The Case for Radical Collaboration in Journalism

Last month, I wrote a prediction for Nieman Lab: that more journalists in 2026 will be asking what it actually means to serve the public.

Journalism is fundamentally about helping people understand the world and make informed decisions. And it requires meeting audiences where they are, not where we think they should be. Understanding that leads to harder questions: How do we reimagine journalism from the ground up to truly serve our communities? What should we preserve, and what should we leave behind?

Here's one answer: We need to break out of our silos. If we're serious about serving differently, at a time when trust in news is at a record low and fewer people see enough value to pay for it, we need radical collaboration. What does that mean? It means journalism can't only be the purview of journalists - it means working with a wide range of people, from technologists and researchers to community leaders and civil society.

That's why through ICFJ+, our new venture with Code for Africa and Proto, we're working with the growing number of stakeholders that news media need to be successful and trusted. That's what the "plus" in ICFJ+ is all about.

Let me give you a concrete example: Journalists should be working with community-embedded content creators - those with a small but highly-engaged following. We call them nano-influencers. In a talk at the iMEdD International Journalism Forum this past fall, my ICFJ+ co-CEO Justin Arenstein and I argued that journalism must move toward the spaces inhabited by trusted influencers and collaborate with them on equal footing, to create a new space where authenticity, personality and information integrity coexist.

Why? Because these nano-influencers already understand the fundamentals: Audiences want to hear from people who know the reality they live in. They need information that is hyper-personal to them. They are incredibly demanding about platform-specific formats. And they are looking for conversational, social validation of information. This is backed up by global research by Google News Initiative and FT Strategies, which I advised, and by the Reuters Institute.

Through radical collaboration, newsrooms can learn from people who have already figured out how to build and maintain trust in the digital public square. The future of journalism - a journalism that truly serves its audiences - won't be built by journalists alone.