Tag: Journalism

Although most research projects are carried out with a small team of two to four journalists, the number of projects that are inter-regional, international and / or multidisciplinary is growing [The state of collaborative journalism 2020]. More and more subjects are cross-border because they involve international money flows, large data sets are found or specialists are required. But topics in a city also have more impact if they play the same role in other cities. It gives an extra dimension and appeals to a larger audience. Especially when it comes to topics that have a national character, such as public transport or healthcare. In those cases you can grow as a team up to ten, twenty or more people. Who is going to manage that project?

Big boys

Organisations like ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists), OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) and Investigate Europe never started their first project with “Oh, let’s hire a project manager.”. As in business, most organisations, which are not used to setting up large projects, do not turn to a PM to prepare and execute the project professionally. Growing companies start their projects with small teams, in which someone takes the lead in a natural way or takes charge of the implementation and delivery from a self-evident role within the team. As customers become more important and demanding, the project teams grow and so does the added value of a person with a specific role that is solely concerned with managing the project.

Sometimes a company becomes so big and the projects are so numerous that there is an excess of managing people and the role is not so much of added value, but standard and sometimes becomes without content or value. The trick is to keep thinking whether this specific project really needs a coordinating role with this specific team.

When you are confronted with a project that is just a little too big to handle as you are used to, this can prompt you to consider someone with the role of being responsible for things like meetings, action lists, document management etc. It seems logical to choose someone within the team to take on these tasks, but the result may be that the person gets into a conflicting situation: at the same time contributing to the research (and having their own opinion) and being the coordinator of the team. This can lead to situations where either the role of coordinator is compromised or the role of investigative journalist.

To PM or not to PM

Success stories of teams of investigative journalists can certainly be found where someone both contributes to the investigation and takes on the coordinating tasks. This is mainly in small organisations where projects are clear and the team is not too large or complex. However, for larger teams or more complex journalistic projects, a coordinator best be appointed. This is certainly the case when many people from all corners of Europe, for example, work together on a subject.

How to decide whether you want to name someone in the team the coordinator or add a project manager to your team? It is a hard question, since it depends on the complexity and size of your team, skills and capacity of team members. If you decide to let someone within the team of journalists pick up tasks as planning, stakeholder management, alignment with outlets etc does this person have the right skills and experience? Will this role interfere with other roles this person will have within the team? For example, can the coordinator or project manager stand firm if one of the journalists isn’t delivering? Or is this persons opinion going to get in the way of being a neutral party within the team?

If the team is large enough and budgets are put together, figure out how much time you would need to organise and put that next to the investment a team member would have to make, at the expense of research. Then add those hours to the budget request, so you can hire someone for a few hours a week or month to outsource those tasks to someone who can do it efficiently and effectively. This way everyone is maximising her or his capacities!

Tip: if you add the time and costs of a PM you think you need executing your project, funding parties will agree to pay for that part of coordination of the team. It will give assurance that journalists will be focused, the coordination is in good hands and deadlines will be managed. All team members can focus on what they do best.

For more information and some examples:

Elisa Simantke (Investigate Europe) is the editorial coordinator of Investigate Europe. You can watch an interview by Dóra Diseri (n-ost) with her on Facebook 3rd of June 2020 about best practices and case studies of her multinational team. Discussion about the roles and challenges of collaborative journalism amid the coronavirus pandemic and best practices of her cross-border editorial team. Investigate Europe is a team of experienced journalists from nine European countries who are working as a multinational team and tackling the usual national bias by sharing, merging and crosschecking facts.. (Facebook n-ost)

Marina Walker Guevara might be the best known Project Manager in Investigative Journalism. She was the deputy director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, an independent network of reporters who work together on global stories. Walker Guevara has managed some of journalism’s most consequential investigations on global corruption, including the Panama Papers, which involved more than 370 reporters in 76 countries and shook governments and businesses across the world. Other investigations include Swiss Leaks, Luxembourg Leaks and Offshore Leaks.  Here is an interview with her about the Panama Papers, a changing world for journalism and her role in this investigation.

“We have realized over the years that the old model, with the lonely wolf, investigative reporting, haunting information andd scoping others is no match to the challenges of the world we have today.”

Marina Walker Guevara