who are seemingly unable to read anything beyond 300 characters, and you can see how easy it is to fall into that vicious supply-and-demand cycle.

THE RACE TO BE FIRST

This is quite understandable, as we’ve all fallen prey to the human addiction to breaking news. Some journalists have gone on to make quite lucrative careers from it, even proclaiming themselves ‘the breaking news boss’ and copping numerous professional awards in the process. I tip my hat to those journalists who are still able to not only be first at getting the news out there, but doing so in a responsible and professional manner, even amid the wild, wild West that is today’s social media.

The problem with this breaking-news phenomenon, however, is that the race to be first isn’t accompanied by a similar race to be the best. In other words, far too many important news stories are done a disservice because journalists are more focused on beating the competition to the next big breaking news item, rather than delving and diving into the deep intestines of the current one. I’ve also noticed the worrying trend where, if one newspaper breaks the news first, then the other appears to ignore it completely, rather than show up to give readers another perspective or a richer experience.

DOING THE NEWS JUSTICE

The problem with this approach is that a lot of stories are left half-finished and half-baked. Let’s say, for example, that today’s breaking news story has 10 critical parts and Newspaper A beats Newspaper B to the punch in investigating and reporting parts one to five It is quite likely that Newspaper B would rather ignore the value of investigating and reporting on parts six to 10, and opt instead to go chase after their own breaking news. This leaves parts six to 10 unexplored and incomplete. Not surprisingly, parts six to10 are usually at the real heart and soul of the issue.

To my mind, the solution is collaborative journalism, a term used to define reporting that is complementary and collaborative among rival newsrooms that share resources, expertise and capabilities to conduct, investigate and report on a major news story or event. Collaborative journalism is a possible way for journalists to fulfil their roles as societal watchdogs, balanced against the need to meet the deep financial challenges that newsrooms face today.

COLLABORATE, NOT COMPETE

Working together must become the rule rather than the exception if we are to ensure a broader and deeper scope of really meaningful investigative journalism. Joint investigations can provide depth, scale and scope that no one newsroom could match on its own. Media houses will be able to play an even more impactful role in monitoring society, staying vigilant, and keeping public officials honest. We should demand this from our free press, as more information means individuals can make better, more informed decisions, given that we would now have visibility and access to deeper, more detailed data, documents and reports. This not only improves the quality of public life and promotes, protects and preserves our democracy, but it also addresses the power relations and inequalities that impact our quality of everyday life.

It’s a no-brainer actually, but as in all things, the devil is in the details. Media is a business, and businesses thrive off competition. But businesses also thrive off operating efficiently. Our rival newsrooms should begin to examine ways to cooperate in ways that ease the news-gathering and news-reporting burden. After all, it was this collaborative approach that created The Associated Press in 1846, when a handful of daily newspapers pooled resources to efficiently cover the Mexican-American war. More recently, it also gave us the Panama Papers, the largest collaborative reporting project in history, involving over 100 media partners in 25 languages and nearly 80 countries.

FACT-CHECKING

One particularly low-hanging fruit is possibly collaborating to fact-check public figures and hold them accountable for false or misleading claims. While fact-checking currently exists in a manner that is designed to catch and correct reporter errors before they are published, greater potential for collaboration may exist in teaming up to publicly challenge political lies and exaggerations. Reporters from rival newsrooms could conceivably partner to create their own professional networks and support groups, and form their own alliances within the profession.

By amplifying the impact and influence of fact-checking through collaborative journalism, we will simultaneously be creating the raw material for other stories and other media outlets to dive into, thereby giving our watchdogs more teeth. I am not trying to be utopian or overly simplistic, as I do recognise that the news business is neither selfless, altruistic nor free of competitive tension. But news media must also recognise that sometimes it is actually better to complement than to compete.

Major Basil Jarrett is a communications strategist and CEO of Artemis Consulting, a communications consulting firm specialising in crisis communications and reputation management. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com