Impact Stories

Thanks to Lavun Community Radio’s solutions-oriented coverage in the local Nupe language, several communities neighboring Kutigi, a town in Nigeria’s North Central region, were able to replicate improvements addressing challenges with utilities such as electricity, potable water and environmental sanitation. Leaders from a neighboring town and settlement sought guidance from Kutigi’s utilities commission and subsequently set up steering committees to manage various maintenance strategies, which included providing skills training for young people to become involved in the work. (Lavun Radio, a community-owned and operated station, was trained in solutions journalism as part of the Solutions Journalism Africa Initiative, managed by Nigeria Health Watch.)

Gabriela Barzallo (January 2024): Reporter Gabriela Barzallo wrote a solutions story titled “¿Puede la bioeconomía tomar el relevo al petróleo en la Amazonia ecuatoriana?” (“Can the bioeconomy replace oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon?” https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-06-22/can-the-bioeconomy-replace-oil-extraction-in-the-ecuadorian-amazon.html) for the Americas section of El País, one of the most extensive and trustworthy Spanish-language outlets, in June 2023. Shortly after, Ecuador’s minister of tourism, Niels Olsen, reached out to discuss some of the nonextractive economic practices she explored in her article, including ecotourism. In a plan for the country’s tourism industry outlined at the beginning of 2024, the minister specifically mentioned his intention to promote sustainable and entrepreneurial forms of tourism that would benefit rural and indigenous communities.

La Raza (2023): The Field Foundation of Illinois provided a $25,000 grant to La Raza, a leading Spanish newspaper in Chicago, to support its coverage of democracy and the Hispanic community ahead of the 2024 election cycle. Moving beyond the usual horse race coverage, Jesús Del Toro, the publication's director and general manager, said La Raza would be “transparent in what is covered and how we do it, opening our reporting to include our audience’s perspectives and needs regarding politics and elections, and producing content that showcases local solutions and initiatives.” It also plans to produce “educational materials, such as voter guides, to help our immigrant readers to better understand democracy and its process in the USA,” explained Del Toro. (La Raza participated in the 2023 edition of the Advancing Democracy Fellowship, led by SJN, Hearken and Trusting News.)

As a result of working for the Southern New Mexico Journalism Collaborative, which brings together nine media outlets covering COVID-19 and pandemic recovery from a solutions lens, several journalists pursued opportunities for career growth and professional development. Diana Alba Soular, who has 15 years’ experience in legacy newsrooms, took the job of project manager and editor with the collaborative and said, “Solutions journalism opened my eyes to possibilities of what journalism can be.” While there are many persistent issues in New Mexico, she said media organizations could take more responsibility “to advance the health of our communities,” by learning and reporting on better ways to tackle problems. Another reporter, Reyes Mata III, developed his skills in solutions journalism through work done for the collaborative. His reporting and the attention he received contributed to his working as a freelancer for The Washington Post.

In March of 2023, the mayor of Salt Lake City, Erin Mendenhall, credited the Great Salt Lake Collaborative with bringing attention to the lake's environmental issues, which also have a damaging effect on the state of Utah as a whole. “With many thanks actually, I need to cite our great local reporters of the Great Salt Lake Collaborative who’ve been beating this drum for years,” she said, “and that combined with the national attention from The New York Times last summer, and that collectively has brought eyes and minds in an almost unbelievable way.” This acknowledgment from a high-ranking public official demonstrated the influence media coverage had on public discourse and government action. That same month, Utah’s governor signed a series of bills into law aimed at water conservation and saving the lake. One of the provisions was for the creation of a Great Salt Lake commissioner position to oversee the implementation of new policies. The water policy memorandum produced by the commissioner’s office, which provides an overview of legislation passed in the five years prior, stated: “The GSLC elevates attention to the Lake by increasing the number of stories about the Great Salt Lake and water in Utah. The water user community, and in particular state agencies, should proactively engage with the news media to ensure reporters have a complete understanding of the depth and breadth of the actions being taken to protect the Lake.” In September of that year, a coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the state of Utah, accusing political leaders and agencies of not doing enough to save the Great Salt Lake. The legal action’s case rested on the public trust doctrine, which was used successfully to address water shortages affecting Mono Lake in California. The Salt Lake Tribune, along with other publications in the collaborative, had produced a solutions-focused series a year earlier exploring, among other approaches, how the legal doctrine had been put to use to preserve the lake’s water.

Climate Solutions (2023): Climate Solutions, a collaborative of news outlets convened by the public media partnership StateImpact Pennsylvania, wanted to get feedback about its project from the community. It formed a listening group of nine people, which it assembled six times between 2022 and 2023, and asked how their behaviors had changed as a result of reading climate solutions stories produced by the collaborative. Those stories included coverage of home energy savings and responses to flooding, as well as a seven-part video series titled “What can I do about climate change,” created in response to a question that emerged from its engagement work. Twelve of the top 50 performing stories on StateImpact Pennsylvania’s website were solutions oriented. Participants in the group unanimously shared how they learned from the information and talked about it at work or in their personal lives. Some described a growing awareness of climate change and taking small actions in their day-to-day lives to mitigate its consequences or getting involved in local climate-focused projects.