News Ambassadors

News Ambassadors enlists college journalism students to help local newsrooms fill gaps in coverage of underreported communities - with stories that uplift solutions and common ground and are responsive to the needs of the local communities themselves. We train participants to use solutions journalism and Complicating the Narratives practices as they report stories informed by local community priorities.

News Ambassadors offers training on two methods:

1) Solutions Journalism, rigorous reporting on solutions to wide-facing social problems including the four pillars: Response to an existing problem; Evidence of how the response worked (or why it didn't); Limitations to the approach; and Insight or lessons learned to help others considering whether to try similar approaches in their own communities and contexts.

2) Depolarization Reporting Strategies, focused on the four pillars of Complicating the Narratives method, designed by High Conflict author/journalist Amanda Ripley and her Good Conflict colleague Hélène Biandudi Hofer. The strategies were born from researching conflict mediation psychology studies -- how people actually behave when they're feeling suspicious and threatened by the other side - and distilling lessons journalists can use to improve coverage of contentious issues.

News Ambassadors director Shia Levitt is an accredited trainer of both methods, and gave a preview of some of the depolarization methods at Citizen University's 2024 webinar on "Strategies for Journalists and Storytellers to Strengthen Civic Culture" (https://thefulcrum.us/media-technology/building-civic-culture). The strategies are designed for journalists to use covering contentious issues but have applications for many different types of reporting as well as beyond the journalism field.

Newsrooms or classrooms interested in exploring a depolarization training can get in touch via our Depolarization Training Interest Form (https://forms.gle/jmXGk8rU6PxzwTb17) or reach out via LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/newsambassadors/).