Collaboration on a national scale: journalism educators, students and the 2016 Australian federal election

Journalism is a collaborative process that requires individuals to work autonomously
and collectively to produce news and information. In 2016, journalism
educators from 28 Australian universities collaborated to provide coverage of
the Australian federal election in a project called UniPollWatch. This project
involved around 1000 students and 75 staff producing coverage of 150 House
of Representatives seats that included 346 candidate profiles, 125 electorate
profiles and verdict stories, profiles of 26 Senate candidates, and feature stories
on nine key policy areas. The purpose-built UniPollWatch website also hosted
two large-scale data journalism projects. This paper describes how the largest
Australian student university project was devised and how it attracted and
sustained collaborative participation. It also reports on the results of a survey
of participating journalism academics about the structure of the project and
draws insight from their comments about the management of future projects on
this scale. The theoretical perspectives of analysis are drawn from journalism
practice as well as governance theory, journalism pedagogy and work integrated
learning. This paper argues that the UniPollWatch model offers possibilities
for further development and adaptation for universities to collaborate for the
benefit of journalism education, students and the practice of journalism.