Frequently Asked Questions

HOW DO YOU FIND THESE STORIES?

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.)

HOW DO YOU VET STORY SUBMISSIONS?

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:

• Come from a news outlet, have a date, and byline?
• Focus primarily on a response to a problem?
• Convey insight, so that its lessons are relevant and teachable to others?
• Provide evidence of an approach's success or failure? This part demonstrates the credibility of the reporting on the response. Qualitative or quantitative evidence are acceptable. If the response is still in the piloting phase, we ask that journalists address the need for more evidence in the story and can account for what progress has been made.
• Address an approach's shortcomings or limitations? Does the story put the response in meaningful context?
• Avoid advocacy, PR, puffery, and hero worship -- instead focusing on credible, objective reporting?

HOW DO YOU TAG STORIES?

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.

WHERE DID YOUR ISSUE AREAS TAXONOMY COME FROM?

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.

WHAT ARE SUCCESS FACTORS?

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)?

WHERE DID YOUR SUCCESS FACTORS COME FROM?

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.

WHY ARE SUCCESS FACTORS IMPORTANT?

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.