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What is the goal of our digital information environment? Is it simply to inform us, or also to empower us to act?
At the Solutions Journalism Network, the team understands that simply reporting on social problems rarely leads to change. What they’ve discovered is that rigorously reporting on responses to social problems — can more often give activists and concerned citizens the hope and information they need to take effective action. For this reason, SJN trains and encourage journalists to report on “solutions angles,” and more broadly seeks to rebalance the news, so that every day people are exposed to stories that help them understand problems and challenges, and stories that show potential ways to respond.
In this episode, Tina Rosenberg, co-founder of SJN, and Hélène Biandudi Hofer, former manager of SJN’s Complicating the Narratives initiative, walk us through the origin of solutions journalism, how to practice it, and what impact it has had. Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin reflect on how, much like solutions journalism, humane technology should also be designed to create an empowering relationship with reality — enabling us to shift us from learned helplessness to what we might call learned hopefulness.
The Solutions Journalism Network’s database of more than 12,000 solutions stories from around the world.
Co-written by SJN co-founder Tina Rosenberg, the Fixes column covers solutions to social problems.
An opinion column covering solutions, and a participant in the Solutions Journalism Network.
Tina Rosenberg’s 2001 story in the New York Times Magazine, which sparked the inspiration for the Solutions Journalism Network.
