Can Collaboration Tools Change How Journalists Work?
The FactPL team's move from KakaoTalk to Slack to Google Docs. The experience of shifting from vertical reporting to horizontal sharing — and what actually made it work.
In December 2021, I wrote a piece for Sinmun-gwa Bangsong (Newspaper and Broadcasting) introducing how the FactPL team works. We were about eighteen months into the newsletter service.
Journalists are essentially freelancers. Even within a team, everyone reports their own beats and produces their own stories. Collaboration is rare outside major features, and even then it usually means dividing up interviews and assembling the parts. This structure lets journalists focus on reporting. But if you think about the full content flow — from pitch to reporting to production to distribution — just writing well isn't enough.
Failure 1: Trello and Slack, First Attempt
When I first joined FactPL, I pushed to bring in Slack and Trello. I'd used the combination successfully before and trusted it. But overcoming the inertia of "why adapt to something new when KakaoTalk works fine" was harder than I expected. We cycled between Slack, Jandi, and back to KakaoTalk for a year.
Success: The Online Move
The turning point was January 2021. We were relocating physically to Sangam-dong. Our team lead declared we'd also move our digital workspace. We tried KakaoWork first, found it uncomfortable, and went back to Slack. There was about a week of confusion, but we'd already been through it once, so we adapted quickly.
What I learned: you can't drag people forward by yourself no matter how good the tool is. Someone with the authority and credibility to pull the trigger needs to commit to the change. Our team lead played that role.
FactPL's Collaboration Stack
With Slack as our main communication channel, Stibee (newsletter publishing), Google Docs (collaborative drafting), Typeform (interactive surveys), and Google Analytics (metrics) all connected into a coherent system. The architecture is simple: talk in Slack, write together in Google Docs, exchange comments via Slack notifications. Since editing or commenting on a document triggers an immediate Slack notification, there was no need for separate reporting.
The unexpected benefit: the hierarchical feeling typical of newsrooms started to soften. Casual conversation increased dramatically compared to KakaoTalk. Sharing rather than reporting meant ideas were developed rather than killed in approval chains.
Tools Aren't the Answer
Honestly: culture comes before tools. Introducing collaboration tools without changing a vertical culture just means reporting through new channels. FactPL worked not because of the tools but because there was already shared buy-in for working horizontally. The tools made that intent concrete in daily practice.
When I cover startups now, I always ask: "What collaboration tools do you use?" The answer matters less than what it reveals: how information flows inside the company, and whether that flow is vertical or distributed.
Written based on a column published in Newspaper and Broadcasting, December 2021.