Panama Papers turned competing journalists into a global investigative team

The Star's Jim Coyle writes:
"Almost as mind-bending as the sheer volume of data leaked in the Panama Papers, and its reach into the lives of the rich and powerful, is the fact so many journalists in so many newsrooms in so many countries were able to keep so big a project secret for so long.
"It defied the natural order of things. It required journalists to go against all traditional training and view competitors as collaborators.
"It demanded of a notoriously gossipy species the sort of tight-lipped discretion more typical of confessors than those in the business of spreading the news.
"Yet the lid was so tight not even the New York Times, according to its deputy executive editor, knew the Panama Papers project was under way or the stories were coming.
"What made it all possible, according to Rob Cribb, the Star’s lead reporter on the project, was a new attitude of collaboration born of the sheer scale of modern data-based research imperatives and the diminished resources of economically strapped news agencies. Both demand and supply suggested collaboration."
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