Audiences engage more with SoJo stories
New research shows that audiences find solutions journalism stories more trustworthy, interesting, and uplifting than traditional news stories.
In September 2020, media research company SmithGeiger interviewed people in six U.S. cities after showing them both problem-focused TV news stories and solutions stories. The solutions stories transcended politics, age, and gender, and inspired people to get involved in important issues.
To find out more, read the Solution Journalism Network’s Top Ten Takeaways from this research.
New e-learning courses available
We’re excited to announce that you can now learn the basics of solutions journalism in this 2-hour course that you can take any time! In addition to offering this course in English, we’re also offering it in Romanian, Ukrainian, and Croatian versions.
Help us spread the word by sharing this email with your colleagues!
Solutions Journalism: Reporting on Effective Responses to Society’s Problems
If you enroll you will learn how to:
- Identify solutions stories
- Explain and apply the key criteria of solutions journalism to your reporting
- Package your journalism story as a great SoJo pitch that will attract editors’ attention
New English guide on “How to respond when someone close to you spreads disinformation”
Both traditional and social media users often label Czech senior citizens as notorious fake news spreaders. Disinformation chain emails are among the types of content widely spread among the senior population, which adopted online tools – such as email – only recently. On the other hand, there is a significant group of senior citizens who, while feeling harassed and troubled by such messages, don’t know how to react to them without damaging relationships. Transitions teamed up with its partner Elpida, and with seniors themselves, to prepare a set of tips on how to effectively respond, with empathy, when someone shares disinformation and conspiracies with you. The project is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Prague and the National Endowment for Democracy.
You can access more information on this project here.
In case you missed our solutions stories:
- Belarusian NGO overcomes apathy and bureaucracy to help prisoners successfully reenter society in Back to Life.
- Speaking Hope to Power in Pankisi focuses on women’s groups in a conservative Caucasus enclave that are giving local women a voice.
- Czech towns are Giving Mother Nature a Hand by using land consolidation to make rural areas greener and less flood-prone, for the benefit of farmers and the public alike.
- And in Ukrainian Library Reinvents Itself for a New Age, a youth library in Kherson shows the way to thriving in uncertain times as an educational and literary hub for the local community and wider region.