Impact Stories

News Literacy Network (August 2022): Jodie Jackson, a longtime champion of solutions journalism and author of “You Are What You Read: Why Changing Your Media Diet Can Change the World,” launched the News Literacy Network (https://newsliteracynetwork.org/about) in August 2022. A significant part of the organization’s work will be dedicated to solutions journalism, including “in-depth resources about what solutions journalism is and how to find it, with an aim to go into newsrooms in the future to talk about how to create it.”

NPR (2022): National Public Radio hired its first climate solutions reporter, Julia Simon, in late 2022, with a mandate “to give our audiences an understanding of the scientific, behavioral and policy solutions people are adopting to address the catastrophic consequences of climate change.” Neela Banerjee, who leads the climate desk at NPR, said that many factors led to the creation of the position, including learning about solutions journalism through SJN. NPR now is producing solutions-oriented climate coverage at the national and local levels, fostered by its collaborative of individual stations focusing on this topic. In October 2023, NPR dedicated a whole week of coverage to climate solutions. (Disclosure: The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which supports the climate solutions position at NPR, also has funded some of SJN’s climate work.)

TCS (August 2022): The 7th Trilateral Journalist Exchange Program organized by the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS), an intergovernmental foreign relations organization in East Asia, focused on solutions journalism as a means to cope with problem-centered reporting in the region. Twelve journalists from large news organizations in South Korea, China and Japan attended the event, for which SJN was a consultant.

Graham Media Group (July 2022): Executives from Graham Media Group say their new digital solutions journalism program, called Solutionaries, has already attracted more than a million views on YouTube. The program was inspired by solutions journalism training that SJN provided to Graham’s seven TV stations and its national desk. Solutionaries features reports from each of Graham’s newsrooms.
In November 2022, station WKMG serving Olrlando, Florida, started including a full half hour broadcast of “Solutionaries” every Tuesday.

Foundation for Investigative Journalism (June 2022): After the Foundation for Investigative Journalism published a solutions journalism article titled “Soilless Farming to the Rescue. How to Boost Agriculture Without Hurting Forests,” (https://fij.ng/article/special-report-soilless-farming-to-the-rescue-how-to-boost-agriculture-without-hurting-forests/) one of the people featured in the story, Adebowale Onafowora, saw a surge in inquiries about hydroponic growing techniques. People seeking more information cited the story as the reason they reached out, according to Abdullah Tijani, who wrote the article.

University of Oregon (2021): Nicole Dahmen, a professor at the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication, was named the Scripps Howard 2021 Teacher of the Year (https://scripps.com/fund/news/scripps-howard-foundation-announces-winners-of-69th-scripps-howard-awards/). This national award recognizes a full-time faculty member teaching in a journalism and mass communication program. Dahmen is one of the leaders of the Catalyst Project, which created the first solutions journalism academy for educators in 2018. She also teaches a stand-alone course in solutions journalism.