As I mentioned in a previous post, Google Drive has lately been my tool of choice for journalistic collaboration. Not only can Google Drive be a great tool for co-authoring stories with another reporter, it can also be great for collaborating on major issues that take multiple people and multiple stories to cover.
At my university, the president recently announced that he is stepping down at the end of this school year to serve as a chancellor. He announced this on the day all of the content for our November issue was due. However, considering this was the biggest story any of us would ever cover as student journalists, we knew we had to put our current plans for November on hold and deliver some great content on the president’s decision.
The story involved multiple reporters producing multiple stories. Even though some of us needed to interview the same person, we couldn’t all do so. So I started a Google Doc. on Google Drive where reporters could post who they were interviewing so that other reporters could then enter questions they wanted that reporter to ask the interviewee.
I shared this document with all reporters involved in this project. We put in a lot of hard, long hours on the November issue (which came out about a week ago), and Google Drive played a small role in helping us put out a great issue. Check it out.
Zack Anderson 