Giving Compass' Take:

• Reporters and editors share how utilizing solutions journalism approach to cover stories in other communities helped them understand issues more broadly.

• How can donors help support widening the scope of reporting, especially for smaller, rural media outlets? How does bringing in a diversity of experiences help progress solutions journalism? 

• Read about networking solutions to help build local newsrooms. 

Many of us living in rural places can fall into the trap of thinking we’re the only community who has ever suffered from a particular intractable issue — economic decay, aging populations, opiate addiction, and more. The resulting sense of hopelessness is problematic, especially when the stories we see in our news media reflect back to us only the problems — and not what’s being done about them. Solutions journalism combats that myth head on, opening a new set of questions for reporters to pursue, and exposing communities to a wider set of ideas.

To understand more, we interviewed a dozen editors and reporters at small and medium-sized shops in our network that have traveled out of town or even state to report a solutions story. Here’s what our network has learned so far about why — and how — it’s done:

  • Your community’s problems aren’t unique. Sometimes newsrooms look deep in their own backyards to figure out what’s working to address a problem. But other times, the solutions really are elsewhere.
  • Focus on the burning issues. What keeps your audience up at night? For a story about an outside town to resonate, it has to tackle a burning issue back home.
  • Start with who you know. Start by asking people you already know what efforts, cities, or states they’re studying as models.
  • Find your data ally. Who keeps track of regional or national statistics on the issue you’re reporting on? Can they help you identify positive deviants in the data, or places bucking a trend?
  • Lead local. “To someone who’s reading in Chicago, [I wanted] to show people what that place is like, and connect it with them,” Emmanuel told me. “That first sentence set up the expectation for the story — that we have something to learn from this place.”

Read the full article about solutions journalism helps look toward other communities by Leah Todd at The Whole Story.