Impact Stories

Eric Cortellessa of the Washington Monthly wrote a solutions story about Utah’s vote-by-mail system, followed by an opinion piece (published in The Washington Post) that focused on Maryland (“Maryland can save its election by letting
people vote at home” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/local-opinions/maryland-can-save-its-election-by-letting-people-vote-at-home/2020/03/19/0c7afe6e-68a3-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html). Maryland then adopted the approach, starting with a small special election. Cortellessa followed up to see what happened, and found that the switch had some success, with turnout increasing 10 percentage points compared with a primary election a few months before (https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/05/14/can-vote-by-mail-work-in-low-income-minority-neighborhoods/).

A story about a Louisiana sheriff’s lieutenant who created an inventive program to protect women from domestic violence led several other localities to consider replicating the model. The lieutenant, Valerie Martinez-Jordan, also was invited to develop a domestic violence curriculum for police departments across the state, which often ranks in the top three for rates of women murdered by men (https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.112.150/bk4.85e.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/Violence-Policy-Center-2019-Press-Release.pdf). Martinez-Jordan, herself a survivor of domestic abuse, put her small Lafourche Parish sheriff’s office in the vanguard when she created the firearms retrieval program, which takes guns away from domestic abusers. The federal Department of Justice’s community policing publication featured Lafourche Parish’s system in its newsletter (https://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/10-2020/spotlight_on_the_field.html).

In 2020, U.S. Rep. Bobby L. Rush of Illinois introduced a bill requiring hospitals to report ambulance diversions to the federal government and providing for a study by the National Academy of Medicine of ways to reduce this phenomenon, which can put patients’ lives at risk. This legislative step followed the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s investigation into the death toll related to diversions (https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/2019/10/28/ambulance-diversion-least-21-deaths-tied-hospital-bypass/4064119002/) and solutions reporting on how Massachussets banned the practice of turning away ambulances (https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2019/11/22/busy-hospitals-say-they-must-turn-away-ambulances-one-state-banned-practice.html). The reporting also led to hearings in the Wisconsin State Legislature.

Outriders, a Poland-based digital publication covering global issues, generated $8,000 in sponsorship revenue from Santander Bank to support a solutions-driven reporting package. Jakub Górnicki, CEO of Outriders, said pitching solutions-focused projects to businesses increases the publication’s chances of garnering support, because companies see value in associating their brands with coverage of responses to social issues.

A four-part series by the USA Today Network, which exposed a “predator pipeline” in which athletes suspended or expelled for sexual assault at one college were accepted at other institutions, led to policy change. Two colleges immediately pledged to change how they vet athletes who seek transfers and adopted policies similar those featured in the solutions story in the series (https://stories.usatodaynetwork.com/predatorpipeline/call-to-action/), and members of Congress issued a bipartisan call for an independent study of NCAA policies. Under pressure, the NCAA announced it would review its policies. Reporter Kenny Jacoby, who studied solutions journalism at the University of Oregon, said the series wouldn’t have had the impact he wanted unless he showed readers a possible path forward. “And here we’re seeing some direct evidence that the solutions component has helped bring that about,” he said.

WXIA in Atlanta ran “Caged in Cruelty,” a two-part series on animal abuse reforms, comparing the effectiveness of Pennsylvania’s approach to reducing these incidents with the status quo in Georgia. Within three days of WXIA’s story, a lawmaker who had been debating what to do scheduled a meeting with legislative staff to draft a bill for the upcoming legislative session. Two community meetings to discuss how to push for those reforms were also scheduled. Impressed by the depth of knowledge in this story, Reddit asked WXIA to conduct an “Ask Me Anything” forum that received more than 864 comments and questions in six hours.