5 Ideas for Boosting Your Solutions Coverage
How consistent signposting and messaging can help get your stories noticed
Sarah Gustavus, SJN’s Economic Mobility initiative manager, contributed to this reporting.
Growing numbers of news organizations are dedicating more effort, and more space, to substantive solutions coverage. But it’s not always clear that audiences know what they’re seeing — or why.
They should. With news avoidance and distrust in the media rising to unprecedented levels, we believe that now is the time to consider labeling and promoting solutions journalism so audiences can identify what distinguishes this coverage.
There is an opportunity to showcase a fresh paradigm by elevating what is being done right to address endemic crises.
A year ago, Joy Mayer from Trusting News published this blog post, in which she wrote, “If you want solutions work to be part of the story of your journalism, you need to actually tell that story.” Mayer recommends that newsrooms mention the solutions frame of their work on social media, in newsletters, within articles and by creating dedicated landing pages. With this blog post, we have included some of Mayer’s examples and added a few of our own, in the hope that some of you will consider appropriating these ideas and testing whether they’ll work for your news organization.
By doubling down on these recommendations, we can offer five strategies for maximizing the ways your solutions reporting gets noticed. Upcoming research will test the actual effects of these practices.
The TL;DR version:
Go Meta: Inform your audience about the reasons you practice solutions journalism everywhere you describe your work.
Involve Your Whole Team: Make developing solutions journalism the responsibility of people across roles in your news organization.
Work Smarter, Not Harder, When It Comes to Messaging: Make boilerplate language about solutions journalism readily available to your newsroom.
Represent the Response With Visuals: Videos and photos matter. It’s worth the time and attention to go beyond stock photos and ensure visuals match the solutions focus of a story or series.
Put Time Into Headlines and Social Media Posts: Match the tone of the story and highlight the response (what’s different) in headlines, social media and newsletters.
Go Meta
Because you opt to cover not just problems but also what can be done about them, this kind of coverage likely aligns with your news organization’s values and mission. This is an opportunity to let your listeners, viewers and readers know what your organization’s values and mission are.
This isn’t just about transparency. It can help people become more media literate and identify your brand as a trusted source of information. Communicating directly about the kind of journalism you produce can help differentiate your approach to reporting. This will likely help nurture interest in solutions-driven coverage and could contribute to building reader loyalty.
Consider making this clear on your About page and in other solutions-focused sections to explain what solutions journalism is and why it is part of your editorial output.
Here are examples from Next City, the Seattle Times’ Education Lab, Reasons to be Cheerful, and The Richland Source.
Involve Your Whole Team
Don’t silo this work with one individual or group in your newsroom. Producing and leveraging powerful solutions stories to consistently meet your organizational goals requires building a habit that everyone can contribute to, from the editors to the engagement reporters and your sales or development staff.
If publishing a solutions journalism story is an outcome of the journalistic process, it’s also the start of a new distribution, engagement and marketing journey. Find ways to ensure your solutions-driven work doesn’t fall flat in “post-production.” Communicate across the organization to keep everyone informed about what is being produced and its hoped-for impact.
If solutions reporting is an editorial priority, engage in conversations with colleagues about how it can be leveraged and occupy a place in what they produce, too. Think of promoting this work in your media kits for advertisers, your annual reports, your grant applications and your events. Make solutions journalism a component of your plans to achieve sustainability and greater reach.
Work Smarter, Not Harder, When It Comes to Messaging
Instead of writing new language for every editor’s note, newsletter or response to a comment online, prepare concise and clear boilerplate wording to maintain messaging consistency. Develop several versions your team can use or refer to in preparation for urgent needs. This will also help save time.
We encourage you to describe your solutions-focused work with a message that your audience will be receptive to.
Setting up a dedicated section on your website, using click-through links among pieces, and consistently labeling this kind of content will signal to your audience that it is a cornerstone of your journalism.
The Trace, a publication focused on guns and gun violence in the United States, has a section called “How We Fix This” that highlights how “a growing body of evidence shows that there are existing interventions that can save lives right now.”
In one of The Trace’s newsletters, Akoto Ofori-Atta, the publication’s former managing editor, wrote more about its approach:
“Stories about solutions aren’t the breaking news that consumes so much of for-profit newsrooms’ time. Nor should they be puff pieces — far from it — or rest on politicians’ or law enforcement’s unvetted claims. Good solutions journalism requires writers and editors who’ve become experts on the subject they cover and are willing to challenge accepted narratives. It takes rigorous reporting, which means lots of time diligently gathering data, questioning policymakers, and talking to the people actually affected on the ground.”
The Narwhal, an online publication reporting on Canada’s natural world, has a “Solutions” section that explains, “Solutions journalism elevates public conversations by pointing to the root of problems and what is being done to fix them.” It describes the content readers can expect: “stories about renewable energy, the revitalization of Canada’s environmental laws and the ideas that are sparking revolutions in how we think about and move through our daily lives.”
The Hechinger Report’s Solutions section states: “We explain what’s working, what’s not and what matters in education. Our stories are deeply researched, carefully written and rigorously edited. Our mission isn’t only to expose problems. We want to find out what’s being done to fix them and whether those solutions are working and can be replicated.”
An editor’s note by the Jackson Hole News&Guide reads:
“The News&Guide believes reporting on solutions is just as vital as reporting on problems themselves. With training from the Solutions Journalism Network, the Jackson Hole News&Guide team has expanded, where possible, its attention to stories that hit the pillars of solutions journalism, which detail a response to a problem, examine its effectiveness, delve into limitations of the solution and provide insight to readers.
We hope this story serves to inspire you.”
Represent the Response With Visuals
Lisa Waananen Jones said in her blog post about teaching solutions journalism photography to students, “Photos show the ‘how’ very well, especially for any action- or process-based response.” Visuals offer another way to capture what the story describes, thereby helping the audience see the place where a response is being implemented as well as showing the agency of individuals involved.
If your story is about people who are working to solve a problem in their community, show them doing that work — not just people who are suffering. This is particularly crucial when covering communities that have often received attention for challenges or problems and not positive coverage of their assets or strengths.
A few key tips from our colleague Mikhael Simmonds, SJN’s Mid-Atlantic region manager and multimedia lead:
- Involve photographers early and often.
- Ask yourself who has agency in the story.
- Ask yourself how any images you may use make you feel.
You can find more suggestions for simple ways to tell a powerful, visual solutions story here.
Here is a good example from U.S. News & World Report’s series Childhood Cancer: Seeking a Better Global Solution.
Put Time Into Headlines and Social Media Posts
In our support to newsrooms of different sizes, we’re finding that problem-focused headlines generally don’t work. Challenge your audience by showing right in the headline that the story is different, or they may skip past it because they think they already know the issue. And it’s not just our instincts telling us that. A study by the Engaging News Project found that, while the difference is modest, solutions-focused headlines tend to increase the number of clicks.
It’s important to involve your entire team in training and planning for solutions-focused stories and projects.
Here are some examples we have been sharing lately with newsrooms:
1. ‘How’ headlines:
Taiwan has millions of visitors from China and only 45 coronavirus cases. Here’s how. (Vox)
2. Highlighting effectiveness and action:
A billboard that acts like 1,200 trees (OZY)
3. Statements with a hook:
Four officers, no weapons, no charges: A Yukon First Nation’s solution for keeping the peace (The Globe and Mail)
Let us know how it goes! If you try something and it works, please share what you’ve learned in this easy form: SJN Impact Tracker. If you want to discuss strategies, feel free to reach out to me at alec@solutionsjournalism.org.
