Impact Stories

On March 15, 2021, a nonprofit providing housing assistance to residents in Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood announced it received a $50,000 gift from an anonymous donor. According to a press release from the nonprofit, Slavic Village Development, the donation was made in response to a Jan. 26 article (here: https://www.thelandcle.org/stories/facing-eviction-residents-struggle-to-find-help) from the Northeast Ohio Solutions Journalism Collaborative, a project supported by SJN that aims to reinvigorate local media ecosystems through collaborative solutions journalism projects. The story was originally produced and published by The Land, a local nonprofit news outlet, but additional collaborative members republished it.

A month after a Cleveland public radio station aired a solutions story (https://www.ideastream.org/news/several-ne-ohio-cities-consider-pay-to-stay-eviction-prevention-laws) examining the trend of “pay-to-stay” housing legislation, the city of Lakewood in northeast Ohio passed a similar measure, and city leaders in two other communities in northeast Ohio introduced the idea. The story, by Ideastream, examined what happened in other Ohio cities that had already implemented the measure, which allows tenants behind on rent to remain in their homes if they pay what they owe before local courts process the eviction. (Ohio is one of five states that allow landlords to file for eviction as soon as a payment is missed, without offering tenants any extra time to come up with the money.) Ideastream is part of the SJN-sponsored Northeast Ohio Solutions Journalism Collaborative. Housing advocates note that the widely shared story is helping educate the public and landlords.

Outriders, a Warsaw-based nonprofit digital magazine published in Polish and English, was awarded first prize from the International Center for Journalists for a solutions project in the category of science and health reporting in English (https://www.icfj.org/news/journalists-icfj-network-honored-pandemic-coverage-five-languages). Outriders was honored for its online comic, “Favela vs. COVID-19,” which tells the story of the grassroots initiatives launched by the residents of three favelas in São Paulo to address problems caused or exacerbated by the pandemic (https://outride.rs/en/favela-vs-covid-19/intro/). The comic was produced by a team of journalists based in Brazil, Poland and Spain and was published in English, Polish, Spanish and Portuguese. It was also longlisted in the Digital Media category of the 2021 One World Media Awards (https://oneworldmedia.org.uk/awards/longlist-2021/).

Priyanka Shankar, a freelance journalist with Are We Europe, a border-breaking magazine, participated in the Solution Journalism Network’s Complicating the Narratives (CTN) training with the staff of Are We Europe. Shankar and another freelancer, Inbar Preiss, then were invited to co-edit an entire issue of the magazine and used CTN skills to explore the ongoing impact of colonialism in Europe. The issue sold out quickly. Shankar told SJN that CTN helped her and Preiss tackle their own confirmation biases through better listening. Shankar and Preiss reflected on their experience with CTN for the International Journalists’ Network (here: https://ijnet.org/en/story/journalists-europe-complicate-narrative-colonization).

Hothouse (https://hothouse.substack.com/about), a digital newsletter focused on climate change, has solutions journalism baked into its editorial identity. In a first for the fledgling publication, which primarily serves audiences in the U.S. and the U.K., Hothouse signed a deal of approximately $25,000 with a content distribution company that prioritizes solutions stories that can be syndicated to local publications in the U.S.

The Daily Sun invited some of its most frequent writers of letters to the editor to learn a deep listening technique that is part of SJN’s Complicating the Narratives initiative (here: https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/articles/how-a-small-town-paper-is-applying-conflict-mediation-skills-to-its-opinion-content/). The paper also hosted public tolerance forums and launched a digital public square — all to address what it saw as an increase in vitriol and name-calling on the opinion pages, and foster more productive civil dialogue. The result: Digital Editor Julie Hirshan Hart estimated the number of letters to the editor that include personal attacks has dropped by half, engagement is up, and the Sun’s audience has expanded. “The past year has brought an underlying goal into clearer focus, to be a place where our communities might turn in their search for solutions to issues that polarize our region,” said Hirshan Hart.