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Solutions Journalism
- 1. #studio20 Blair Hickman| Dowser Media Solution Journalism
- 2. #studio20 Today’s news coverage is not designed to help society self-correct.
- 3. #studio20 Problem-Frame Bias The last 30 years… Tamil Tigers Irish 800 Grameen Republican Army Bank 3600 84
- 4. #studio20 Solution Journalism Thoughtful, critical stories about how people are advancing new ideas, models and institutions to address social ills more effectively. Who is solving what and how?
- 5. #studio20 Story What’s broken? Powerful What’s working? What’s the goal? How do we get there? Innovation and Change
- 6. #studio20 Tools! http://dowser.org/solution-journalism/toolkit
- 7. #studio20 http://dowser.org/solution-base
- 8. #studio20 http://dowser.org/solution-base
- 9. #studio20 Market Potential
- 10. Thank you to: #studio20 David Bornstein Jay Rosen Founder Mitch Stephens Peery SocEnt Program Zoe Fraade-Blanar BYU All my Studio20 colleagues Jonathan Stray The AP @amandablair hickman.blair@gmail.com #SolutionJournalism
Notas del editor
- Hi, my name is Blair Hickman, and my partner was Dowser Media, which is a news site founded by David Bornstein in 2009 to produce and advance journalism that critically examines potential solutions to the world’s major problems, what we’ve been calling “solution journalism.” My project was to both lay down a more concrete definition of Solution Journalism and create a suite of tools to help reporters cover social change more effectively. The big problem we’re tackling here is….
- The big problem we’re tackling here is that today’s news coverage is not designed to help society self-correct. That is the purpose of the press, and why many journalists entered the field in the first place.But I bet if I asked you guys to think of 5 major national or global problems, and then think of 5 promising solutions, it would be pretty difficult. Many people have ideas about how to remedy this, but Dowser’s proposed piece of the puzzle is more balanced coverage of both problems and existing solutions. Right now, that’s not happening.
- The media’s overwhelming theory seems to be that problems are newsworthy, but solutions are not.David did some number crunching in his last book, and in the last three decades, the New York Times has referred to the GrameenBan—the microfinance pioneer-- in 84 stories, a third of them since Grameen won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, yet it’s referred to the Tamil Tigers in eight hundred stories and the Irish Republican Army in 3,600.Yet the Grameen Bank, which you can trace back to 1976, is one of the preeminent financial social enterprises. There are now 200 million families that are considered clients of microfinance. That’s about 1 billion people whose lives have been influenced by this institution and its idea. The microfinance model basically shifted the entire field of international development—in both positive and negative ways. Yet for some reason, that’s not considered newsworthy.
- We think the theory here is that exposing problems is that will kind of get people riled up and they’ll fix things. But that’s kind of like criticizing your children every day, and expecting them to become better people. Eventually, they tune out.Our answer is Solution Journalism, which is not advocacy or hagiography, or feel-goodstories, and doesn’t take any sort of social change as a self-evident good thing.It’s journalism that looks for truly innovative models with promising, evidence-based rates of success, and then presents those stories in powerful, critical narratives that explores the minutiae of how the strategy operates.
- While crafting this definition, we dove into behavioral and social psychology of how people change, and found that there are four basic themes that people need to know to solve problems:what’s brokenWhat’s workingWhat the goal is? How do we get there?And, for our purposes, they need it all wrapped up in a powerful story. A few individual journalists and outlets occasionally produce this type of reporting. The long-form narratives that AtulGawande writes for the New Yorker are perfect examples. But ultimately, it’s pretty scattered. What we need is a more concentrated effort to increase both the quality and quantity of these stories. Should a journalist who covers a problem also have a responsibility to present potential solutions? And if they did, would this make people more interested when they cover problems?
- To help this along, I developed a toolkit to serve a variety of different users. It is up, in alpha, and has:-A short video explainer-A manifesto-A casebook-Heuristics -Vocabulary-Starting points for professors, data journalists and short-form web writers -Guide on how to solutionize your problem story-How to pitch solution journalismAnd a source base….
- Dowser has vetted a little over 700 social enterprises that, right now, live on an Excel spreadsheet. But we’re working to get them into an online database that you can search based on Problem, Solution, Beat or Location. Right now, we have a basic working mockupSo when you click on one of these placemarkers, you’ll be taken to…
- An organization’s page, which will have all the information you need to get started. And you may be saying, well, that all sounds well and good, but why should I care? People say they want good news, but when we provide it, traffic goes down.
- But we believe Solution Journalism has a very strong potential market. And drawing that traffic does not need to be hard. I did some preliminary research over the summer, and what I found was that a well-done piece of Solution Journalism, put in the right vertical—and that does not mean something called “Impact” or “Doing Good”—was shared prolifically. The Fixes column, which David writes for the Times with Tina Rosenberg, almost always makes Most Popular and Emailed lists.There’s an entire untapped demographic of users that want this kind of information because it’s about power. It helps them advance the goals they’ve set for themselves.
- The ultimate takeaway here is not that Solution Journalism is the answer but that, right now, people are craving a new type of news that helps them fix society’s major problems. And the press is in a unique position to remap its sources and rethink its content. We need to start experimenting with how to do this. So please, try out our guide and give us feedback. We’re using the hashtag #SolutionJournalism. And if your organization wants help or has questions, please do reach out to me at @amandablair or hickman.blair@gmail.com.Thank you to David Bornstein. Solution Journalism is really is baby, and without him, I wouldn’t have had this project.BYU’s Peery Social Entrepreneurship program for research and coding helpJonathan Stray, for helping me realize there are lots of options for a news environment to help society self-correct.Thanks to Jay, Zoe and Mitch Stephens – who originally connected me with Dowser.And thanks to all of my Studio20 colleagues for all of their moral support and feedback.