Impact

The Philadelphia Citizen (June 2020): After The Philadelphia Citizen highlighted a basketball program in Virginia that helps keep people out of prison, Philadelphia Youth Basketball created a similar program. In 2019, The Citizen wrote about the Virginia program, called RVA League for Safer Streets, and also invited one of its leaders to talk at its Ideas We Should Steal Festival. 

Foundation for Investigative Journalism (June 2022): After the Foundation for Investigative Journalism published a solutions journalism article titled “Soilless Farming to the Rescue. How to Boost Agriculture Without Hurting Forests,” one of the people featured in the story, Adebowale Onafowora, saw a surge in inquiries about hydroponic growing techniques. People seeking more information cited the story as the reason they reached out, according to Abdullah Tijani, who wrote the article.

Kansas Leadership Center Journal (November 2022): After the Kansas Leadership Center Journal, a civic issues magazine, published a solutions story about how a small group in Emporia, Kansas, is working to bridge ethnic and linguistic differences, the Journal organized an event that drew 45 people, about half of whom identified as Hispanic. Some attendees — who also included a state legislator, the Emporia city manager and two city commissioners — expressed hope that the group would remain connected.

Red/Acción, an online publication in Argentina that specializes in “periodismo humano” (aka solutions journalism), recruited seven media organizations in seven other Latin American countries to experiment with a story-sharing network. When it launched, editor David Flier wrote that the news organizations “believe that sharing these kinds of stories, the experiences and knowledge they contain, helps us imagine better solutions.” The collaboration published and shared hundreds of stories throughout 2021.

A spokeswoman for a sewer district in northeast Ohio credited a solutions journalism story with helping double the number of low-income renters who signed up for a program aimed at helping them pay their sewer bills. The story was part of the Northeast Ohio Solutions Journalism Collaborative’s “Making Ends Meet” project, and was published by Ideastream Public Media, which represents local television and radio stations.

Solutions coverage of democracy helped Prism raise $100,000 for additional politics and democracy reporting. Shirley Vilca, Prism’s development director, said the newsroom’s solutions journalism approach helped attract a major donor who she said was drawn to this editorial approach. Prism also highlights its solutions work in its impact report, which staff members use in fundraising efforts.

Mpindi Abaas, a 2020 Solutions Journalism Network LEDE Fellow and longtime proponent of solutions journalism, launched Solutions Now Africa, a solutions-focused newsroom based in Uganda, run by seven alumni of the Media Challenge Fellowship Program. The newsroom is Africa’s first solutions journalism newsroom, producing stories on innovations, models and systems that are working around the continent. The newsroom also is using solutions stories to challenge negative narratives about Africa.

Executives from Graham Media Group say their new digital solutions journalism program, called Solutionaries, has already attracted more than a million views on YouTube. The program was inspired by solutions journalism training that SJN provided to Graham’s seven TV stations and its national desk. Solutionaries features reports from each of Graham’s newsrooms.

A story explained how farmers in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, figured out that leftover stalks and leaves from their corn crops could feed cattle and reduce air pollution. The head of the city of Cuauhtémoc’s ecology department announced that the city would stop burning leftover corn stalks and leaves, too, crediting the story as one impetus for the policy change.

El Colectivo 506, a grassroots news organization in Costa Rica, hosted a Zoom call in which rural journalists, national and regional authorities and readers discussed the newsroom’s coverage of how communities can better prepare for and prevent climate disasters. As a result, people from different parts of Costa Rica met one another and shared ideas about how national and regional leaders can work together. The richness of the discussion convinced El Colectivo 506 to host more such solutions-oriented conversations.

During the second half of July 2021, Santa Cruz Local, a two-year-old outlet, launched a reader revenue campaign to support its reporting on homelessness. Within two weeks, staff members raised about $20,000 from roughly 100 local readers, their most successful fundraising campaign to date.