Too big to cover alone: Newsrooms team up

Driving the news: The "Facebook Consortium," a name given to a group of roughly two dozen news outlets that agreed to hold stories based on leaked materials from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, made its big editorial debut Monday. Unlike more established news collaboratives, the group was formed quickly and had to set its own publishing terms, which were hard to manage in real time. A more traditional news collaborative, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, or ICIJ, typically spends years working on major investigations - including the 2016 Panama Papers, The China Cables and most recently, the Pandora Papers. What they're saying: A slapdash effort like the one behind the "Facebook Papers" won't be able to undertake "The truly deep and global kind of reporting that really makes these kind of stories much better," said Michael Hudson, a senior editor at the ICIJ.But that also allowed it to publish newsworthy information quickly, and each participating news outlet was able to put its own stamp on the work. "Lots of news judgments made may not be exactly the same," Hudson said. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project is a global news collaborative that covers organized crime. The Associated Press has set up a local news collaborative called StoryShare, to help newsrooms quickly share information about COVID, as well as other hot-button topics, like climate change and gun violence.