Solutions journalism

In chapter 4 of Searchlights and Sunglasses, Eric Newton discusses how critical it is for newspapers to engage, as well as to be engaged in, their communities:

In the digital age, we don’t just consume the media; we are the media. Friends, neighbors, co-workers, family — seemingly everyone is tweeting, posting, liking, commenting, creating and using news. 

But news by itself is not enough. Knight Foundation believes communities are at their best when informed and engaged. For news to matter, people must act on it. Solutions require people to engage with each other as well as the issues at hand. Impact requires community.

Newton and the Knight Foundation believe newspapers should not only identify problems in their communities, but solutions as well. A post last week on Columbia Journalism Review's "Behind the News" blog titled "Building a New Storytelling Movement" discusses a new fellowship program by Images and Voices of Hope, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to make media "agents of positive change." The five fellows in the program will spend six months exploring the potential of "restorative narratives" — stories that demonstrate how people can contribute positively to a problem in their town.

The story also quotes David Bornstein, a New York Times columnist and founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, who advocates the need for this type of reporting and writing:

[Bornstein] would like to see journalists take advantage of multiple angles when reporting any one story—solutions journalism and restorative narratives are just two prisms through which a story can be told. The more angles available, the more comprehensive stories can be, he says. The problems faced by society today are increasingly complex, Bornstein says, and it’s no longer adequate for journalists to point to problems without showing readers how people are trying to solve them.

This makes sense to me, and I think it can be a way for local newspapers to make themselves more relevant to their communities again. While a majority of people value local news, they don't always make the connection that if their local newspaper downsizes or even closes, news about their schools, their elected officials, their neighbors and their communities may become nearly impossible to find.