As a journalist of color working for a legacy publication of color, I’ve spent my career being reminded of my constraints. Like many of my colleagues, I work with limited resources compared with other journalists at larger publications, but I’ve been fortunate in my work with the New York Amsterdam News never to have suffered from having my imagination constrained. As I spoke to the 10 Black publishers that made up the first cohort of the Knight x LMA BloomLab, I tried to remind myself, as well as them, of the vital and historic work our newspapers have done over the decades and how much of it, often without our knowing it, has been solutions journalism in nature.
Trying to bring new ideas to any newsroom, let alone small and under-resourced ones, is always going to be a challenge. I admit I was somewhat wary of the concept of solutions journalism before I fully grasped what it was. But once I was better versed, I understood not only the power of this approach to journalism but also how much of my own work, and the work of my colleagues, already embraced its four pillars.
The historic role of the Black press in America has often been to shine a light where others decline to look. We point out the problems that others ignore and, whenever possible, try to force the powers that be to address them. There is an immense pride in doing this type of work, but at the same time we are all too aware of its limitations. As difficult as it is to report on the problems of epic scale people of color face, it is even more daunting to try to seek out and describe the solutions that might address the generational neglect and trauma America has inflicted on communities of color.
During my conversation with the publishers, I tried to highlight exactly why I thought the solutions journalism approach reflected the best traditions of the Black press. After all, when we covered the nascent, and then growing, Civil Rights Movement when the white-led press ignored or ridiculed it, what were we doing but highlighting proposed solutions to injustice?
Like many others who are new to solutions journalism, our newsrooms face the challenge of finding a way to integrate the practice into the work we are already doing. There are a few simple steps that everyone, from newsroom leaders to reporters, can use to advance a solutions-based approach to their coverage:
- Ask your sources, “What’s the answer?” Often we interview people about something that has gone wrong in their community. These same sources can have insight into the solutions to the problems we are covering.
- Spend time interviewing sources/experts on “problem” topics you cover a lot (gun violence and health care disparities, for example). These interviews do not need to be for a particular story but rather conversations that allow you to learn more about topics you often cover, but without the deadline pressure of breaking news. Ask these sources about their experiences and what they think possible solutions could be.
- Set aside the time and budget for solutions stories. A lot of the reporting we do is cyclical. We can lean into that by planning to do solutions stories in advance. For example, every year you might do a story about a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. Knowing that Thanksgiving is coming up, your newsroom can plan to do a story about efforts to combat hunger in your community in addition to the regular coverage you do.
- Review your coverage. We often cover the same topics over and over again, often in exactly the same ways. Take an afternoon to review the last five or 10 stories your newsroom has done on a “problem” topic with a critical eye toward how you might be able to add a solutions approach to your work moving forward.
- Designate a “champion.” The best way to increase the amount of solutions journalism your newsroom does is to have someone — it could be an editor, reporter or even intern — who is dedicated to this approach. They become the person asking their colleagues, “What are the solutions to the problems you cover?” as well as a beacon by using a solutions approach in their own work.
During my session with the BloomLab publishers, I highlighted a recent story one of our Report for America corps members did on the effort by leaders in the Black community to combat colorectal cancer. The story was done by a young journalist who hadn’t been deeply trained in solutions journalism yet still contained many of its elements, as it was focused on the response to a social problem and addressed the challenges and limitations to the approach these leaders were taking.
I also highlighted the amazing work of the collaborative Word in Black and how it was able to use a solutions approach in two very different ways. The first was in a rapid response story about how to help people of color impacted by tornadoes. This is the kind of short, quick story that we often ask our reporters to turn out in a few hours. But instead of simply focusing on the devastation, this story provided readers with the resources they could use to take action and help.
The second example was a wonderful series, “Lost Innocence: The Adultification of Black Children,” which over several stories examined not just the tragic impact of adultification on our young people but how this bias can be recognized and addressed. These two examples illustrate how a solutions journalism approach can be incorporated in a wide array of stories, from short to long form.
During our conversation, Larry Lee, the publisher of The Sacramento Observer, highlighted the solutions-oriented work that his publication was doing with its “Solving Sacramento” series, which began by looking critically at the issue of housing in one of America’s most expensive real estate markets. Far from simply telling us that Black residents face immense challenges in finding homes, the series looked at potential legislative responses as well as the work of the nonprofit Sacramento Community Land Trust to help people gain access to permanently affordable housing.
“Solving Sacramento” is a collaborative journalism project of the Local Media Foundation, with support from the Solutions Journalism Network, among others, but one that many of the other publishers on the call had not been aware of. Moments like these show the power and importance of having opportunities to not simply learn from a solutions journalism trainer like myself, but to share knowledge and experience that already exist but have been siloed.
These examples helped the publishers on the call better understand both how they were in many ways incorporating a solutions approach in their newsrooms but also how as a collective they already had many tools in place to do this type of work. In the 21st century, the Black press must continue to shine a light on the systemic challenges our communities face, but we must also go deeper and surface the solutions to these same challenges, because we understand that no one else will.
Damaso Reyes is the investigative editor at the New York Amsterdam News, the founding editor of its Blacklight investigative unit and a certified solutions journalism trainer. New York Amsterdam News was a member of the SJN Labor Cohort, for which Damaso was an SJN Labor Cohort Fellow.
This article was originally published by the Solutions Journalism Network and republished on IJNet with permission.
For more on the New York Amsterdam News' solutions-focused work, click here.
Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash.