Initiative

Democracy

Newsrooms are examining what's working to strengthen democratic health and expanding coverage of enfranchisement.

Photo by Just Eldredge Media / Atlanta Civic Circle

Ditch the Horse Race

Newsrooms like the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Atlanta Civic Circle, The Current (Lafayette) and WITF-FM are embodying community-centered, solutions-focused campaign coverage, swimming against the tide to make something special.

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The Solutions Journalism Network is supporting newsrooms that are adopting innovative approaches to how they cover politics, government and elections, working to better serve their communities and strengthen democracy. This work includes:

The Building Democracy Fellowship, a nine-month program in which journalists from 15 newsrooms are building skills they need to adopt solutions-focused coverage of government.
A massive open online course (MOOC) on how to adopt a community- and solutions-focused approach to covering elections and politics. Called “A Better Way to Cover Elections: Campaign Reporting that Centers Communities and Solutions,” this course is available free to interested journalists or newsrooms to complete at their own pace.
The Advancing Democracy Fellowship, offered in partnership with Hearken, Trusting News and Good Conflict. Participating journalists spend nine months learning and applying skills they need to adopt a community- and solutions-focused approach to coverage of politics and elections. (The 2024 fellowship is underway; check back here for news about what comes next.)

Building Democracy Fellowship

In September 2024, 15 newsrooms took up the challenge of rethinking how and why they cover government and democracy, expanding the vital coverage of what’s going wrong with newsworthy stories highlighting efforts that are going right, and what communities can learn from them. Over nine months, participating newsrooms will learn the skills needed for solutions-focused government coverage, and put them into practice. Partners for this effort include Big Local News, the FrameWorks Institute and Partnership for Public Service.

Participating newsrooms are:

Atlanta Civic Circle – Georgia
Dallas Free Press – Texas
Honolulu Civil Beat – Hawaii
LINK nky – Kentucky
Northwest Public Broadcasting – Washington
Richland Source/Knox Pages – Ohio
Texas Standard – Texas
The Current – Georgia
The Current – Louisiana
The Haitian Times – New York and Ohio
The Journal – Kansas
The Philadelphia Citizen – Pennsylvania
The Salt Lake Tribune – Utah
WITF – Pennsylvania
WUWM – Wisconsin

Massive Open Online Course on How to Better Cover Democracy

“A Better Way to Cover Elections: Campaign Reporting that Centers Communities and Solutions,” is a course that distills the skills taught in our nine-month Advancing Democracy Fellowship. Over a series of modules, which you can complete at your own pace, you’ll learn an effective and innovative alternative to the traditional horse-race approach to election reporting, which will help you better serve your communities and strengthen democracy. This course is for anyone who is dissatisfied with traditional coverage of politics, elections and democracy and wants tools and strategies to increase trust and engagement, reduce polarization, and employ solutions journalism to help communities address problems and hold politicians to account.

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Advancing Democracy Fellowship

Many newsrooms cover politics, but few spend much time on democracy — the electoral and governmental systems that make our country what it is. The Advancing Democracy Fellowship is changing that.

Through a series of fellowships from 2021 to 2024, we’ve supported more than 500 journalists from 80 newsrooms that are moving away from covering politics like a sport — which research shows leads to distrust in candidates and the media — and instead employing skills to empower, include, inform and collaborate with the public. These newsrooms are using community-centered and solutions-focused practices that are helping them play a more constructive role in advancing and improving U.S. democracy.

The Solutions Journalism Network, Hearken and Trusting News jointly run the initiative.

The program includes training, coaching, peer support and a stipend to support innovative news coverage. The goal is for newsrooms to adopt practices that address our democracy’s challenges by helping news organizations build civic engagement, equity and healthy discourse.

Newsrooms participate in a curriculum that includes training in The Citizens Agenda approach, solutions journalism, Engaged Elections, Good Conflict and building trust with audiences.

Participating newsrooms in 2024 are: