Hold the presses! I’ve got a scoop. We will trounce the competition.

Does this model of fierce competition still make sense in an online era? Does the influx of women into the top spots on publications portend a new era of collaboration instead?

If you want to see the future of journalism, please watch the three videos in which Alisha Green and Emily Lawler explain how their personal friendship enhances their professional relationship.

Alisha is editor-in-chief of SpartanEdge, a weekly online multimedia campus publication currently celebrating its fifth anniversary.* Emily is editor of The Big Green, a monthly magazine with its roots in a feminist world view.

The young women note that being free of the pressure to generate income through ads offers them a freedom other editors don’t enjoy. Being liberated from those pressures allows them to experiment with ideas that can contribute to innovations in the delivery of local news.

Is collaboration a realistic alternative for communities where a growing number of online local publications are vying for survival?

One way it makes sense is by sharing multimedia assets such as YouTube videos. Just recently, Lansing Online News has started posting YouTube videos of reviews and behind-the-scenes videos about productions at the Wharton Center created by SpartanEdge. Alisha worked hard to earn the trust of the folks who run Wharton Center, MSU’s premier non-profit performing arts facility, and there is no point in us doing the same when we can embed their video and link back to their publication.

Lansing Online News also ran video by Brandon Kirby for The Big Green about protesters outside the Capitol during Governor Jennifer Granholm’s recent state-of-the-state address. It makes no sense for either of us to stretch our already overburdened volunteers to do the same thing.

And there is the hope that linking back and forth between our two publications will help both of us rise in the search engines. The strategy mimics the synergy that often occurs when a Taco Bell or other fast-food restaurant moves in next to MacDonald’s, and the sales of both go up.

Sometimes the issue is resources. Alisha and I often confer about whether she has someone at SpartanEdge who can shoot video at a campus news event, or whether I am already covering it for Lansing Online News.

Sometimes the concern is video quality. SpartanEdge relies mostly on Flip videocameras, while LON has access to two higher-end Canon GL2s. Flips work great for one-on-one interviews, but covering the MSU Board of Trustees meeting on campus, for example, can benefit from using a camera with more options.

Working together allows both of our publications to report and comment from our respective points of view, while sharing the same video assets.

Where will this go in the future? No one knows. The three of us know and trust each other based on our association in the same class. But the benefits of collaboration seem obvious, especially in an online world where cross-linking to other publications improves credibility with the audience.

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*In the spirit of transparency, it should be noted that I helped some enterprising MSU students launch SpartanEdge in January 2006.