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Basic Toolkit / Vetting a Solutions-Oriented Story
At this stage, you’ve potentially found the bud of a compelling story. How do you know if it’s any good?
As with any story, you’ll have to vet the idea.
First, follow the rules of good journalism. Try to find many distinct perspectives when reporting a story. Interview people who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the intervention. Think about where your sources get their funding.
The judgment needed to identify a good solutions story is similar to the judgment needed to identify a good problem story: what happened and how do we know it happened? The difference is in the perceived consequences of getting it wrong. In journalism, saying something is a problem and getting it wrong is a misdemeanor. Saying something is working and getting it wrong is a felony. “Overly credulous” is one of the worst things you can call a journalist. How do you avoid it?
Don’t imply the problem is solved — it probably isn’t. Don’t announce that this is the best solution — you can’t know that. Don’t predict it will last — it might well not. Limit yourself to reporting the news: there’s something going on, and here’s what the evidence says. As with a traditional story, “evidence” isn’t just data. It can also be found in interviews, shoe-leather reporting — all the ways journalists gather information. No solution is perfect. Make sure you report on its limitations and struggles.
Such caution is protective. You don’t have to worry about looking like an advocate if you don’t make claims. If the solution falls apart a few months later, you don’t look gullible, because you simply covered what was happening at the time.
These guidelines are also liberating. You don’t have to try to rank and compare solutions to find the most successful one. You are free to write about solutions that are only partly successful — or even unsuccessful, as long as it’s an interesting or important failure, and you can explain to the reader why you’re covering it (see our section on failure). You’re just looking for a good story.
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» Failure
As indicated in our Slices section, this gives you a level of comfort. That said: remember that even with numbers, there may be some vested interests that went into collecting and sharing them.
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» Slices
Be extra careful. Your subjects will likely rush to talk to you about a solutions story. But you shouldn’t rush to believe what they say. Get the evidence to support any claim of success.
Sophie Fung
"Get the evidence to support any claim of success." Yes, good journalism reports with evidence. Otherwise it is PR indeed.
Damon Fairall
Mary leaves a comment on every page and it is absolutely electric lol
Mary Agoyi
Getting an evidence is as important as the story... Thank you for this.
Mary Agoyi
Getting an evidence is as important as the story... Thank you for this.
Chidindu Mmadu-Okoli
I just learned there's a word for going to the field to verify stories: shoe-leather reporting. Yes, this is relevant for telling balanced solutions stories.
“There has to be an established problem or common agreement that there’s a problem. Look at the responses. There needs to be some way to measure the effectiveness of that. If it’s just anecdotal, if we just have people saying, 'Oh, this is great,'' that’s really not enough. We need some way to measure it. If the response or solution came about because somebody just threw aton of money at it, we’re probably not interested in that because that precludes a lot of other places from being able to replicate it or try it out themselves. Which speaks to another thing we look for. Is the response or solution scalable? Could it be replicated somewhere else?"