Last year, when I was asked to contribute a prediction here, I mentioned that we in journalism would be looking more at our social impact than our total pageviews or other metrics. This year, working with Chicas Poderosas in Latin America and witnessing all that’s going on in the region, I believe the path to generating that social impact journalism should strive for is community and collaboration.

Though the journalist’s job has been traditionally seen as a lonely one, focused on competition for bylines or scoops, the realities of the industry and the world open the door to a new, more collaborative way of doing journalism.

In a scenario where news outlets continue to close, newsrooms continue to shrink, and journalists remain expected to do more with less, cooperation between journalists and/or newsrooms offers the possibility of improved coverage, the chance to tackle important issues with a more complex approach, and of learning and exchanging experiences.

Social protests, the rise of feminist struggles, and migrations going in the region show us that, to cover current affairs, we need more dynamic approaches. We need teams that gather different skills and expertise, that are more diverse, and we need a regional reach to fully tell the story.

The possibilities provided by collaboration are endless. We’ve seen it with regional projects that have helped uncover corruption. In 2019, at Chicas Poderosas, we’ve witnessed it first hand. In the mediathons we held in Argentina, Colombia, and México, we’ve seen the ideas, creativity, and power that is generated when journalists, communicators, and designers are gathered to work on projects combining their skills and their different perspectives — provided by their socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnic origins, age, and training. Stories get generated that offer a different perspective, which pose new questions and provide a more complex understanding of issues. In a regional investigation we created with 11 reporters to tell the stories of migration and non-binary people in Latin America, we’ve seen the possibility of creating new narratives that question traditional stories, include more questions, and provide new perspectives of how journalism processes can happen.

In 2020, we’re excited to see where the paths of collaboration take us, what we can create with this approach, and how these practices are replicated. But there’s one thing I’m certain about: The future of journalism is collaborative.