March 16, 2020

Hi everyone —We hope you’re well and that you’re staying safe and healthy.

I’m writing this to let you all know that we are cancelling the in-person 2020 Collaborative Journalism Summit, and intend to conduct the event in-place instead.

That means wherever you are, you’ll just need a device and an internet connection to participate! (We’re definitely not giving up on all of our plans for North Carolina, however! We fully intend to host the 2021 Collaborative Journalism Summit in Charlotte.)

There are many reasons why we came to the decision about this year’s Summit: travel restrictions have recently been placed on us and many of you, and it became even more clear over the last few days that it’s not safe to host large public gatherings anywhere in the U.S.

However, the spirit of CJS has always been one of peer-to-peer learning and collaboration, so we’re confident — and excited! — about turning our full attention to producing a useful, informative and fun in-place experience.

We hope you’ll be able to still participate!

We’ll be in touch with the details in the coming weeks, but for starters, we plan to keep everything roughly on the same schedule. Also, thanks to the support of some sponsors who are sticking with us, we are making the event free. 

I want to give a special huge thanks to our core sponsors, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Democracy Fund, both of which reached out faster than lightning to assure us that they’ll be here to support us and the Summit, no matter what happens over the coming weeks. That means a lot.

We’re researching platforms now and will share details as we get them ironed out. But in the meantime, you can sign up here. We’ll be announcing more details about the Summit through our collaborative journalism newsletter, which you can sign up for here.

Thanks for your support. We are grateful. And we can’t wait to see you in May for the 2020 Collaborative Journalism Summit!

Stefanie Murray
Director, Center for Cooperative Media
Montclair State University