Solutions Journalism Network Audience Impact Tracking Guide can help your newsroom articulate and track the impact you intend to generate among audiences and communities with solutions journalism stories.
Topic: Solutions Journalism
Community-Centered Journalism Engaging People, Exploring Solutions, and Building Trust
Contemporary journalism faces a crisis of trust that threatens the institution and may imperil democracy itself. Critics and experts see a renewed commitment to local journalism as one solution. But a lasting restoration of public trust requires a different kind of local journalism than is often imagined, one that engages with and shares power among all sectors of a community.
Stop Drowning Alone, Start Sailing Together
The Solutions Journalism Network offers 16 steps for innovative newsrooms to navigate a better future for themselves and their communities. A better, more sustainable path might be easier than you might think. One key is to foster deeper relationships with your audiences as partners rather than customers/audience members. Another is to write about how communities are rebuilding and reviving just as well as you cover breakdowns, problems and collapse.
Systems Thinking For Journalists
Journalism + Design has developed a suite of systems thinking tools for journalists to focus their reporting on the underlying causes of complex problems: the policies, power dynamics, and beliefs fueling systems that actively harm, marginalize, or benefit specific people. By expanding our lens beyond individual events and outcomes, journalists can hold entire systems accountable, rather than just the symptoms they produce.
Complicating the Narratives
What if journalists covered controversial issues differently — based on how humans actually behave when they are polarized and suspicious? As politicians have become more polarized, we have increasingly allowed ourselves to be used by demagogues on both sides of the aisle, amplifying their insults instead of exposing their motivations. But what else can we do with conflict, besides letting it sit? We’re not advocates, and we shouldn’t be in the business of making people feel better. Our mission is not a diplomatic one. So what options does that leave?
The Journalism Industry Knows Engagement is Necessary to Survive
What are the barriers? Why is it so dang hard to just “do engagement already?” We had our hunches, but we commissioned a study to really find out. We spoke with 100 people who are already bought in — who desperately want to spend their time doing better engagement — to learn what (and who) stands in their way. Engagement is a process, not a product. The solution must start with mindset and culture change, not software
Using Conversation to Build Collaboration Between Newsrooms and Communities
The Jefferson Center launched Your Voice Ohio in 2017, the second phase of an ongoing collaborative effort to help Ohio newsrooms better understand and respond to the needs of their communities. We’re looking at a variety of methods of engagement — both in-person and online — to find the most effective and sustainable approaches for local newsrooms. Here’s what we’ve learned so far (as of 2018).
How The Dallas Morning News Builds Subscriber Loyalty With a Facebook Group
The Dallas Morning News has created a Facebook Group for its subscribers. It’s a way to grow loyalty among those who pay for its journalism and give them more direct access to the paper’s journalists and editors. Members of the group also get exclusive benefits such as tickets to events and other perks … In this issue, we’re looking at how the Morning News built its subscriber group and how the newsroom and marketing departments collaborate to run it.
What ‘Engagement Reporting’ Is and Why It Matters
What if readers, not just sources, were an active part of the news reporting process? A new group of journalists is exploring that possibility in an effort to deepen their reporting and build community relationships. ‘Engagement reporters’ are journalists who combine the power of community engagement with traditional news reporting to do journalism that aims to authentically serve the community and reflect their interests and needs. They’re not audience engagement editors and they’re not news reporters — they live in both worlds.
Solutions Set
Solutions Set is an ongoing archive of reports on engaged journalism tools and practices produced and compiled by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and The Solutions Journalism Network.
Solutions Story Tracker
The Solutions Story Tracker from the Solutions Journalism Network is a curated, searchable database of rigorous reporting about responses to social problems. It’s designed to help identify emerging ideas, approaches and patterns in social change around the world. Here are 10 Reasons Why Journalists Submit to the Solutions Story Tracker.
Engaging Communities Through Solutions Journalism
This report explores the potential impacts of local solutions journalism, particularly for underrepresented and stigmatized communities. Solutions journalism explores responses to systemic social problems—critically examining problem-solving efforts that have the potential to scale.