Changing your journalism in one go may be exciting, but it can also be daunting and difficult. Here’s instead a guide to gradual improvement in 12 baby steps over the course of a year.

This guide draws on the concept of solutions journalism as defined by the Solutions Journalism Network, but it also goes beyond that for other tips and tricks to get in the right headspace.

My old university professors would have my head for haphazardly mixing definitions such as solutions, constructive, service and engaged journalism, but they are all intertwined and will together help you stretch the reach of your own reporting to tell your audience the whole story.

I’d advise you not to get stuck on buzzwords, though; it’s the process itself that matters. And don’t feel bad if you don’t always live up to it. Not all your stories have to focus on solutions – there are plenty of instances when the problem needs to be addressed first. But just including one or two of the practices below in the coming year may give your reporting more depth. Send it to your newsroom, or start applying the principles yourself – and let me know how you get on.

January – evidence

Solutions-oriented journalism isn’t just “good news”, it’s rigorous reporting on responses to problems. That means it’s based on evidence that something worked, not on hope alone.

That evidence can take the form of data, research, similar initiatives that have worked in the past, statistics, anything that gives you fairly robust signs that something is working or not.

It can feel intimidating, but don’t think of it as writing a doctoral thesis, think of it as providing context. Partial or imperfect evidence can be used too, as long as you’re upfront about it.

To do: Next time you write a news story (say, about a shooting), also include data for context (there were X numbers of shootings this year, and that’s an increase/decrease over the past decade). That’s not solutions journalism, but it’s a first step to getting used to including context in your general reporting as a habit. The rest of the article will show you how to build on that.

February – interviews

Evidence isn’t just quantitative, it’s qualitative too.

Start adding solutions-oriented questions to your interviews. How do you know? Who’s doing it better? How would you do this instead if you had the chance? What’s the biggest challenge?

For more inspiration, check out these 22 questions that complicate the narrative. In the coming months, you’ll get used to speaking directly to the people affected by a problem and response.

To do: This month, pick one solutions-focused question to include in all your interviews. To make it feel manageable, pick one that will add to the article you’re currently writing, not a question that sparks an entirely new story (that can, and should, come later – but we’re starting small).

March – engage

To really form a bond with readers, you need to engage with your community even when you’re not writing about them. The tricky thing about this is that few editors are going to give you time to go out and talk to people without having a story to show for it, and (unless you’re naturally a part of the same community yourself) it might feel rather like doing unpaid labour in your off time.

But there are ways of squeezing it into your work day.

Out doing a vox pop? Ask them what else you should be writing about. Grabbing a latte on the go? Have a quick chat with the waiter. If, like me, you aren’t particularly talented at striking up random conversations with strangers, try doing it in your reporter role. Introduce yourself. “By the way, I work at so-and-so newspaper, what do you think we should be writing about?”

You could also post it as a question on social media, in newsletters or as a line in your articles.

To do: Ask a reader or readers what problem they would like to see solved.

April – diversify

Always interviewing the same kind of people is, sadly, both efficient and comfortable – you know who they are, how to strike up a rapport, that they will (quickly) pick up the phone to give you quotes. But it’s time to step out of your comfort zone and start diversifying your sources.

Use what you learned last month. Next time you do a vox pop, go to an area you don’t usually go to. Next time you need to interview an expert, broaden the way you think about who the “expert” is – maybe it’s not a university professor, maybe it’s someone who is living the experience.

Think about the roles you tend to put your sources in. Does one group of people always play the victims when they’ve got much more agency than your reporting gives them credit for? Solutions journalism can help you focus on how people respond to challenges within their community.

To do: Interview someone you’ve never interviewed before.

May – answers

If Constructive Journalism and Solutions Journalism met Service Journalism in a bar, they would immediately hit it off. The latter is sometimes sneered at as an easy way of getting clicks (How to insulate your roof! How to know if your fiance is a narcissist! How to become a millionaire!), but it’s been getting a revival, and when done well it is good, audience-centred journalism.

Several recent news events (the Covid pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, a series of tense political elections around the world) have shown how important it is to provide fact-based information that answers readers’ questions even when they don’t make for sexy headlines.

Are your readers wondering why there’s been so many power outages in their town, or how to pick the best school for their children, or how to apply for a residence permit? Getting your head into a space of service mindedness helps you think in terms of solutions rather than problems.

To do: What’s the last question you received from a reader? Answer it in an article.

June – optimise for usefulness

Step two in including service mindedness in your reporting.

Yale psychologist Howard Leventhal’s research in the 1960s suggested that when adding a map and opening times to an information leaflet about a tetanus inoculation clinic, people were more likely to get vaccinated than when reading the same leaflet without the facilitating information.

Optimising for usefulness helps your audience navigate their way through the world, and it pays off for you too: if they get something out of your coverage they’re more likely to return to it.

Including fact boxes in articles is great (if you’re digital, consider embedding them in the story instead of sticking them right at the end, to maximise the chances of them getting read), but it does require the involvement of several people (reporter, editor, designer). It’s worth thinking about what you can do in your own work to make your stories more useful to readers right now.

To do: Every time you produce a story this month, ask yourself if there’s anything you can add – even just one sentence – to make your story more practically useful to your audience.

July – workflow

It’s the peak of summer in Europe. The news cycle slows down. Your colleagues are on holiday, the office is down to a couple of reporters, the editor who drew the short straw, and temporary staff in the form of a group of promising interns who managed to grab a gig for the summer.

If you can’t get buy-in for it at other times of the year, this is the ideal time to experiment with your workflow. Make sure you get to relax, too, but blocking out time and being clever about prioritising can help you make the most of the summer lull coverage. The challenge will be to keep it going come autumn, but at least now, no one is paying enough attention to tell you to stop.

To do: Spend less time on a story you don’t need that much time for, and use the freed-up time to think creatively about how to make space for more solutions reporting in your schedule.

August – follow-ups

“After the story is published or aired, listen to how people respond so you can answer questions, correct misconceptions and pick up ideas for your next story,” advises the Solutions Journalism Network in a new checklist for how to create a solutions story in six steps.

If you’re not used to doing solutions stories, or your schedule doesn’t allow for it, draw inspiration from the stories you’re already working on and build on them. If a reader asks a question about your story, you don’t just have to respond to them – it could form the basis of a follow-up story.

To do: Did you sniff out a potential solution to a problem you reported on this month, but couldn’t get it into the same article? Your task for August is to cover it as a follow-up story. By the way, here’s why follow-ups are a magic trick for making the most use of your limited time.

September – limitations

When you start making your journalism more solutions-oriented, it’s tempting to get into a flow where you see everything as a positive news story. But that’s neither constructive nor realistic.

All solutions have limitations. That community project that helps get immigrant women into work is a great initiative – and a temporary fix to a problem that the government abandoned. That school that increased its pupils’ grades perhaps only boosted the scores of already high performers. That medical clinic would save the lives of more patients with better funding.

But don’t be discouraged. When you make your reporting more constructive, it’s also a silent pledge to be in it for the long haul. Two steps forward and one step back is still progress, but just because solutions reporting focuses on the former doesn’t mean it shouldn’t include the latter.

To do: Next time you cover a feel-good story about an initiative that aims to solve a problem, ask yourself – and ask the people you interview – what they need to do it even better. Include that.

October – report

There’s a good chance your reporting has already become more solutions-focused by now, even without you noticing. But if it hasn’t, now’s the time to apply all the things you’ve learned in the past year. Here are the four essential ingredients a solutions journalism story should include:

Response. The focus is not on the problem, it is on the response to that problem.
Evidence. What proof do you have to back up that something is – or may be – working?
Limitations. What are the flaws, or what could be done better?
Insight. What can others learn from the response?

Insight is the one thing we haven’t yet covered this year. If you’ve got the other three, it often follows naturally, but not always. Think of it as the ingredient that will help your audience apply the learnings from the story to go out and solve a similar problem in their own community.

To do: Find and report a solutions journalism story from scratch.

November – reflect

We’re approaching the end of the year, so set aside time to reflect on the 11 months that passed and look ahead to the new year. How has making your reporting more solutions-focused made you feel? How have readers responded to it? Is the change visible in your newsroom?

How can you build on this in the new year? What are the changes that you had wanted to make, but couldn’t? Can you use your learnings to boost the impact of your work and inspire others?

Think of this session as plotting your personal solutions journalism story just for your own head. What’s the evidence that your new approach has worked? What are the limitations to the way you approached it, or challenges you faced? And what have you learned (that’s your insight)?

To do: Look back at three ways you’ve changed your reporting this year, and a checklist of three things you want to add to your reporting next year. Write it down and stick it on your desk.

December – accountability

There’s an easy way of increasing the chances of keeping your New Year’s resolutions: tell people about them. The act of saying them out loud helps, and so does the act of sharing.

Finding accountability buddies helps us maintain healthy habits. You’re more likely to read a book every month if you join a book club, or go running every week if you make plans with a friend, or make your reporting more solutions-focused if you have a fellow journalist to bounce ideas off of.

To do: Share the checklist you wrote last month on social media – don’t forget to tag The Fix (on Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook) to help us amplify your work. Or if you’re not comfortable shouting in public, email it directly to me if you just want a friendly supporter to share it with.

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