Three publications have teamed up for an ongoing investigative report into New Orleans and its police department, Editor and Publisher reports. They are non-profit investigative journalism project ProPublica, daily newspaper The Times-Picayune of New Orleans and public affairs television program Frontline.

The resulting project is called Law & Disorder and features video, social networking tools, photos and documents to report on several cases involving New Orleans police and civilians in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The collaboration came about when Frontline was searching for stories to coincide with the five-year anniversary of the hurricane and turned to ProPublica for help, while the Times-Picayune editor had seen ProPublica's piece about a New Orleans hospital published in The New York Times magazine. The newspaper and ProPublica then discovered that they had been working on some of the same stories. Times-Picayune managing editor Peter Kovacs told Editor and Publisher that he wanted to see this information in his newspaper.
"[ProPublica] had dedicated a lot of time to an archipelago of cases in which people were shot by police after Hurricane Katrina in ways that have not been thoroughly investigated. They had done some good research on that," Kovacs said. "The idea was to take all the information and cases and put them into a family and uniting theme. These were cases where police shot people under circumstances of which it would have been difficult for police to follow normal protocol."

One Frontline reporter and one ProPublica reporter worked on the story from offices in New York, while three Times-Picayune journalists covered it from New Orleans. It is ongoing, though, with plans to regularly update the site and a phone-in tip hotline. Frontline may dedicate a broadcast to the subject.

The Times-Picayune published its stories on the subject in December, even though the joint project just launched. Kovacs said that he did not want the stories' impact to be lessened by Super Bowl coverage, and that he wanted the issue to be on the agenda during the city's mayoral election.

"I thought it was terrific," Kovacs said of the partnership. "I would recommend it to anybody."

Collaboration has been touted as a key component of the future of investigative journalism. ProPublica is no stranger to it, having worked extensively with The New York Times. This latest report is further evidence of the value for editors of embracing innovative and collaborative projects.

Source: Editor and Publisher