Giving Compass' Take:
- Here are five tips for solutions journalists when reporting on historically marginalized communities to address and end barriers to inclusion and equity.
- How can donors advocate for solutions journalism?
- Read about funders' role in protecting marginalized communities.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
Too often, journalists write about marginalized communities, focusing mainly on their problems. Not Oscar Perry Abello (Next City) and Priti Salian (freelance), who have long written with and for communities. Between them, they’ve produced more than 75 stories exploring what’s working to help people overcome barriers to inclusion, equality, and prosperity in the economy, education, medicine and beyond.
Abello and Salian spoke with the Solutions Journalism Network’s 2021 and 2020 LEDE fellows — competitively selected journalism entrepreneurs spreading solutions journalism — about how to report solutions stories for/with communities that have been deprived of power, privilege and resources. Below are Abello and Salian’s five main tips. You can also check out the full one-hour discussion, where they walk through examples in their own reporting:
- Study and reference the history of the community you’re covering
- Acknowledge the community’s agency
- Tackle sensitive information thoughtfully
- Resist extraction
- Craft your narrative with an eye to your source’s preferences and best interests.
Read the full article about solutions journalism on marginalized communities by Oscar Perry Abello and Priti Salian at The Whole Story.