Impact Stories

A solutions story on quality carbon credits is among the most popular articles published to date by Hothouse, a newsletter that investigates climate solutions. The publication credits that story as a big factor in a recent gain of 1,000 new subscribers, helping more than double the audience of the one-year-old publication. It was syndicated in Popular Science and Scientific American. Hothouse was started as part of an SJN LEDE fellowship. Its mission is to produce original, investigative journalism on climate solutions.

Street Roots, a weekly social justice newspaper in Portland, Oregon, was honored in the Society of Professional Journalists Northwest Excellence in Journalism Contest for "Foster Care Shuffle," a five-part series that examined places that are making progress in providing more stable placements for young people in foster care.

The Climate Solutions collaborative in Pennsylvania received a $10,000 grant from America Amplified, which it will use to create advisory groups to help test whether sustained climate change coverage affects individuals’ daily lives. The collaborative, which is part of the Local Media Project at the Solutions Journalism Network and focuses on central Pennsylvania, is made up of five news organizations, two educational institutions and a theater company.

Sanket Jain’s solutions story on how health care workers in India are using WhatsApp to fight misinformation about public health and COVID-19 is a finalist for international reporting in the Livingston Awards. The Livingston Awards honor the best journalism and storytelling by journalists under the age of 35. The winners will be announced on June 8.

A professor at Ohio State University said his documentary about water systems and affordability was influenced by the reporting of the 22-member news collaborative in Northeast Ohio (https://www.neosojo.com/) known as NEO SoJo. Ramiro Berardo, professor of environmental and natural resources policy, said NEO SoJo’s stories about the aid that’s available to help people pay utility bills were especially invaluable (https://www.neosojo.com/blog/neo-sojo-stories-featured-in-water-for-all-documentary). “The issue is not that these programs don’t exist,” he said. “The issue is they do exist but people are not accessing them.”

The Bonn Institute, designed to be a hub for making journalism “more solutions-oriented, richer in perspective and increasingly dialogue-based,” was launched in Germany in April 2022, led by Ellen Heinrichs, a solutions journalism supporter who formerly worked at Deutsche Welle. Lisa Urlbauer, a former SJN staff member, is training coordinator.