Solutions journalism investigates and explains, in a critical and clear-eyed way, how people try to solve widely shared problems. While journalists usually define news as “what’s gone wrong,” solutions journalism tries to expand that definition: responses to problems are also newsworthy. By adding rigorous coverage of solutions, journalists can tell the whole story.

Solutions journalism complements and strengthens coverage of problems. Journalists are often frustrated when painstaking investigations of a problem don’t produce change. We expose our city’s failures to save children from lead paint, or to protect high school football players from concussions, or to recover from the closing of a major factory — but, too often, officials simply dismiss these investigations, saying “we’re doing the best we can.”

Now add solutions journalism to the investigation, showing how other cities are solving these problems. That’s profoundly embarrassing to public officials. Excuses won’t cut it. Change happens.

Solutions stories don’t celebrate responses to problems, or advocate for specific ones; they cover them, investigating what was done and what the evidence says worked and didn’t work about it, and why. They report on the limitations of a response.

Read the full article about solutions journalism at Medium.