Over the last year, a number of news outlets have done what has traditionally been anathema to journalists: collaborate with the competition. From Florida to Maine, Ohio to Texas, newspapers (mostly) are sharing content, merging bureaus, and consolidating printing operations. The efforts that have garnered headlines, though, have a whiff of desperation about them—if not for the severity of the problems newspapers face, we sense, none of this would be happening. But beyond this safety-in-numbers mindset, there is something more fundamental under way. Journalists are creating ways to work with one another, with students, and with the public to sustain journalism’s most important contributions to society.

Wisconsin is an emerging hub of this experimentation. In February, Andy Hall, a long-time investigative reporter, launched the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting with $100,000 from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. The center, housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication, has partnered with the school, and with Wisconsin public broadcasting. Hall hopes to bring in other media outlets in the state, as well a cadre of volunteer “citizen investigators.”

In early April, meanwhile, a cross-section of Madison-area media—from mainstream outlets to Spanish-language outlets to a high-school newspaper—attended an organizational meeting for a new collaborative effort called All Together Now.

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