The release of the Paradise Papers this week left no doubt about the impact of journalistic collaborations. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), including nearly 100 media companies, worked together to implicate a large range of individuals, including Elizabeth II; the President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos; and U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross. This begs the question, can collaboration be the answer to news media’s problems? Josh Lucido says yes in a recent column for INMA:
News organisations need to start cooperating with each other and acting like they’re all fighting together. – Josh Lucido, Matter
While the journalistic benefit from working together to parse the more than 13 million documents is clear, one question that is still to be answered is the business case for such large journalistic collaborations. Do cooperating news organizations see a sustained spike in subscribers?
More reading
- ICIJ: Offshore Trove Exposes Trump-Russia Links And Piggy Banks Of The Wealthiest 1 Percent
- Poynter: How journalists worldwide revealed ‘Piggy Banks of the World’s Wealthiest 1 Percent’
- MediaShift: 6 models of journalistic collaboration
- INMA: Could cooperation be the answer to news media’s problems?
