Developing journalism collaborations for local impact

The role of collaborative scaffolding and solutions journalism in changing local media ecosystems

By Caroline Porter and Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro

Communities and funders are searching for ways to rebuild and strengthen local news to be more diverse, equitable, inclusive, impactful and sustainable. What can we learn from local journalism collaboratives that are using solutions journalism to catalyze change in their communities and local media ecosystems?

In this report, we summarize findings from a yearlong research project in 2020-2021 in which we studied a cohort of six solutions journalism collaboratives based in different parts of the United States. Our research included baseline case studies; interviews with journalists, editors and non-news partners, as well as audience members; meeting observations; and surveys among collaborative members and audience members. Our interest was in understanding what outcomes these collaboratives were generating for themselves, their ecosystems and their communities.

We found that with sufficient time, resources, and leadership, collaborative groups are using solutions journalism to work together in new ways and produce truly remarkable local journalism. Their collaboration is deepening their relationships, changing their mindsets, shifting their ecosystems, and paving the way towards change in their communities.

The members of the mature collaboratives we studied had a strong sense of shared values, operated with a high degree of trust, and had a commitment to the collaborative as an entity. The values, trust, and commitment operated like a scaffold to keep the groups moving forward on their projects, even when they encountered challenges. We call the critical ingredient to their impact collaborative scaffolding.