Impact Stories

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.

In its solutions reporting on the high cost of housing, the CJC wrote about how housing vouchers (the so-called golden tickets to housing for many low-income people) often expired before recipients could use them. The collaborative followed that story with solutions-focused reports on what other places were doing to prevent that problem. Ultimately, the Charlotte Housing Authority voted to give families with federal housing vouchers more time to use the rental assistance — one of the solutions the CJC featured.

Twelve hours after the CTMirror published a story that explored the investments other states were making to maximize participation in the census, the governor's office scheduled a press conference to announce Connecticut had decided to invest $500,000.

The Plain Dealer of Cleveland tackled the problem of childhood lead poisoning in its city with a series of stories that included a solutions-focused look at how other cities were doing a better job of preventing poisoning in the first place. The reporters said the solutions stories were key in sparking change because they showed Cleveland had options it wasn’t pursuing. Most recently, in July 2019, the Cleveland City Council passed a landmark law requiring any property built before 1978 to be certified as lead-free before it can be rented.

James E. Causey, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, wrote about a community garden in the city as part of his series “Cultivating a Community.” The solutions story looked at how young boys benefit from growing fruit and vegetables on a small plot of urban land as a means to steer clear of other activities that could ultimately lead to incarceration. Causey said his reporting “turned out bigger than being a piece on a man working on an urban garden and trying to address the needs of the community” and that he “found a lot of love in a community where people believed love didn’t exist.” After the story came out, the organization managing the garden secured its nonprofit status and received $30,000 in funding. It also saw an increase in people looking to mentor and volunteer with the project.