We get stories through three routes: (1) stories that SJN knows about because they're being produced by our newsroom partners, (2) stories that individuals, particularly members of our Hub, submit to the Story Tracker for our review, and (3) stories that staff & others stumble upon. (We're currently thinking through the last route, trying to develop a system for searching for and harvesting solutions journalism from the news at large.)
First of all, it has to be solutions journalism. Stories are only selected for inclusion in the Story Tracker if they meet all the requirements for solutions journalism. Does the story:
We add stories one-by-one, taking time to critically read/watch/listen to the narrative in order to tag the story not only for the basic info like the author, date, news outlet, but also to (1) craft a short searchable description of the story, (2) geocode each story based on the location of the reported-on response, (3) tag relevant issue areas/subjects for each story, using the Foundation Center's taxonomy, and (4) tag each story by Success Factors, our own unique taxonomy that off ers a nuanced look at the ingredients of success for a particular solution.
Our issue area taxonomy was adapted from the PCS Taxonomy with definitions by the Foundation Center, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International License.
Success Factors are the tactics that are critical to a response's success or failure. What social change strategy did this solution use that made it work (or not work)?
We developed this in-house. It was a long process, headed by Tina Rosenberg, Taylor Nelson, and Matthew Zipf, which involved reading hundreds of stories to see what tactics were critical to making a response work. Much solutions journalism tells the story of a response that succeeded where others had failed, and seeks to identify how — what did this response do diff erently? We tried to identify, name and classify all these different tactics.
The same Success Factor can power all kinds of social initiatives. For example, "addressing underlying issues" or "building trust" can lead to successful responses in education, health, criminal justice and many other fields. People working in all these fields can benefit by learning how successful programs use these tactics. And using the focus of Success Factors to make these connections helps people to understand the systems that create social change.
Stories are only added to the Solutions Story Tracker® if they meet all the requirements for solutions journalism.
“The basics.” We may not add a story to the Solutions Story Tracker for the following reasons:
Submitted stories must have been published or broadcast by media entities whose primary purpose is to offer strong, critical, and independent reporting. Examples of stories that may be excluded for this reason are YouTube videos that are not connected to a news organization or journalist.
The Solutions Story Tracker catalogs stories that identify the journalists and producers, so it’s clear who created the stories.
The Solutions Story Tracker is used for research. It is important that stories have dates for citations.
Solutions journalism focuses primarily on a response or responses to a problem. If a story misses this mark, we may not add it to the Solutions Story Tracker for the following reasons:
This story has little or no information about a response. It is primarily focused on a problem.
This problem-focused story includes a paragraph or sound bite hinting at initiatives working to combat the problem, but responses are not the main focus of this piece.
This story is about interesting or positive things that are happening, but they don’t amount to a response to a social issue or problem.
Solutions journalism conveys insight, so that lessons of a response are relevant and accessible to others. If a story misses this mark, we may not add it to the Solutions Story Tracker for the following reasons:
This story mentions a response, but it doesn’t describe how the response worked in detail so that others might learn from it.
This story tells the news consumers that the world has good people doing nice things, but it does not offer insight that addresses a systemic or social problem. The story highlights individual acts of kindness, aiming to make the audience feel good instead of providing a teachable lesson about the response to replicate at scale.
This story lacks a coherent focus on a response, or has too many grammatical errors or other issues, for inclusion in the Solutions Story Tracker.
Solutions journalism provides evidence of a response’s success or failure or indications of progress linked to a response. If a story misses this mark, we may not add it to the Solutions Story Tracker for the following reasons:
This story is about a plan with little or no progress happening yet. At this stage, the response has been announced or launched, but there is no information yet about its impact or effectiveness.
This story is about an idea or theory that has not been tested. These stories often propose potential solutions and discuss theoretical challenges and opportunities, but real-world insights are limited because the response has not been tried yet.
This story primarily summarizes the findings of a research study. The story lacks practical applications or additional context and reporting by the journalist, but it does offer value in the world of solutions. While these research study stories are not solutions journalism, they are automatically flagged for potential future projects with us and are great supplemental materials for our staff to read.
The reporting in this story is focused on raising awareness about a response, but doesn’t describe anything beyond its happening. As a result, insight and evidence of its impact are not present. While raising awareness is important, solutions journalism values evidence to show how a response is working or not working in that effort.
Solutions journalism discusses the limitations or shortcomings of the response or places the response in meaningful context. If a story misses this mark, we may not add it to the Solutions Story Tracker for the following reasons:
This story does not discuss the limitations or shortcomings of the response or places the response in meaningful context. As a result, the story of the response is incomplete and the insight is limited.
This story overpromises, describing new innovations or technology as “lifesaving” (for example) or as a perfect response to a complex social problem. These stories often lack context, especially information about the shortcomings and limitations of a response.
This story relies too much on the journalist's personal experience to describe a response without addressing the shortcomings of the approach. Rigorous solutions journalism should inform the news consumer about the response as a priority.
Solutions journalism avoids advocacy, PR, and hero worship—instead focusing on credible, objective reporting. If a story misses this mark, we may not add it to the Solutions Story Tracker for the following reasons:
This story asks news consumers to support the response to a social issue (e.g. buttons embedded within the story encourage readers to 'Get involved,' 'Donate here,' 'Support this campaign here,' etc.). Solutions journalism is about providing information to news consumers, not telling them which responses they should support.
The journalist seems to be connected with the response profiled or offers the perspective of the organizers only. These stories often lack voices other than that of the journalist and the organizers of a response. They often read like thinly veiled PR. Actual PR and other promotional content also falls into this category.
This story is primarily about profiling, celebrating, or honoring an individual, rather than focusing on the response that the individual is leading or advancing.
Finally, there are a few other reasons why we may not add a story to the Solutions Story Tracker:
Oops! Please submit this story again with a working link.
We generally do not accept blog posts because they often do not go through an established editorial infrastructure for fact-checking and rigorous reporting. When such a system is present, the story may be included in the Solutions Story Tracker.
We were not able to review this story submission because it is behind a paywall. While stories in the Solutions Story Tracker can be behind paywalls, our team needs access to be able to review and tag the story. Please reach out to our Data Architect, Marie von Hafften (marie@solutionsjournalism.org) to discuss possible workarounds.
This is a link to a series description or landing page. The Solutions Story Tracker does not catalog series as a whole. We vet, tag, and catalog stories individually. Please submit the individual solutions stories that are part of this series or project.
Our story reviewing team occasionally writes in custom comments for unusual issues, such as when they are reviewing a story that is a repost of a story already in the Solutions Story Tracker.
Our issue area taxonomy was adapted from the PCS Taxonomy with definitions by the Foundation Center, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International License.
Photos are licensed under Attribution Non Commercial 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license / Desaturated from original, and are credited to the following photographers:
Fondriest Environmental, David De Wit / Community Eye Health, Linda Steil / Herald Post, John Amis / UGA College of Ag & Environmental Sciences – OCCS, Andy B, Peter Garnhum, Thomas Hawk, 7ty9, Isriya Paireepairit, David Berger, UnLtd The Foundation For Social Entrepreneurs, Michael Dunne, Burak Kebapci, and Forrest Berkshire / U.S. Army Cadet Command public affairs
Photos are licensed under Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license, and are credited to the following photographers:
Ra'ed Qutena, 段 文慶, Fabio Campo, City Clock Magazine, Justin Norman, scarlatti2004, Gary Simmons, Kathryn McCallum, and Nearsoft Inc
Photos are licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons license / Desaturated from original, and are credited to the following photographers:
Burak Kebapci and SCY.
Photos are licensed under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) and are credited to the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Conference attendee listening to speaker, Jenifer Daniels / Colorstock getcolorstock.com.
Photo Credit: Kevork Djansezian via Getty Images
Photo Credit: Sonia Narang