7 Tips for Journalists Interested in Pursuing Solutions-Oriented Stories on #MeToo

The volume and variety of reporting on sexual harassment and assault in the last year has skyrocketed. According to the Women’s Media Center’s new report, the number of articles on sexual assault is up over 30 percent since the Harvey Weinstein story broke. And yet, very few journalists and/or outlets have dedicated attention and resources to finding out what responses to toxic educational or professional environments work, what kind of prevention efforts prove effective to reducing the chances of that toxicity in the first place, or what processes for accountability, justice, and even healing exist.

The Solutions Journalism Network spent a day exploring what these kinds of stories might look like together with journalists, organizers, educators, and entrepreneurs from around the country. And launched a fund (now closed) for just this kind of reporting! Here’s some of what we learned together:

Kids are paying attention.

While federally-funded sex education remains focused on abstinence-only frameworks, kids are finding out about sex and consent (or a lack thereof) through other sources, including porn, fiction (the teenager on our panel said she and her friends read and watched 50 Shades of Gray, despite it being cast as a trend among older women!), Big Mouth, and sex vloggers. Understanding the impact of these sources can lead to all kinds of fresh angles, like Maggie Jones’ porn literacy piece. There are a wide variety of efforts outside of the school setting, like the Coaching Boys into Men program, and a new documentary film, Roll Red Roll, which is doing screenings and discussions to raise awareness of the cultural dynamics in communities where sexual assault is brushed under the rug. (See our collection of vetted stories on sex education for more inspiration.)

The courts are not the only place survivors are pursuing justice.

In communities where policing, the courts, and the prison system have long felt like violent institutions in and of themselves, many survivors of sexual violence are not inclined to report their perpetrators. Instead, frameworks like restorative justice and transformative justice are proving to be sources of homegrown healing. These processes take a long time, and often involve family and friends of both the survivor and the perpetrator. As Ejeris Dixon, an expert on transformative justice, told us: “All justice is about relationships.”

Laws are changing, but access is still limited.

As reported in The New York Times, and expanded upon in our day together by Emily Martin, VP of the National Women’s Law Center, the laws around sexual harassment and assault are shifting. The next step is to make sure that those who have endured sexual harassment and/or assault have the resources to pursue legal action if they want to (the province of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund) and that people know their legal rights. It would be great to see more journalists pursuing stories about educational and organizing efforts (like the National Domestic Worker Alliance’s newly announced effort to create a bill of rights) to expand awareness and access to legal recourse for those who may want to pursue it.

Entrepreneurs and technologists are rising to the occasion.

Chef Erin Wade described how she and her employees came up with a simple, color-coded system to address sexual harassment in her restaurant and Jaime-Alexis Fowler talked about a new app that allows people to text about “tough work situations” — surfacing many sexual harassment situations in workplaces around the country. Callisto, an third-party app for reporting sexual assault, has been around for three years on college campuses and is now expanding into professional settings. What are the other innovations — inside and outside of organizations — that are ripe for coverage like these?

Boys and men are increasingly getting involved.

While much of it is off the radar (as discussed by Andrew Marantz and Darnell Moore), men are starting to grapple with their complicity, victimhood, and power to be part of the solutions in a big way. Psychotherapist Avi Klein talked about the therapeutic work that men are doing to confront their own behavior (interview to go live soon from On Being). Clearly there is a real opportunity here for journalists, of all genders, to paint a vivid picture of what this grappling looks like right now, both formally and informally. (See our collection of vetted stories on male-focused and led interventions for more inspiration.)

Place matters.

Brian O’Conner, who does boys and men education all over the country with Futures Without Violence, reports that regional, racial, and religious differences play a huge role in how communities understand, process, and create safety. While there may be some real upsides to living in small towns and rural settings, it also might make reporting harder for some survivors. There is a wide variety of journalism begging to be done by local reporters on what kinds of nuances their readers and listeners face while architecting responses in this #metoo moment.

Too many survivors have experienced re-traumatizing treatment at the hands of journalists. We must and can do better.

#MeToo’s communications lead, Chelsea Fuller, talked about the many calls her outfit gets from journalists saying things like, “Can you get me a victim in the next hour?” Of course we face the reality of deadlines, but it’s critical that journalists listen, understand, and report in a way that doesn’t feel extractive but empathic. Take time. Build relationships. Honor these stories with accuracy and nuance. The Dart Center has many resources on the responsible ways to report on sexual violence.