How to Sell Solutions Journalism
The solutions approach can drive new revenue for journalism. Five newsrooms reveal how they’ve done it.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen increasing evidence that solutions journalism drives stronger audience engagement. Solutions stories tend to heighten people’s sense of agency — problems can be solved, and I can play a part — in ways that change the quality of their news consumption. They spend more time with solutions stories, and they share those stories more often with friends and family. That can lead to greater trust in and loyalty to their news source.
The question: How can that pay the bills?
That’s far from an abstract challenge, of course: News organizations everywhere are struggling to replace traditional sources of revenue. Their ability to do so, or not, determines whether they can sustain quality reporting that serves their communities; as much as we journalists aspire to drive great civic value, we also have to make ends meet.
Thankfully, news organizations are discovering that solutions journalism can, in fact, unlock new revenues. Stronger audience engagement actually can translate into economic value. And there is a growing class of funders that see great appeal in rigorous stories that explain what works. Among others, more and more philanthropic foundations are growing comfortable with the notion of supporting journalism, and many are eager to help foster public understanding of and discourse around key social challenges and corresponding responses.
Here are three approaches that are getting traction: Fund a project. Fund a beat. Fund the approach.
Fund a project:
Arizona Daily Star: “Fixing our foster care crisis”
The Daily Star, a daily in Tucson co-owned by Gannett and Lee Enterprises, had reported intensively on the state’s ongoing foster care crisis — including soaring numbers of child neglect cases and removals. But “We really did want to differentiate our reporting by looking at what could be done,” says reporter Emily Bregel. They imagined a series that would surface ways to help families and protect children without unnecessarily removing kids from their homes. That would mean visiting other states that had engineered more effective approaches to caseworker training and retention; and correcting the often adversarial relationship between child welfare workers and the parents they serve.
Bregal and her colleague Patty Machelor, who has long covered foster care and social services as part of her beat, wrote up a pitch that described the project and explained the need for external funding: $10,000 for reporters’ travel to five states; $6,000 to attend a conference on child welfare issues; and $10,000 to produce a series of community forums. They sent it to Clint Mabie, president and CEO of the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona. Mabie was a longtime resource for the paper’s reporters. He had never funded a newsroom project.
“We had never been asked,” says Mabie. “All it took was the ask.” The foundation had a number of donors who were interested in foster care — including the family of a man, now deceased, who had grown up in the foster system and liked the idea of supporting targeted stories.
“When you have opportunity to have deep investigative reporting on a subject, donors are really excited to build awareness and deepen understanding,” Mabie says. “And the solutions focus made a difference for our donor. We are in a crisis situation in Arizona. We need to uncover what those issues are and what effective national models are and whether any of those can apply here.”
The community foundation awarded the Daily Star $26,000. Machelor and reporter Perla Trevizo won a $4,500 in support through a fellowship from the Center for Health Journalism at the USC/Annenberg Foundation, which supported additional investment in engagement activities — including an initial survey of parents that was translated into several languages; and roundtable discussions to surfaces issues and needs. The resulting project, “Fixing our foster care crisis,” launched in March, 2018. The Daily Star is working with Reveal’s “StoryWorks” program to turn the roundtable transcripts and reporters’ stories into a play that will be performed for state legislators later this year.
Another take: The Fuller Project
The Fuller Project, a two-year-old site dedicated to deep, investigative coverage of women’s issues, won a $400,000 grant from Humanity United in July to report on human trafficking with a strong solutions focus. This was the Fuller Project’s first multi-year foundational grant, and a third of the reporting they committed to deliver was earmarked for solutions journalism.
“I put [the solutions component] in our proposal, hoping it would be of interest to them and also because I thought it would create impact,” says executive director Christina Asquith. “The funder was very interested in that lens. She specifically pulled that out.”
Says Liz Baker, communications director at Humanity United: “This is an opportunity for us to better understand the potential of solutions journalism. It’s not something we’ve delved into in our media funding in the past. I’d like to explore what kind of impact it can have. In some ways, SJ implies a locality: What are some local solutions to trafficking. Something smaller scale that may not be getting coverage that other communities may find resonant.
The Fuller Project’s reporting on trafficking will launch in November.
What works:
Reporters can make the sell. “The pitch was successful because the reporters made it,” says the Daily Star’s Emily Bregel. “We were passionate about the project and it came across that we knew what we were talking about.
Make the boundaries explicit. More and more foundation funders understand that the journalism they support has to be independent — but make sure. Arizona Daily Star Editor Jill Jorden Spitz “was very clear from the beginning,” says reporter Trevizo. “[The foundation] wasn’t going to have control over content or read story drafts. Those conversations are key to make sure that expectations are clear before money is accepted.”
Fund a beat:
The Seattle Times: “Project Homeless”
In 2013, The Seattle Times partnered with SJN to explore challenges and solutions facing public education. “Education Lab,” initially funded for one year by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Knight Foundation, included two dedicated reporters and a full-time engagement director, as well as parts of a department editor, photographer, and other newsroom staff.
“Education Lab” generated strong audience engagement, with sharp increases in page views and time on page compared to non-solutions education coverage. It also attracted a significant community of interest in education issues; catalyzed more constructive public discourse on school issues; and helped prompt public policy changes. Most important, The Times has been able to demonstrate the impact of Ed Lab on the education community and public policy, providing critical proof-of-concept that solutions reporting can be catalytic.
The Times sold against Education Lab — targeted advertising online and in the newspaper, as well as sponsorships of public events and a weekly newsletter. “We tried a lot of things,” says Sharon Chan, vice president for innovation, product, and development. The paper eventually realized, she says, that the institutions that connected powerfully to solutions reporting were in it less for traditional advertising reach than for social impact. “That’s what we learned: Potential sponsors care about how will this improve the world. If there were errors I made in the beginning, it was about not acknowledging that. How do you connect journalism to social impact? And how can we deepen the coverage and conversation around of the problems they want to solve?”
This is how Chan thought about the virtuous cycle between coverage, engagement, impact, and revenue:
In fact, Ed Lab’s demonstrated impact helped build interest among funders to support other solutions-focused beats — most urgently, coverage of Seattle’s persistent homelessness problem.
The Times’ proposal — and its eventual coverage — emphasized investigation and explanation of the causes of the city’s homelessness. But it also promised to examine potential responses in Seattle and elsewhere: “This solutions-based journalism approach will attempt to change the public discourse on this subject, a community service that is at the core of The Seattle Times’ mission to serve readers.” The Times’ proposed budget included support for two reporters and an editor as well as a digital producer, a photographer videographer, a part-time graphics and interactive artist — and support for reporters’ travel to other cities to examine relevant innovations.
That framing resonated with a coalition of philanthropic and corporate funders. “The focus on systems change was important,” says Mary Grace Roske, chief brand officer at the Seattle Foundation, an important community foundation. “How can we address systems rather than symptoms? The project appealed because of its focus on how we got here, and what are the conditions that perpetuate homelessness? [The Times’] reporting has dug deep into how we get here and how we can solve this.”
The Seattle Foundation, BECU, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Campion Foundation, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Schultz Family Foundation, Seattle Mariners and Starbucks together invested $525,000 for the first year of Project Homeless, which launched in 2018, and $328,500 so far for year two.
Another take: New Hampshire Union Leader
The Union Leader, New Hampshire’s biggest daily paper, has secured philanthropic funding to support two solutions-focused beats, each with a dedicated full-time reporter. “Silver Linings,” a year-long initiative, supported by the Endowment for Health, focused on issues of the state’s aging population. “Beyond the Stigma” explores the substance abuse and mental health crisis, with funding from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, NAMI New Hampshire, and private individuals. And the Union Leader’s editor, Trent Spiner, says it’s close to nailing down a third issue-based grant.
What works:
Impact talks: “With Education Lab, we measured impact, and we told the story of that impact in the community — specifically of how solutions journalism changed conversation around intractable conversations,” says The Times’ Sharon Chan. “That prompted community leaders to ask: Could that approach be used for other intractable issues? Had we not had that story of impact to tell, I don’t think Project Homeless would have happened.”
“The Times has done an exceptional job with their metrics,” The Seattle Foundation’s Mary Grace Roske says. “Who is reading these pieces? Where is the highest traffic? Is this engaging the community in meaningful ways? Ultimately, what you look for is changes in policy, changes in how resources are being spent. When I see the reporting is influencing dialog at the policy level, I think the ROI is there.”
Focus on local accountability: “Leaders focused on this issue realize there is a ton of money being spent on homelessness, close to $200 million in our county,” Chan says. “But is it being spent in most effective way? That’s the accountability angle: Solutions journalism is intended to shine spotlight on what’s being done and whether it’s working.”
Community foundations tap into a rich vein of local support: Community foundations, which have emerged in many cities and towns, attract and aggregate networks of individuals who want to pool their donations with those of others to provide a critical mass of support for local causes. These individuals often are jazzed by the idea of expanding high-quality news coverage of the issues they care about.
Fund the approach:
The Richland Source
Early in 2018 the Richland Source — an energetic, online-only news organization in Mansfield, Ohio — launched an effort to underwrite its solutions journalism for the next year. The Source had already produced strong solutions projects on infant mortality, food security, and other issues. Now, it promised two new initiatives: “Rising from Rust,” a deep dive into how small cities can re-invent their economies; and “Gray Matters,” an examination of approaches to elder care.
Publisher Jay Allred wanted to monetize those efforts — but rather than selling discrete projects, he positioned his pitch as support for solutions reporting across the paper. “It was part pragmatism,” Allred says. “Managing one investment across multiple projects was easier than selling topic-related projects. And we wanted the freedom to use those funds as the stories developed.” But the sell also connected authentically to the Source’s mission. “We’ve been preaching the solutions gospel to our community for four years. They knew we believed in it, and this was a way for them to connect with that. We do things this way because it matters to us, and because it has a net positive impact. I didn’t want to thin-slice it any more than that.”
Allred sold “newsroom partnerships” — not advertising, and not sponsored content, but visible support for high-impact journalism. He promised supporters to steer all revenue into solutions reporting — leaving the paper flexibility to decide which projects and stories were priorities meriting resources. “While it is not traditional advertising, your brand will be associated with something incredibly constructive for an entire year,” his standard follow-up email promised.
He targeted local companies and organizations that were civic-minded and whose business or mission connected to the planned coverage — but which hadn’t before advertised in the Source, to avoid cannibalizing existing sales. He promised partners full transparency; recognition and thanks across media platforms and at events; and quarterly updates with his newsroom.
The Source routinely integrates its solutions stories with community-based discussions. And in March, with support from the Richland County Foundation, the paper organized a year-long, citizen-based effort to construct action plans for economic redevelopment — an initiative that launched by sending 15 residents to the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, to soak up ideas.
That approach hit home. “I thought this is a great way for us to support their work,” says Jodie Perry, president of the Richland Area Chamber of Commerce. “What they were trying to do in terms of bringing best practices from other communities, I’m supportive of that. We can learn a lot from other communities that have gone before us. It’s a huge factor in how I run the Chamber, looking at other communities. What they were trying to do spoke to how I run things.”
The result of Allred’s campaign: $67,500 from 22 local sources, all of it earmarked for solutions reporting. Ten of those partners were new to the paper; the others added to their existing spend. The original goal was $50,000, and Allred says he could have asked for even more. But he wanted to be sure the paper could deliver on its promise of impact. And he wanted to leave room to go back to the well, another day.
Allred told us: “This says so much about the resonance of what we do together as solutions journalists and community leaders. If we could make this connection in our community, other newsrooms (and their publishers) can too.”
What works:
Partners are…actually partners: The Source’s newsroom partners don’t have a say in coverage decisions. But they are invited into the discussion. “We sit down with Jay’s news team, and I feel comfortable sharing thoughts,” says Brady Groves, president of the Richland County Foundation. “They’re in touch with a lot of people, so together we think about how can we bring all these stories together.”
Allred says that this sort transparency and interaction has become part of the paper’s identity. “It’s the intentionality that you see at all levels of the newsroom toward baking in opportunities to converse and engage with partners and readers about content. That was not designed in. We knew we’d do it, but didn’t know it would become as natural as it has. It requires persistence, making small adjustments all the time — but looking for home runs that change people’s perception.”
Say thank you: Allred was sure to be generous with his gratitude. “We chose to be proactive about saying that funders have been generous,” highlighting them regularly on the site and at events, but also sending private notes to keep the appreciation in plain sight. In an editorial explaining the campaign, he wrote: “To a person, these organizations have demonstrated their belief in the critical and influential role local news plays in civic life. Moreover, they understand independent journalism focused on effective responses to social problems is among the most important kinds.”
