EXPANDING BOUNDARIES, RECALIBRATING CORE VALUES & CENTERING COMMUNITIES: HOW COLLABORATION IS CHANGING THE JOURNALISTIC FIELD

Abstract

With the traditional commercial model failing, U.S. news organizations are increasingly turning to various types of collaborations in order to produce news content. They are partnering with nonprofits, universities, creative groups, citizen journalists and other entities, many of them non-journalistic in nature. As a result, these diverse groups are increasingly having to negotiate different sets of values and priorities as they establish journalistic processes and create news content. This dissertation explores, first, the question of how the structure and makeup of such diverse collaborations influences the journalistic values and norms by which the effort abides; second, it examines how the processes of collaborations reflect these negotiated norms and values. The project seeks to shed light on the ways traditional journalistic boundaries are being expanded and the journalistic field transformed by new, non-traditional journalistic partners in collaborations. The qualitative study – which utilizes in-person and virtual ethnography, in-depth interviewing, and textual analysis – focuses on two different collaborations: a fledgling partnership called the Dallas Media Collaborative, which involves 14 different journalistic and non-journalistic partners working together to cover the topic of affordable housing in Dallas, Texas; and the Credible Messenger Reporting Project, which pairs professional journalists and community journalists in the coverage of gun violence in Philadelphia. The study finds that these partnerships demonstrate evidence of journalists expanding their traditional boundaries to include new partners in the process of creating news content, showing that collaboration can mark an attempt at field repair. These new partners are helping to re-envision the purpose of the field, with a much greater focus on public service and the goals of effecting social change and empowering communities; they are also forcing an expansion of the boundaries of what can be considered journalism – especially in terms of creative work and audience engagement. However, journalists often continue to enforce traditional values even amid the presence of non-traditional partners, and the power dynamics of traditional journalism are persistent. As a result, collaborations continue to be a site of constant of contested norms and values, evidenced both in journalistic processes and in the content that they produce.