Custom Course Collection: Prescott College Photojournalism Course

Story
The Business of Burps: Scientists Smell Profit in Cow Emissions

A company called Mootral is studying whether changing a cattle’s diet could make the animals belch and flatulate less methane. They created a food supplement out of compounds from garlic, citrus, and other additives, that in early tests, has shown a decrease in a cow’s emission of the greenhouse gas. If they can get investors on board and scale it to different breeds of cows and in different climates, it could help the agricultural and farming industries to combat climate change.
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- Author Adam Satariano
- Date 2020-05-01
- Publication The New York Times
Story
Can outdoor teaching enable Italy to safely reopen schools?

Some schools in Italy held trial reopenings after having to close due to the pandemic, and are modeling their new classroom environment after Denmark's "forest schools," where classes are held outside. In order to maintain social distancing, and high safety measures for both students and teachers, students are kept in small groups with assigned zones, and school days have been shortened. More schools across the country are also re-opening slowly and in small groups after seeing the results from the trial run.
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- Author Jessica Phelan
- Date 2020-06-23
- Publication The Local
Story
Balancing out the doom and gloom: Why we're producing more journalism with a glass-half-full outlook

ABC News in Australia is using a solutions-focused, or constructive, approach to reporting on social problems. Focusing in particular on three areas, affordable housing, stormwater, and obesity, the Hobart newsroom is combating widespread hopelessness and mistrust of the media by highlighting what individuals and communities are already doing to address problems. The approach is used around the world and supported by organizations such as Solutions Journalism Network and the Constructive Institute. While change can be slow, these groups offer newsroom training to help shift reporting perspectives.
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- Author Angela Ross
- Date 2020-06-11
- Publication ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Story
Can Vote by Mail Work in Low Income Minority Neighborhoods?

Maryland and Ohio recently held elections almost entirely by mail and their different approaches provide insight into the impact on low-income voters, particularly those without permanent addresses. All registered voters in Maryland were sent mail-from-home ballots whereas Ohio voters had to request a ballot. Despite some reports of issues, turnout in Maryland increased 10 percentage points overall and 6 points in Baltimore City, indicating no widespread disenfranchisement in poorer counties. In Ohio, the extra step created a barrier for many voters and turnout decreased from 43.6% in 2016 to just 22.6%.
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- Author Eric Cortellessa
- Date 2020-05-14
- Publication Washington Monthly

More and more people around the world are saying how tired they are of the 24-hour news cycle and seeing negative news on their news feeds. In fact, in the United States, about 66 percent of respondents to a survey say they’re experiencing news fatigue. While disturbing, this trend is not surprising, given how much journalism focuses on society’s problems and what’s going wrong, and how little journalists report on solutions.

As you've learned in this course, solutions journalism strives to flip that narrative on its head. Instead, stories focus on what’s working, how communities respond to problems, and how effective those solutions are. The stories in this collection highlight strong examples of rigorous, evidence-based reporting on responses to social problems and the impact that these stories can have on engaging audiences and leading to real-world change. The questions that accompany these stories are designed to help you think about the key ingredients that make a good solutions story and to reflect on your own news consumption habits.

If you'd like to continue learning about and exploring solutions journalism beyond what you learn in class today, you can use this collection to do so, just by reading the stories in the collection and considering the discussion questions, or, you can take this a step further and add more stories to this collection, or create your own collection to share with others.

Here's how:

With this collection open, click on the LOGIN/REGISTER button in the upper right corner of the website and select Register Here.
In the "Join Today" box, select that you are "Not a journalist, but I want to learn about solutions."
Fill in the rest of the information -- that you are a student, your name and email, create a password (anything will do, we're not picky), and in the referred by box, please add your professor's name.
Now, open the collection again and this time, click on the "Copy and Customize" button to the right. That's it; now the collection is yours to add to as you'd like. When you want to come back to it, you'll find it saved to "My Collections" under your name in the upper right corner of the page.
When you find a story you'd like to add to the collection, simply click on the bullet icon in the story detail page and select this collection to add the story. You can also create new collections from scratch if you'd like. Just click the bullet icon in the story detail page and instead of adding a story to an existing collection, select "create a new collection."

Since the focus of this course is photojournalism, here's a custom search of solutions photojournalism. This is a new field in the Solutions Story Tracker, so come back often to check for more. Finally, here is an article that summarizes recent research on the impact of solutions-focused photojournalism compared to more typical "heartbreaking" images that bring attention to social issues.

Collection