This story was originally published by WKMG. This story is part of a collaborative initiative of independent local news outlets working towards a more informed and engaged Central Florida.
A new state law restricting individuals from sleeping on public property is shaking up communities across Florida but has also inspired an unprecedented journalism collaboration uniting 10 news outlets to tell the complex stories behind the issue.
Recounting how the idea got off the ground, Judith Smelser, president and general manager of Central Florida Public Media, asked a simple question: “Could we get local news leaders in a room together to talk about what are our common challenges?”
Smelser first called her friend Megan Stokes at the Oviedo Community News. The two then brought in Mark Brewer from the Central Florida Foundation.
Within a few months, what began with a simple question and a couple of phone calls grew into a news collaborative – the first for the region, bringing together WKMG-TV, Orlando Sentinel, Central Florida Public Media, WUCF, Lakeland’s LkldNow, Osceola News-Gazette, Oviedo Community News, Orlando’s The Community Paper, Winter Garden’s VoxPopuli, and the Winter Park Voice.
“I’ve been in Central Florida for 30-something years, and this is the first time I’ve seen something like this,” said Roger Simmons, executive editor of the Orlando Sentinel. “If you told me years ago that I’d be sharing my stories with News 6 or Central Florida Public Media, I’d have said you were crazy.”
“The local news industry is changing by leaps and bounds, day in and day out,” said Allison McGinley, news director at WKMG News 6. “Good journalism is about transparency, authenticity, and deep community engagement. This collaboration allows us to combine resources and dig deeper into the root causes.”
“We know that Channel 6 has certain viewers, the Sentinel has certain readers, and Central Florida Public Media has certain listeners,” Simmons added. “They may not intersect, so this is a way for us to get our stories, your stories, stories from all organizations, out to a broader audience.”
As part of the news collaborative, each outlet will contribute its unique vision and storytelling – whether it’s hyper-local coverage, investigative reporting, or multimedia content creation – to paint a comprehensive picture of a single topic over a six-month period. The chosen focus of the collaborative’s pilot project is homelessness, particularly the enforcement of the new law banning public camping.
But putting competition aside and collaboration front and center goes against the competitive grain of local journalism.
“When you’re looking to do good work, you recognize that you have to put competition on the cutting room floor, and the focus has to be on our audience, on our community,” McGinley said.
“Times have changed, and the competition isn’t (with) each other anymore,” Simmons said. “It’s misinformation, social media influencers, and the erosion of trust in journalism.”
“We’re in a time right now when information is everywhere. Facts are scarce,” Smelser said. “We’re in a time when we can go online and find things that masquerade as news, masquerade as facts. And a lot of people legitimately don’t know how to tell the difference because they look the same.”