The picture was taken by a photographer from one of the GDP’s 17 regional newspapers and through contractual obligations to share content, the association had full rights to one of the most famous photo’s of the 2006 World Cup.

GDP works on a “three sources method”, which sees cooperation, resource and content sharing between the GDP’s staff and the staff of its 17 member organizations. The third source is freelancers, whose specialist material is distributed throughout the association.

There is constant communication between the GDP central desk and the member newspaper’s editorial staffs.

Costs are shared among the newspapers and the GDP itself. Each newspaper acts as a regional correspondent for other members, and is “obliged to share stories and photographs with others, including scoops”.

Van Linden admits that this can sometimes be a problem, saying that although the member organizations are “the heart of the machine”, and that scoop and exclusive sharing “doesn’t work all the time”.

Despite this, van Linden says that the unique 80 year cooperative has allowed for “successful competition and concentration on core competence”. He also said that combining resources meant that the association was able to produce “high quality journalism, and at the same time save significant amounts of money”.

By Jackie Bischof, Wits University Journalism