Finding Ideas for Solutions Stories

Students who want to do solutions journalism aren’t always sure where to begin. Our Basic Toolkit has sections on finding and vetting solutions stories; here are some ways to go about finding stories and some tips to keep in mind:

Finding responses:

• Begin with engagement. What do people in the community know? Solutions are sometimes hidden in plain sight. Engagement work is important in discerning what people actually need, and it’s also helpful in finding out about responses that are already happening. 
• Look for small slices. Every problem is made up of lots of smaller problems. It’s often difficult to find a “solution” to the overall problem (e.g., poverty or energy security), but easier to find solutions stories about how people are solving smaller slices (e.g., job training, housing or renewable energy). Choose a small slice of a problem in your own area, and look for who’s having some success tackling it. Or conversely, find a response in your community, and then identify the small-slice problem it addresses.
• Ask the experts. When looking for a solutions story, ask people who study the problem you’re interested in. They probably know about various responses and which are most effective, equitable, efficient or otherwise worth writing about.
• Follow the money. Foundations don’t support efforts that can’t demonstrate success, so look at the list of organizations being funded by local foundations. Just make sure the story is about the response, not a profile of the organization.
• Look for positive deviants in data. Who’s doing something better? Positive deviants are great because they provide ready-made justification for why you’re choosing this particular story. You’re working backwards from the evidence instead of the other way around.
• Browse the Solutions Story Tracker. It might be time for a follow-up story on a response implemented long ago, or there might be an expert quoted in a story who can be asked, “What else has been done since then?”
  Talk to a reference librarian. College libraries employ librarians whose passion is helping students. They can assist with finding leads on solutions worth reporting on: data, experts, donors and more.
   

Other tips:

• Solutions journalism works for widely shared problems. If a problem is widely shared, then people in various places are trying to solve it. If it’s a problem here and you can’t find anyone responding to it, look for responses elsewhere.
• Solutions journalism is enterprise reporting. It’s not a way to cover breaking news. But it can be ideal for a follow-up to a breaking news story if the underlying issue is a widely shared problem and someone is addressing it.
• Many problem stories mention but don’t explore solutions. Look for “afterthoughts” — brief mentions of solutions — in problem-centered stories. Find out whether anything effective is being done that wasn’t covered in the story. 
• A solutions story can be about a problem of any scope. Whether the subject is a neighborhood effort or a countrywide initiative,  the story should be proportional to the problem it is trying to address.
• Evidence of effectiveness can be qualitative as well as quantitative. Your reporting can include data, on-the-ground interviews, experts, anecdotes, firsthand observations and other evidence, so long as it’s clear and convincing. 
• Don’t look for perfection. It doesn’t exist. Instead, find a response that’s effective — there may be many to choose from — and report on how well the response works and where it falls short.
• The test: Is it a good story? Use the same judgments you make all the time with traditional stories.
   

How to teach this: As in-class assignments or homework, ask students to choose a problem in the news right now that interests them and make an annotated list of five real people who could help them identify a solution worth reporting on. (The annotations should include names, titles, why they would be helpful, and their emails and phone numbers.)

Tip: Some students are reluctant or afraid to talk to real people. Build their confidence by having them work in pairs to research and come up with questions for the people they will call to help find responses. This should include research into who the people are, what they have done and why they would be useful contacts, as well as an explanation of what the students are looking for (what an effective response is) and why (what solutions journalism is). Remind your students to end every interview with, “Is there anyone else you suggest I contact?”