{"id":3513,"date":"2017-07-17T06:19:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T05:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amdf-centre.org\/?p=3513"},"modified":"2026-07-05T20:13:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T19:13:24","slug":"project-facet-aims-to-make-it-easier-for-journalists-to-collaborate-across-newsrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amdf-centre.org\/2017\/07\/17\/project-facet-aims-to-make-it-easier-for-journalists-to-collaborate-across-newsrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Facet aims to make it easier for journalists to collaborate across newsrooms"},"content":{"rendered":"
Christine Schmidt, Nieman Lab |<\/div>\n
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Collaborative journalism is\u00a0good<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 until you get lost in email chains, Slack channels\u00a0and Google Drives. The one-woman team of\u00a0Project Facet<\/a>\u00a0is hoping to change that, and looking for collaborators for her own venture.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are newsrooms that want to collaborate but it is logistically painful,\u201d\u00a0Heather Bryant<\/a>, a journalist and software engineer, said. \u201cMost places are using email, maybe there\u2019s a calendar they share, they\u2019re trying to make Trello boards, they\u2019re trying to get everybody into Slack\u2026While collaboration is historically a people\/culture challenge as well, the pain caused by tools is not insignificant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bryant recently finished her term as a\u00a0John S. Knight Journalism Fellow<\/a>\u00a0at Stanford, where she delved into the technology at the core of collaborations in journalism. Her interest was spurred by a previous gig as the digital services editor at\u00a0KTOO Public Media<\/a>\u00a0in Juneau, Alaska.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the newsrooms I was working with in Alaska, collaboration is a necessity,\u201d Bryant explained. \u201cWhen you have one- and two-person-newsrooms trying to cover a lot of space, it\u2019s hard to do. The newsrooms best positioned to cover a story would be the ones to cover it: the stations near the Coast Guard, near the fisheries\u2026Not every station had to jump and go cover it, because they knew that they had a trusted partner to do the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

The complications arose when newsroom leaders looked at how to actually do the coordination. Bryant said many relied on emails, \u201cand that gets really really messy, really fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enter\u00a0Project Facet<\/a>: a web-based dashboard of communication and shared files where multiple collaborators can schedule check-ins, develop stories, track team progress, and even write and edit stories alongside each other. Bryant has been building this singlehandedly since 2015 when she received a grant from the\u00a0Knight Prototype Fund<\/a>\u00a0to explore the prospect of open source software to simplify the editorial process for news organizations, especially multi-platform publishers. Her fellowship this past year enabled her to fully submerge herself into\u00a0Project Facet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In her application, Bryant stressed that she wanted to research \u201cwhat tools, infrastructure, resources \u2014 what do we need to do to help newsrooms create effective, meaningful partnerships.\u201d Since then, she\u2019s built up a Slack community of 300 followers focused on collaborative journalism, attended over a dozen conferences and site visits, and collected data on the geography of collaborative journalism through a newsroom survey. (Bryant has been building the software with the idea of newsroom-to-newsroom collaboration, but she wants to include freelancers and individuals in the platform as well.)<\/p>\n

She wrote in a\u00a0Medium post<\/a>\u00a0following her fellowship:<\/p>\n

When I knew I was going to be a John S. Knight Fellow, I pivoted in my framing. Rather than spend my time negotiating and debating, I would spend it reporting. I wanted to talk to as many people as possible who were interested in collaboration or already doing collaborative projects. I want to know what\u2019s working, what\u2019s not and what needs to be better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(You probably saw a\u00a0more recent Medium post<\/a>\u00a0of hers, about journalism\u2019s class problem, that got a lot of attention in news circles.)<\/p>\n

Now, Project Facet is almost ready for deployment. Bryant said she has several newsroom partners eager to test the beta version who have identified three different\u00a0collaborative projects<\/a>\u00a0to use it on. But she is looking to add someone who can tackle the security component of the platform first. She\u2019s also preparing Project Facet to launch as a nonprofit organization, with longterm plans to find financial support through subscriptions, memberships, and licensing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had gone down the road of starting to investigate what venture capital funding would look like and came to the conclusion that that\u2019s not necessarily the right direction,\u201d Bryant said. She\u2019s aiming for the smaller newsrooms like she used to work in: \u201cI would rather have a thousand small newsrooms be able to collaborate easily than be able to build one big tool for a big newsroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

But to get Project Facet rolling by the fall as planned, Bryant needs to find collaborators of her own.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big challenge for me right now is transitioning from being a thing that I\u2019ve been working on to having more people working on this to grow at a better rate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0first appeared on\u00a0Nieman Lab<\/a>\u00a0and is republished with permission.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Main image CC-licensed by Flickr via jmettraux<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n