Only after I left the newsroom did I realize the limits of traditional problem-focused coverage — and the power of adding solutions to the mix.
By Matthew Kauffman
In more than a dozen years as a data journalist on the investigative desk of the Hartford Courant, I had a pretty traditional philosophy about the beat — and the role of the mainstream press in general.
The rules were simple: Identify the bad guys, shine a light on their failures, and then step back, leaving it to policymakers to figure out if there was a better way forward.
But there was at least one accidental exception to the pattern.
For one project in the early 2010s, I used data to identify the school bus companies with the worst records for maintaining their buses, putting students into vehicles with faulty brakes, bald tires, leaking exhausts, busted emergency doors.
Classic accountability journalism.
The rules were simple: Identify the bad guys, shine a light on their failures, and then step back.
But there also happened to be a curiosity in the data: one company with a nearly perfect inspection record, year after year, far outperforming every other company in the state.
So we decided to write a separate story on that firm, detailing the specific practices they employed — that their competitors didn’t — to keep their buses and their young passengers safe.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that story was a rare foray into what I later came to know as “solutions journalism,” an often-misunderstood approach that encourages journalists to go beyond pure problem-focused reporting by rigorously investigating responses to those problems with a verifiable record of moving the needle in a positive direction.
I didn’t write many more stories like that — if I wrote any.
Investigative work came with perverse badges of honor: I put people in prison; I had detractors threaten me in creatively violent ways; I was sued more than a few times.
While I wrote about people who needed help, I was always better at afflicting the comfortable than comforting the afflicted.
It was only after I left the Courant, free from the daily grind of the newsroom, that I began to see the limits (and privileges) of the traditional journalism I’d been practicing — and the real value of adding a solutions lens to problem reporting.
So here I am, an unlikely convert: a former accountability purist who’s become a full-on evangelist for solutions journalism, telling any journalist who will listen that they should add it to their reporting toolbox.
I only wish it had happened sooner in my career.
So here I am, a former accountability purist who’s become a full-on evangelist for solutions journalism.
When I first heard about solutions journalism at a conference in Boston, I had the same skeptical reaction that I think most journalists, and certainly most investigative reporters, feel. Solutions Journalism? We’re going to proclaim the solution to poverty? War? Teen pregnancy? It struck me as not only unachievable, but ill-advised, stepping over the line into advocacy.
Trainers at the Solutions Journalism Network — founded a decade ago by a pair of reporters at the New York Times — have heard it all before. And the trainer that day tried to set me straight. It’s not about magic bullets or anointing some universal solution to intractable problems. It’s just looking at evidence to see if a policy or practice appears responsible for a positive outcome. It’s not advocacy if you don’t oversell it. Moreover, it’s technically not solutions journalism if the story doesn’t examine limitations to the response. Does it require a certain infrastructure that may make it difficult to replicate? Does it lead to improvements for certain people but not others? Is it shockingly expensive?
For me, it was still a hard sell, having spent a career rooted in the notion that the Sunday paper was for big exposés, and Monday was for badgering politicians for insincere quotes on what they were going to do about it, or perhaps a banal he-said-she-said from competing interests, with no serious research into what was actually working.
That approach was rooted in a palpable aversion to producing anything that might be judged — dare I say it — good news. Worse still was the fear of seeming to endorse something that might turn out to be a dud.
Let’s be honest: Knock something in print and have it turn out your criticism was factually inaccurate, and that can mean a briefly embarrassing correction. But appear to praise an idea and have that seeming endorsement prove to be a colossal mistake, and that’s a badge of shame you might wear your whole career!
That may seem an exaggeration. But consider these questions:
How comfortable do you feel writing stories about places or institutions that are doing things poorly and getting it wrong? Pretty common in the news business.
Now how comfortable are you writing stories about institutions that are getting it right? If you’re like me, there’s a real resistance to what feels like the risk of writing about places that are “getting it right.”
Appear to praise an idea and have that seeming endorsement prove to be a colossal mistake, and that’s a badge of shame you might wear your whole career!
Looking back at some of my projects, I find myself with mixed feelings.
One series I co-wrote revealed how efforts to desegregate Hartford classrooms had left city schools more segregated than ever while gleaming new magnet schools gave preferences to white families.
Another project exposed that a college scholarship program had been looted by the elderly founder’s daughter, leaving struggling students helpless.
Yet another dug into the multi-million-dollar world of sham diploma mills that sell fake academic credentials.
I was good at sniffing out failure and corruption. Going beyond the problem to look at solutions, my approach dictated, was far outside my job description.
But there was also a lot of privilege surrounding my self-imposed focus. I hoped that my reporting projects would lead to reform, but I wasn’t personally impacted by most of the failures and misconduct I wrote about.
I didn’t fear being racially profiled by police. I didn’t worry about the schools my kids attended. I had no loved ones in group homes or nursing homes or on military deployments. I had a job, health insurance, a decent 401(k), a roof over my head.
Insulated from the problems faced by the vulnerable populations I wrote about made it a little too easy to wall off any responsibility to investigate what might be working to make their lives better.
There was a lot of privilege surrounding my self-imposed focus. I wasn’t personally impacted by most of the failures and misconduct I wrote about.
A year after bidding farewell to the newsroom, I saw a job posting from the Solutions Journalism Network looking to incorporate data into solutions reporting.
Seeing an opportunity to help struggling newsrooms, I took the gig, which evolved into a two-year project helping news outlets around the world use data for clues into places and institutions successfully responding to social problems.
It also gave me a chance to reassure journalists who had the same skeptical reaction I had.
Solutions journalism, I told them, isn’t about endorsing a particular course of action. It’s just about casting the same rigorous and skeptical eye on institutions that appear — based on solid evidence — to have found success in responding to problems.
Rather than a retreat from hard-hitting exposé work, I came to recognize solutions journalism as a natural partner of the sort of work I had done, elevating it in multiple ways.
First: It actually boosts accountability journalism. That story on the bus company with the stellar maintenance record? It didn’t just give a pat on the back to that firm; it also shut down all the lame excuses offered by the poor-performing companies. Show that a problem can be successfully addressed, and you take away the ability of the bad actors to spout excuses for their failure.
Second: It offers a possible path forward that a community or institution can contemplate. Particularly with data journalism, if we trust data to point us to places that are doing poorly and are worth a deeper dive to see what’s going on, we should trust data to point us to places that appear to be doing better and are worth a deeper dive.
And third: It gives readers and viewers the kind of journalism that studies consistently show they want. Not stories that sugarcoat problems, but stories that pair in-depth coverage of problems with equally in-depth and rigorous analysis of responses to those problems. It’s the sort of work readers will engage with. So it’s also great sustainable journalism.
I came to recognize solutions journalism as a natural partner of the sort of work I had done.
Looking back at all my work – the school-desegregation series, a series I wrote on preventable deaths in hospitals and another on deaths in group homes – I wish I’d looked for places that were doing better and found out why.
What a missed opportunity.
But it’s not too late for education reporters who are still working in newsrooms, and I hope they’ll consider my experience.
Matthew Kauffman is a former investigative reporter and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. He can be reached at mwkauffman@gmail.com.
Previously from The Grade
Solutions stories that aren’t puff pieces
The case for covering promising innovations and preliminary successes
Bad news bias and prolonged school shutdowns
Making education news more useful
‘Complicating the narratives’ in education journalism
The promise and peril of “solutions” journalism (2015)
Making education news more useful (2023)
