Reframing news to focus on strengths challenges established media
Solutions-based journalism may require ‘a new animal’
Monday September 15, 2008 -- Jennifer Higgs
Journalists and news organization with the proposition to move towards a solutions-based approach would be redefining the news in a way that is challenging for traditional media organizations, say two journalism experts.

"You need to be able to have your own creativity to redefine news differently and then you need to have the support of your editors to be able to report it differently,” says Jan Schaffer, J-Lab executive director.

The idea of solutions-based journalism has been around for years, but has yet to make its way into mainstream journalism practice.

“I still think (solutions-based reporting) is very effective, I don’t know however that you can particularly identify news organizations that are focusing on that right now,” says Schaffer.

John Hatcher, a journalism professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, says there are plenty of examples where the media focuses on the problem or the negative, but if you ask a journalist they would say they look for the news.

“Journalism schools students are taught to write with conflict in mind, but you have to be careful how that word is used,” he says. The word conflict, he says, could be substituted with story.

The rise of new media organizations experimenting with alternative models makes this an exciting time to ask questions about the focus of the news, Hatcher says.

J-Lab published a study titled Citizen Media: Fad or the Future of News? The study explores the change in the media landscape through the use of “hyperlocal journalism” websites that often help their community solve problems.

“I love the idea of media serving a role of building community, of creating public discourse and being another public place where we can all meet and talk and share ideas in a way that’s not defined by problems and isn’t necessarily combative, that is useful,” says Hatcher.

Hatcher says it is important to find out if everyone else feels the same. “If we create that does it actually mean people do read more . . . does it actually lead to a stronger community, does it work?”

Schaffer says a solution-focus is one tool of many in an effective journalism toolbox.

“I think other things have to do with how you frame your stories, whether you are framing them based on conflict, whether you validate consensus, whether you focus on demographic . . . there are many other things that I think also affect what makes journalism resonate with the readers.”

Citizen media makers rarely use conflict as a frame. For example, when attending a meeting where people agreed the journalist would still write the story.

“Often traditionally a journalist would say there’s no news there, because nobody is fighting, and the news is about the disagreement instead of the agreement,” says Schaffer.

“It’s a bad habit of journalism, I think it’s a habit that still is used to define what is and isn’t news,” she says.

Reframing the news to avoid a problem focus is interesting, says Hatcher, and though some hyperlocal websites have adopted the approach mainstream newspapers would not be as excited about or likely to publish these types of solution-based stories.

“You are talking about major institutional changes in the traditions of what’s news, in the definitions of what’s news, and in the way it is taught both in the schools and the way it is practiced in the newsrooms and those kind of routines and those kind of practices are usually not written down anywhere, it’s the stuff where somebody says ‘this reporter doesn’t get it,’” says Hatcher.

Schaffer also says she is not sure traditional news organizations will change their approach.

“I don’t really know that they all will, and I think that they are going to suffer for it,” she says.

“As journalism moves to a more participatory, expanded definition environment I think that projects that aren’t able to adapt are going to be hurt.”

Rather than changing way news organizations work, it “may take a new animal for that to happen,” says Hatcher.

“If you want to be an optimist . . . you could argue that the public is going to do this without the mainstream media, and if they want to join in maybe they need to learn a new set of rules,” he says.

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