Sample Annotated Stories

Annotating stories is an essential part of a solutions journalism class. Here are five annotated stories you can use as “answer keys” after providing the unannotated stories to your students and asking them to identify the four pillars.

Audio Story: Stability or speculation: What community land trusts teach us about affordable housing and the annotation of this story.

Written Story: How Lithuania More Than Halved Its Suicide Rate and the annotation of this story.

Broadcast TV Story: San Diego’s Organic Waste Recycling program shows progress after first full year and the annotation of this story.

Multimedia Story: Wyoming Cowboys Are Breaking Down Barriers, Literally and the annotation of this story.

TikTok Story: A More Sustainable Baking Practice Is Here and the annotation of this story.

You can find more stories for your students to annotate in the Solutions Story Tracker.

How to teach this: Provide students with editable PDFs or documents they can download, mark up and upload. Ask them to use a key with four different colors representing the response and how; evidence of effectiveness; insights; and limitations, and then highlight every instance they find of each one. It can be helpful to have them work in teams during class the first time, or work individually and compare their highlights in teams. After that, this is a valuable homework assignment.

Tip: Repeat this exercise several times throughout the class. Your students’ skill in identifying the pillars will improve with practice and help them focus on what they need in their own reporting and interviews.