Giving Compass' Take:

• Educator Jillian Bauer-Reese, who teaches journalism at Temple University, demonstrates to students the methods of solutions journalism. 

• How is solutions journalism making us think differently about our communities and issues they experience?

• Here are three ways to drive revenue with solutions journalism. 

Last fall, the New York Times Magazine published a long feature about a neighborhood in Philadelphia that called it the “Walmart of Heroin.” That same day, Jillian Bauer-Reese, who teaches journalism at Temple University, was with some of her students in the same neighborhood, meeting with a local group that had been working in the area for more than three decades to provide jobs, housing and community-building support.

Bauer-Reese, who is currently in the midst of teaching her third semester-long solutions journalism course on covering addiction in Philadelphia, took to Twitter to describe the contrast in journalistic approach: “It was an odd juxtaposition to be talking about minimizing harm while reading a piece that could only be described as trauma porn.”

It was that work that inspired Bauer-Reese to embark on a class at Temple focused on addiction — both on the immense, and sometimes seemingly insurmountable problems it creates, and also on responses to those problems.

It’s important for people to realize that if they’re going to explore a single subject, even if they feel as though they’re an expert in the subject, to have a very open mind about what you’ll learn in the process when you’re reporting on that topic through a solutions lens,” Bauer-Reese said.

Read the full article about solutions journalism by Sara Catania at The Whole Story