Collaboration becomes civic memory

I’ve spent a fair amount of 2025 toggling between my parents’ MyChart accounts. From scheduling appointments to reviewing test results, I — and their doctors — have a one-stop shop for managing their various healthcare needs. A hematologist can request lab work, and a gastroenterologist can review the data before recommending a medication or procedure. Everyone is working from the same information. It’s time-stamped, efficient, and verifiable.

It got me thinking: What’s the media’s equivalent to MyChart?

In Atlanta, our mayor, city council, board of education, and county commission are deliberating on a $5.5 billion proposal to redirect property tax revenues towards specific neighborhood investments requested by the mayor rather than each jurisdiction placing the money in their respective general funds. It’s a transformative idea with generational implications.

Nearly every local outlet has covered the issue, and yet we’ve all just scratched the surface, Atlanta Civic Circle included. Not because reporters aren’t trying, but because the work is scattered and immense. Interviews live in separate notebooks (even as multiple reporters from one outlet may be following the issue) and each outlet is building the story from scratch without shared facts and data.

So here’s an idea for 2026: Local media stops acting like isolated publishers and starts acting like a shared civic memory.

We don’t need a mega newsroom. We need an infrastructure layer — a shared repository to upload interviews, link articles, and dump the results of open records requests — all with a clear chain-of-custody protocol.

Imagine clicking into one page for that $5.5 billion proposal and seeing the ordinance language, key budget tables and project lists, interview transcripts, legislative timelines, and publishing schedules. A running list of votes and amendments across jurisdictions, a list of “claims we can verify” linked to supporting documents. Then imagine every newsroom being able to start there before publishing the next explainer, prepping questions for the next press conference, or hosting a listening session with residents. If something changes, it doesn’t get quietly overwritten. The update is logged. The prior version remains visible. We all access the same information and apply it within our expertise, just like my parents’ doctors.

Funders and newsroom leaders rightfully are pushing for more collaboration by co-publishing a series or sharing a byline. Good. What’s even better is shared accountability. A public record that gets stronger with every story. Corrections that are traceable. When the goalposts move, we all have the necessary data and infrastructure to track the changes.

A shared record needs guardrails as strict as its ambition: protect what’s sensitive, and make the public evidence easy to find. Keep public documents and citations open, link back to original stories instead of reposting full text, and time-stamp everything. Advocacy groups, lobbyists, and other stakeholders already collaborate on high-stakes issues — sharing talking points, tracking amendments, and building a common record they can mobilize around. It’s time for local journalism to use a similar approach.

The point is to keep accountability from being out-coordinated. We shouldn’t leave the public record to those we cover or perhaps worse — to the algorithms. Major tech platforms are building their own public records and the “truth” often becomes what they deem, not what the community can verify.

In 2026, let’s pilot this in a few cities around one or two consequential issues — take youth homelessness, healthcare affordability, or even World Cup spending and impact — with a handful of outlets and civic partners. The result is a shared public record that provides a fuller, more accurate picture of what’s at stake and a clearer reason for the public to rely on and invest in local journalism.