Impact Stories

The Thomson Reuters Foundation now regularly includes solutions journalism modules in its courses designed for reporters and for NGO chief sustainability officers interested in improving their media skills. Corinne Podger, a trainer for the foundation, said, “We have found that a solutions journalism module helps NGOs improve their understanding of the rigor that journalists need, and helps journalists use NGOs more effectively to inform reporting.”

The solutions journalism-focused Fort Wayne Media Collaborative in Indiana published a solutions story by Dave Gong about the Fort Wayne-based Just Neighbors program, which places advocates in courtrooms before judges who hear eviction cases. The advocates help tenants who are close to eviction navigate the complex legal system that governs tenant-landlord relations. The story was shared just days later by both the court executive for the Allen County Courts and the executive director of the Fort Wayne Housing Authority.

The Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a coalition of 23 news and education partners covering challenges facing the Great Salt Lake, took home the top prize of $20,000 in the national “Local that Works” contest. The award is a project of Current, a nonprofit news organization that covers public media for industry professionals. Finalists were chosen from a pool of 96 public broadcasters, nonprofit newsrooms and other media groups. The collaborative has produced over 150 stories covering issues like the Great Salt Lake’s dwindling water levels and solutions for abating the crisis, such as the project “At Water's Edge,” published by Deseret News. Heather May, project manager of the collaborative, said, “I think the focus on solutions is what has brought hope to the community, which I think everyone is yearning for.”

After the Kansas Leadership Center Journal, a civic issues magazine, published a solutions story about how a small group in Emporia, Kansas, is working to bridge ethnic and linguistic differences, the Journal organized an event that drew 45 people, about half of whom identified as Hispanic. Some attendees — who also included a state legislator, the Emporia city manager and two city commissioners — expressed hope that the group would remain connected.

In 2022, One World Media, a nonprofit that encourages and celebrates better media coverage from the Global South, centered solutions journalism at the heart of its training program for filmmakers who would later attend its 2023 Global Short Docs Forum. The forum, which brought together 16 participants, emphasized “solutions oriented stories about people who are responding to complex problems with empathy and imagination.” One World Media’s annual impact report states it is “filling a gap worldwide” because the solutions-framed editorial approach “has been popular primarily in print and multimedia but not as much in documentary film.” The nonprofit also introduced the Women’s Solutions Reporting Award in 2022.

Radio Rahma, a local station in coastal Kenya broadcasting in Swahili that took part in SJN’s Africa Initiative, reported on a training program that was started at the Mvita sub-county level to fight crime. The success of the program, which teaches technical skills to young people in need of opportunities, and the broad distribution of the solutions-focused story about it, spurred demand throughout Mombasa County. As a result, the county government resolved to roll out the job skills program countywide. Neighboring counties, including Kwale and Kilifi, have now sent delegations to learn more about the project with a view to initiating it in their counties.