By Matt Carroll <@MattCData>

April 18, 2017: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.

1. How local newsrooms can collaborate on big projects:Slowly, maybe reluctantly, more newsrooms are collaborating on projects. Want it to go well? Well, says Kristen Hare for Poynter, pick your partners carefully, set aside your competitive instincts, and be ready to give up some controls. A good set of tips for how to create a successful news collaboration. Yes, it can work.
2. Me & my (polite) troll — the evolving world of comments:Commenting on stories was originally seen as a way for news sites to engage better with readers. Then came the trolls, driving readers away, and Facebook and Twitter, giving commenters major platforms to speak their mind. Jason Pontin of the MIT Technology Review writes about how one particular polite troll on his site has forced him to rethink comments, and how that world is changing.
3. Pulitzer win highlights decline of family-owned papers: When the family-owned Storm Lake Times in Iowa won a Pulitzer for editorials, it was a win for the little guy. But the victory for the 2,000-subscriber paper was also a grim reminder of how few papers are still owned by a single family. Nice piece by Lukas I. Alpert of the WSJ on the long, slow decline of what was once a journalism staple.

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Matt Carroll is a journalism professor at Northeastern University.