Solutions Journalism Network
The Solutions Journalism Network is a New York-based nonprofit organisation that trains journalists and newsrooms to practise solutions journalism: rigorous, evidence-based reporting on responses to social problems. Founded in February 2013 by journalists David Bornstein, Tina Rosenberg and author Courtney E. Martin, the network provides training, story coaching, learning tools and modest project funding to news organisations, maintains the Solutions Story Tracker, a searchable database of solutions-focused stories that other outlets may republish, and works with journalism schools to teach the approach. Its staff are based in New York City and Oakland, California, and it works with hundreds of newsrooms and thousands of journalists in the United States and around the world.
Origins in the Fixes Column
The network grew out of Fixes, a column in The New York Times Opinionator section written by David Bornstein and Tina Rosenberg from October 2010. Fixes examined initiatives that were working against social problems — in health, education, poverty and the environment — and assessed the evidence for them with the scepticism ordinarily applied to claims of success. Courtney E. Martin, an author and speaker, was a frequent contributor to the column. In February 2013 the three founded the Solutions Journalism Network to move the approach from a single column into newsrooms generally.
Rosenberg brought a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and a seat on the Times editorial board; Bornstein had written books on social entrepreneurs and how they change systems. Their premise was that news coverage concentrated almost entirely on problems, which left audiences uninformed about responses, distorted public understanding of whether progress was possible, and contributed to news avoidance and civic disengagement.
What Solutions Journalism Is
The network defines solutions journalism by four characteristics. A solutions story focuses on a response to a social problem; examines evidence of whether that response is working, rather than relying on good intentions or a single success story; draws out insights that others could apply elsewhere; and discusses the response's limitations and shortcomings. The network is explicit about what the approach is not: it is not positive or feel-good news, not public relations for a charity or company, not a celebration of a heroic individual without evidence, and not a list of silver bullets appended to a problem story. The response, in its formulation, must be reported as rigorously as any problem — with data, with dissenting assessments, and with attention to cost and replicability.
The approach has relatives abroad, notably constructive journalism, which originated in Denmark, and the network situates its work within that wider international movement while concentrating on American newsrooms.
Early Projects and Newsroom Partnerships
The network's first major project was a collaboration with The Seattle Times to produce Education Lab, a year-long series of solutions-oriented stories about public education, which was extended for a second year and became a continuing section examining what works in schools locally, across Washington state and nationally. In its first year the network also launched funds supporting journalists pursuing solutions stories on climate change resilience, social and emotional learning, and women's economic equity.
Partnerships expanded to dozens of leading news organisations. The network provides newsroom-wide training, helps editors identify solutions angles and projects, connects journalists with data providers and researchers, coaches stories in progress, and offers modest funding for reporting projects. Its learning platform publishes guidebooks, checklists and case studies free of charge, and it runs programmes inside journalism schools so that students entering newsrooms already know the method — an effect its leadership describes as changing practice as new cohorts graduate.
Local Television Work
After establishing itself in print and digital newsrooms, the network entered local television. Following a pilot at WEWS-TV, the Scripps station in Cleveland, it recruited local TV stations nationally, hiring veteran broadcast journalist Deborah Potter to lead the effort, with workshops — underwritten by funders including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — delivered to entire newsrooms at fifteen stations in fourteen markets in an early cohort, alongside project funding. The training aimed to embed a single editorial habit across the newsroom: on any problem story, asking whether there is a solutions angle worth reporting.
The Solutions Story Tracker
The network's syndication function is the Solutions Story Tracker, a searchable database of solutions-focused stories produced by news organisations around the world. Early accounts described a collection of more than 1,500 stories; the tracker has grown continuously since, tagging stories by problem, response, place and evidence so that journalists can find comparable responses elsewhere and audiences can read reporting beyond their local outlet. News organisations may republish tracker stories under the network's terms, making the database a practical distribution channel: a solutions investigation produced by one newsroom can inform, and appear in, many others, which extends the return on expensive explanatory reporting.
Evidence of Audience Effect
Unusually for a journalism-methods organisation, the network commissioned research on its own approach. A study by the media research firm SmithGeiger tested ten solutions stories head-to-head against conventional problem stories with 638 local news viewers in six markets. The study found that solutions stories had greater storytelling appeal, distinguished the station from competitors, and were more likely to inspire viewers to take action — a quality the researchers called efficacy. The network uses such findings in its case to newsroom managers: solutions journalism is presented not only as a civic good but as a route to ratings, brand differentiation, long-term audience growth and community impact.
Funding and Organisation
The Solutions Journalism Network is a nonpartisan nonprofit funded primarily by grants from foundations and by donations from corporations and individuals. It reported rapid growth in the early 2020s, including a forty percent increase in grant funding over two years, with average grant size doubling and staff increasing accordingly. Its team has numbered in the dozens, spanning trainers, editors, researchers and programme managers working from New York and Oakland and with partner newsrooms nationally.
Geographic Scope
Although headquartered in New York, the network's work is national and increasingly international. It has worked with hundreds of newsrooms and thousands of journalists all over the world, its story tracker collects reporting globally, and its training materials are used by journalism educators in many countries. Its strongest institutional presence remains in the United States, where its newsroom partnerships span large metropolitan dailies, public media, digital startups and local television groups.
Digital Presence
The network's home is solutionsjournalism.org, which hosts its learning platform, training resources, the Solutions Story Tracker, and news of its programmes and fellowships. Materials are offered free, on the theory that a change in journalistic practice spreads fastest when tools are openly available to any newsroom, educator or independent journalist who wants them.
Significance
The Solutions Journalism Network's significance is methodological: it defined a reporting discipline, built the training and evidence base for it, and distributed its products to the wider industry. In an era when audience research links problem-saturated coverage to avoidance and distrust, the network's proposition — that covering responses with the same rigour as problems produces better-informed and more engaged audiences — moved from a single newspaper column into newsroom practice, journalism curricula and audience research. Its story tracker also gives it a lasting role as a syndicator, circulating solutions reporting among outlets that could never each afford to produce it alone.
