Earlier I wrote about solutions journalism. Promoted by the Solutions Journalism Network, the goal of
solutions journalism is to help journalists “overcome their professional
discomfort with reporting about creative responses to problems.”
The goal is to not only to report about problems, but also to help
people understand how problems are being addressed, and look at “ideas and
models that show promise based on evidence and data.”
It seems like the Christian Science Monitor has decided to adopt this new way of reporting the news.
The 109-year-old publication, which went all-digital eight ears
ago, has decided to adopt an approach that will be based around a voice that is
“calm and fact-based and fundamentally constructive, and assumes that our
readers are looking to have a fundamentally constructive approach to the news,”
says editor Marshall Ingwerson.
In
an article in Nieman Lab, Laura Hazrd Owen asks: “Where do you go, these days, if you want to
read news without feeling utterly hopeless about the state of the world?”
The Monitor, she goes on to say, “wants to be that slightly more hopeful place — not by
glossing over serious global problems, but by providing counterintuitive
insights on issues from the crisis in Aleppo to global warming.”
The change is part of the Monitor’s
effort to revamp and give a new sense of identity to its online presence.
According to Ingwerson, the idea was to less like all the other
media in order to win subscribers.
It’s important, he says, not to throw readers into a pit of
despair.
“We want to look at the news in a way that has fact-based
integrity, but creates a legitimate sense of possibility,” he said, “so that,
as much as possible, it’s an empowering and not a depressing experience to read
the news.”
Will it work? So many people I know say they are tired of the
same-old style of news reporting by most media—a daily litany of crime, death,
terrorism, destruction and disaster.
The Monitor hopes so,
and so do I. We will see.
No comments:
Post a Comment