The value of collaboration

In our break-out session, (Scholar) Kainaz Amaria mentioned collaboration as one of her goals for the summer. I was glad because collaboration is one the most important things we can do in journalism. Sometimes, journalists get so wrapped up in their work that they don’t consider collaboration.

Some of my best reporting experiences have occurred when I was with a photographer. Photographers often see and notice things that I don’t and they are very skilled at getting people to be comfortable with them, even when they are sticking a giant camera in their faces.

When I first met (Scholar) Colleen Cummins (at San Francisco State University) we had to cover an event involving elementary and middle-school kids who were visiting our campus. While I was on one side of the room getting quotes from teachers and administrators, Colleen was on the other shooting and talking to the kids. We were able to compare quotes and notes. We pointed things out to each other, covered more ground and came away with a pretty decent story and some great photos of kids doing experiments (and of one of them beating up our mascot).

We need to recognize the diversity of newsrooms in this way. We’re all journalists trying to get the stories and we are all on the same team. This applies to multimedia producers, copy editors and other writers. If we work together and discuss our ideas and share our concerns, then we can only make the product better.

-- Donna Tam, San Francisco State University, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.