CBS News efforts show growth in solutions journalism to combat bad news fatigue
NEW YORK (AP) — A Colorado school is creating a “zen den” for troubled students. A football coach in Pittsburgh is doing everything he can to relieve the pressure on the players. A Chicago community group is equipping a mobile mental health van, and a Los Angeles school is training students to mentor peers.
Each efforts to address youth mental health issues was recently featured in a local CBS newscast, examples of a move toward “solution journalism.”
The idea is that reporters should be more than the bearer of bad news.
“We want to look beyond the who, what, where and why to the question of ‘how can we help?'” said Wendy McMahon, co-president of CBS News and the CBS Television Stations. “How can we help make our communities better places to live? That is the aim.”
CBS has trained news leaders in solutions journalism at the 14 local stations it owns, in major markets such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, and opened an “innovation lab” where they can collaborate on stories.
The network works with the Solutions Journalism Network, an organization founded in 2013 by two former New York Times reporters, David Bornstein and Tina Rosenberg, and entrepreneur Courtney Martin. Reporters from The Times wrote a column entitled ‘Fixes’ that was often popular despite difficult, dry subjects such as foster care, homelessness or childhood trauma.
The coverage of calamities – shootings, fires, accidents – is so important that the phrase “if it bleeds, it leads” became popular for local TV news. But that puts a damper at a time when news outlets need no other excuse for consumers to leave. Research picks up on people who feel their community isn’t covered unless something bad happens, McMahon said.
That is why the CBS channels emphasize finding people and organizations that try to tackle problems.
Among others, stories that reflect that focus: training auxiliaries in Georgia to avoid arrest of children in schools; efforts in New York, Denver and Sacramento speeding up the settlement of criminal cases; a California county’s solution to stop wage theft in restaurants; a new sea wall built in New York to combat climate change.
After the February train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, CBS stations investigated why safety recommendations for the airline And freight transportation industries have not followed.
“It sets us apart from our competition and serves our communities,” said Chad Cross, who leads the CBS innovation lab.
As they began promoting the idea to industry audiences, Bornstein of the Solutions Journalism Network recalled that they often envisioned blank faces and folded arms.
Many journalists see themselves as researchers responsible for exposing society’s ills, a task made more difficult than ever by the financial problems that have emptied newsrooms. Solutions were the province of others. If the news is bad, so be it.
“Reporting death day after day becomes depressing,” Matthew Ingram wrote in Columbia Journalism Review. “But what’s the alternative — not reporting on what’s happening because it makes people sad?”
That explains the residual disdain for efforts to promote “good news,” which gained immense popularity during the pandemic. Actor John Krasinski started one uplifting youtube channel“Some Good News”, and musician David Byrne started his “Reasons to be merry” website.
Bornstein said solutions journalism is not “good news.” It is a rigorous report that examines how people respond to problems.”
McMahon views people who don’t see the importance of promoting solutions as cynical.
“There are problem solvers,” she said. “There are seekers of solutions, all over this country and in all our cities. These are people and groups with so much ingenuity and so much passion. Their passion is inspiring to us.”
Some critics see the risk of journalists being seen as advocates if some ‘solutions’ receive more attention than others. Bornstein said solutions journalism, if done right, is no more prone to bias than other forms of reporting.
Tom Rosenstiel, a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland, said the Solutions Journalism Network did a good job anticipating some of the concerns it faced, particularly the feeling it encourages puff about organizations or community leaders. Making sure the stories are strong is an important part of CBS’s training, Cross said.
It’s important that journalists take the lead, as opposed to those who don’t support journalism, Rosenstiel said.
In the decade since the Solutions Journalism Network was founded, thousands of journalists and more than 600 news organizations have received training in its principles, Bornstein said. On its website, it has collected more than 15,000 stories that meet the network’s criteria.
Articles posted include an article from New York magazine about “bystander intervention training” to stop crime, a piece about efforts to encourage plant-based diets from Byrne’s website, and a story from Christianity Today magazine about Christians and Muslims working together to translate stories from the Bible into selected African languages.
The network has also named four college journalism programs as hubs of solution journalism, which means that it is included in education and research there. Participating programs are at the University of Georgia, Northwestern, Arizona State, and Stony Brook in New York.
If solution journalism continues to grow, Rosenstiel says, it could be an important tool to prevent people from avoiding the news because they find it too depressing.
“We can’t just be the guard dog that barks,” he said.
