I learned about this program from an excellent article published in the New York Times entitled "Recovering the (Lost) Art of Civility." by David Bornstein. Bornstein is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network which "train[s] and connect[s] journalists to cover what's missing in today's news"--how people are responding to problems." Their website further states that "solutions journalism is a way to spark constructive discourse," it "sharpens accountability," "cover[s] what works," "connect[s] problems with possibilities", and "holds power to account."
This post is part of the
Constructive Conflict
MOOS Seminar's
exploration of the tough challenges posed by the
Constructive Conflict Initiative.
Their "solutions story tracker" indexes over 5,000 stories produced by almost 800 news outlets from 156 countries. The story tracker allows users to search stories by issue, location, author, media type, news outlets, issue areas, success factors, descriptions, and full text. You can even search stories by the UN Sustainable Development Goals! "Success Factors" that seem particularly relevant to our focus here at MBI include "empowering people" (with 1752 success stories!) "embracing the power of relationships" (1250 success stories!) and "cultivating collaborations" (with 1385 success stories!)
Their blog, The Whole Story. while primarily targeted to journalists, also has plenty of interesting material for consumers of good journalism. Their Learning Lab has three "Issue Guides," one on Health, one on Education, and one on Violence, which also are likely to be of interest to MBI readers journalists and non-journalists alike.
Their "Hub" is an online gathering place for journalists who want to get trained in solutions journalism, get support, or pitch or submit their stories. The Hub also links to the Basics Toolkit which explains what is and what is not "solutions journalism," why this kind of reporting is important, what kind of impact it can have and how, basically anyway, it is done. They also have an Engagement Toolkit which explains "how to use solutions reporting to create a platform for more constructive engagement. How to drive productive public discourse and online discussions to strengthen agency and innovation within the communities [journalists] serve.
There is tons of material here that is of interest to me...I hope it is of interest to many of our users too!
