Visual notes from the Collaborative Journalism Summit. Photo by Sarah Gustavus

Collaboration is an essential element for healthy news ecosystems. The relationships that develop through collaboration are the glue that help make local news more connected, responsive, and resilient. Indeed, Democracy Fund sees collaboration, not just with other newsrooms, but also with our communities, as key to the sustainability of local news. Through reporting partnerships we bring more voices into the journalism process, access new tools to tell powerful stories, and expand the reach and impact of reporting.

That’s why Democracy Fund is partnering with Rita Allen Foundation in supporting the Center for Cooperative Media’s fund to support collaborative reporting projects at newsrooms across the country. We are helping double the number of grants the collaborative journalism fund can give, and supporting the Center for Cooperative Media’s efforts to document best practices and disseminate learnings across the industry.

The fund will give grants of $7,000 each to support six collaborative reporting projects.

The deadline for proposals is Friday, June 30.

We’ve written many times about the challenges and benefits of collaboration on the Local News Lab and in the Local Fix, our weekly newsletter. These grants will serve as a spark to help newsrooms test new models and build new relationships. At Democracy Fund and the Local News Lab we are especially interested in collaborations that include audience engagement, diverse partners, and local news organizations.

Read more about the new fund and open call for proposals at the Center for Cooperative Media’s website and read more tips on collaboration here at the Local News Lab:

• Four Steps for News Orgs to Start Collaborating with Ethnic Media
• Best Practices in Journalism Collaborations
• Keys to successful local-national news collaborations: What can you do today to be a Partnership Sherpa?
• The Collaboration Zone: Good Reads on Collaboration
• A Journalism Collaboration Lifts Up the Voices of New Brunswick’s Working Poor
• Hurdles to collaboration: Local newsrooms cite resources, lack of interest and not knowing who to ask
• Three Ways Local and National Collaborations Partner Now
• Why does The Marshall Project’s ‘The Next to Die’ collaborative data initiative work so well?
• Collabor-ade: Interesting Collaboration Projects