Why the Future of Journalism Is in the Story of Solutions

TMS PEACE JOURNALISM, MEDIA, 10 Jun 2013

Fran Korten – YES! Magazine

There’s a catch-phrase turning up in the media world. It’s “Solutions Journalism.” Media organizations are recognizing it’s not sufficient to report just on problems. Our world is hungry for solutions.

At YES! we applaud this development. As many of you know, we have focused on solutions ever since we began publishing in 1996. It’s great to have company.

Why do we focus on solutions? At our founding, we recognized our world was headed toward a huge transition: Our societies couldn’t keep heating up the atmosphere, expanding material consumption, and concentrating wealth and power. We knew that, without a change of course, we would hit environmental, social, and economic walls.

The question on our minds was: “What would such a transition look like?” As YES! co-founder and Executive Editor Sarah van Gelder put it, “Will we turn against each other in a struggle for the last resources or turn to one another in cooperation and community?”

Now, as then, we believe a key to determining that choice is our collective ability to envision a path to a better world. Fortunately, there are plenty of people developing the solutions that make up that path. By telling their stories in YES!, we show that grassroots leaders can be found in communities everywhere, and we invite others to join in becoming agents of change.

One thing you’ll notice about our solutions journalism: We don’t focus on just any solution. For example, you won’t find a story on Wal-Mart going green. Why not? Because any environmental good those changes may do is outweighed, in our judgment, by the flaws that make the Wal-Mart model damaging to our society as a whole.

You also won’t find many stories on technology—it’s an important force but is not by itself a solution. If we suddenly had cheap, carbon-free energy, but didn’t change our culture and institutions, we’d still destroy our Earth. We’d likely build even bigger houses, overfish our oceans even faster, dig even deeper for minerals to make gadgets, and concentrate more wealth in global corporations.

So what are the solutions that we at YES! view as worth communicating? They are solutions that:

• Help tell new cultural stories, based on an understanding of our deep interconnectedness, that change how we think about ourselves, our sources of true happiness, and our relationships with all peoples and all other life.
• Demonstrate new (and also very old) ways to live, and institutions that support healthy, inclusive communities.
• Reveal rule changes that reward cooperation rather than exploitation, and partnership rather than domination.

We focus on solutions coming from the grassroots because we know significant shifts must come from the people. That’s why you’ll see YES! frequently covering social movements. Those often take the form of protest, such as the folks in Texas protesting the Keystone XL pipeline, and families of prisoners protesting mandatory prison sentences. When those protests move in the direction of real solutions, we report on them as part of the pathway to deep change.

The practical actions we feature fit together to reveal large societal shifts that hold the potential for a better world. Our journalism offers a lens that reveals an emerging world nearly invisible to most of the media.

So you can see, our journalism is about solutions, but not just any solution. It’s about transformational solutions for a turbulent time—solutions we can all help make happen. Our lives quite literally depend on them.

__________________________

Fran Korten wrote this article for Love and the Apocalypse, the Summer 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Fran is publisher of YES!

Go to Original – yesmagazine.org

Share this article: email mastodon facebook 🔗 copy link

DISCLAIMER: The statements, views and opinions expressed in pieces republished here are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of TMS. In accordance with title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. TMS has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is TMS endorsed or sponsored by the originator. “GO TO ORIGINAL” links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the “GO TO ORIGINAL” links. This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

One Response to “Why the Future of Journalism Is in the Story of Solutions”

1. TRANSCEND MEDIA SERVICE » Why the Future of Journalism Is in … | World Media Information says:

   10 Jun 2013 at 17:01

   […] Read this article: TRANSCEND MEDIA SERVICE » Why the Future of Journalism Is in … […]