The Examination’s approach to investigative partnerships
Intel from The Examination’s founder Ben Hallman
The Examination, a health news nonprofit, launched this month with a number of investigations anchored in partnerships.
I spoke with the organization’s founder & executive director, Ben Hallman, and the conversation left me quite optimistic about how for-profit publishers can partner with nonprofit news outlets to expand their investigative impact (and brand equity) without breaking the bank.
Here are some of The Examination’s collaborative investigations:
An investigation into China’s state cigarette monopoly, in partnership with USA Today, Der Spiegel, Paper Trail Media, and the Chinese-language organization Initium Media.
An investigation into how registered dietitians share industry-friendly messages, in partnership with The Washington Post.
An investigation into health risks of chemicals on the market, in partnership with The Guardian US.
The Examination’s partners will generally fall into two categories:
National & global outlets, who offer distribution to large & influential audiences, as well as investigative expertise.
Local outlets, who bring localized expertise and access.
In exchange, The Examination provides story leads, reporting bandwidth, and subject-matter expertise. Through a partnership, larger outlets can expand their coverage without additional costs, and local outlets can expand a scoop into a broader investigation.
Oftentimes, partnerships originate between two reporters. “A lot of the best stories happen because two reporters get to talking, and they have a shared idea,” Ben told me. “And then you have a reporter at each organization pushing the idea through each individual place at the same time.”
The Examination cements partnerships with a memorandum of understanding, which outlines expectations from each side. No money changes hands, Ben said, and ultimately a partnership is a trust exercise. “What's really helpful,” Ben told me, “is to have an interlocutor… who themselves has experience with partnering [and] can help marshal resources for you inside that newsroom.”
When it comes time to write & publish, Ben said, there are a number of different approaches, including:
Co-writing & publishing on each partner’s site
Co-reporting and then separately writing different versions for each site
Republishing the story on the partner site after it’s published on The Examination
The Examination writing a special version for the partner’s site, in addition to publishing its own version
Over the years, as the news industry has gotten squeezed, investigative collaborations have become increasingly appealing. “I think the first partnership I ever worked on was probably more than ten years ago,” Ben said. “At that time, we would go to major news publishers, and they didn't even know what we were talking about… and [now] the practice has become normalized… I think that's an amazing transformation.”
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And here’s the latest media news:
Launches:
Punchbowl launched a revamped website and expects to bring in $20 million in revenue this year.
The LA Times launched a section called Climate California.
Estate Media, a publisher covering real estate, raised $1.65 million.
Departures:
Morning Brew has parted ways with two top executives.
New York Public Radio plans to cut staff by 12%.
Mike Bloomberg plans to step down in 3 to 5 years and eventually give the company to his foundation.
Platforms:
Spotify will enable podcasters to convert their episodes into a foreign languages, via a partnership with OpenAI.
Google will shut down Google Podcasts in 2024 and move listeners to YouTube Music.
Apple Podcasts added original shows from Apple Music and Apple News+.
Newsletter platform Beehiv acquired Swapstack, a newsletter ad network.
AI:
Getty launched a generative AI tool based on its archive of images.
A search tool from The Atlantic shows which books have been used in a particular dataset to train AI models.
Hollywood studios will reportedly be able to use AI models trained on writers’ work, as a part of the tentative labor agreement.
TV & Streaming:
Top entertainment companies launched a trade group called the Streaming Innovation Alliance.
Trump said if elected he would investigate Comcast for “vicious coverage” by NBC News and MSNBC.
CollegeHumor rebranded to Dropout, the name of its ad-free subscription streaming service.
More on publishers:
A story in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, amplified by Elon Musk, has led to threats directed to the reporter and the Review-Journal.
63% of Black adults say news about Black people is more negative than for other groups.
Interesting:
Artifact’s Kevin Systrom gave a Q&A where he hinted toward large ambitions:
“It seems like what a lot of people don't realize is that the best companies in the world always start fairly narrow and figure out how to expand over time. You know, Amazon sold books. YouTube was a dating site. Facebook was for Harvard.”
The Independent’s Blair Tapper talked about ways to use big moments to convince advertisers to stop blocking keywords:
“Coco [Gauff] won and we had advertisers blocking [articles containing the word] ‘shot.’ But it’s a tennis shot, not a bullet shot, so I think you have to have those conversations and say, ‘hey, we know this event was important to you – are you willing to open up that keyword targeting?’”
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