NICAR 2022: Best Practices for a Successful Collaboration

[tiffehr]

Notes

Deborah Nelson (U of MD)

• "duet-driven" collaboration -- panelist description of paired collaborations, between field reporting and data gathering

Maggie Mulvihill (Boston U)

• Rule 1: Focused story idea (narrow, and collaborators that bring complementary skills)
• Rule 2: Story, structure & communication
• Rule 3: Memorandum of Understanding
• Rule 4: ???
• Rule 5: Superior Editorial Supervision
• Rule 6: Timeline (reasonable but rigid; for full process not just core costs; "backout schedule")
• Rule 7: Rigorous Fact-Checking Protocol
• Rule 8: Keeping Education "top of mind" (if there are education goals in the collaboration)

Cheryl Phillips (Stanford; Big Local News)

• Shared process -- set a model and collaborate to get it done
• Building reproducible systems that can be the recipe and tools for subsequent projects
• Playing to your strengths
• [lots of examples]
• Expanding collaboration to academics, attorneys and activists [law enforcement records]
• Phases [get from livestream]
• Allow for serendipity

Questions

• for academic/educators, how to coordinate around semester or quarter semester
• value of partnerships to non-journalist academics in helping them get their names out there around data/research projects ahead of their publishing cycles
• contractual data, we help satisfy the "public good" part of their research mission