Going Where the Mission Requires with Solutions Journalism Network’s Tina Rosenberg
About This Episode
This week on the show, Carrie sits down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tina Rosenberg for a third time to assess the surprising power of solutions journalism. Of course, it wouldn't be a conversation about the news media if it didn't discuss the curious patterns of polarization, exploring how our perceptions of division might be more amplified than reality indicates. Tina, co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, argues that the news, in its relentless focus on the negative, can actually distort our understanding of the world. It's a paradox: the very medium meant to inform us contributes directly to our skewed perspectives.
Through her own work, Tina is actively reshaping the narrative. With tens of thousands of journalists now trained in solutions reporting, she and her colleagues are pioneering a new approach – one that investigates what works rather than solely focusing on what's broken. It's not about Pollyannaish optimism or ignoring bad news; it's about rigorous reporting on solutions, examining their effectiveness with the same scrutiny typically reserved for exposing flaws.
Carrie and Tina discuss the unexpected ripple effects of this shift, from happier journalists to a renewed sense of purpose in the newsroom. They explore the subtle art of listening, the power of asset-based framing (championed by Solutions Journalism Network board chair, Trabian Shorters), and the vital role of community engagement. This isn't just about journalism; it's about how we understand and address the challenges facing our society. Tune in to discover how a different kind of storytelling can lead to a more nuanced, and ultimately more hopeful, view of the world.
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Carrie Fox:
Hi there, and welcome to the Mission Forward Podcast. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B-corporation. Thanks for tuning in to today's episode.
This week, we reintroduce you to one of our favorite Mission Forward guests. Here's some trivia for you. She is the only guest to now have been on Mission Forward three times. It's Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist Tina Rosenberg, co-founder of Solutions Journalism Network, who joined us for our very first Mission Forward event back in 2014. Then we had her on our show a couple years ago. And we reconnect again today.
We'll sit back down with Tina to explore the effect that solutions reporting in newsrooms and nonprofits can have on attitudes, behaviors, and bottom line impact. We will talk about the lessons we can learn from leaders like Tina, who keep their mission at the core. I hope you love this conversation as much as I did. Tina is full of wisdom and insights, and is just plain fun to listen to. Enjoy, and I'll see you on the other side.
It was 10 years ago when I first sat down to discuss storytelling for maximum impact at that first Mission Forward event. And three years ago, since we had Tina Rosenberg back on the podcast to discuss reclaiming news as a public good. She is, as you would expect, a brilliant storyteller and an interrogator of solutions, which we're going to hear more about today.
Welcome, Tina.
Tina Rosenberg:
Thank you, Carrie. It's great to be here.
Carrie Fox:
Well, it is always an honor to learn from you, so thanks for being here. I'm going to dive right in, Tina. I want to talk a bit about polarization, because when you appeared on the Mission Forward Podcast, you might remember, a lot has changed in a few years.
Tina Rosenberg:
That was the Jurassic Era I think, right?
Carrie Fox:
Right, right. You said something, and it's interesting how much the world has changed potentially in those three years. But you said, "America's actually not all that polarized. We think we're a lot more polarized than we are, because the media shows the extremes on both sides." Which brings us to today.
Do you still believe we're not as polarized, with both candidates being given an equal chance to win this election, and with the divides as great as we are led to believe?
Tina Rosenberg:
Oh, yeah. I still believe that it's true, that we are not as polarized as we think we are. We're pretty polarized. The world is pretty polarized. But the reason we think we're polarized more than we are is that what we see are the extremes on both sides. Most people are not among those extremes. The loudest, most shocking, most newsworthy voices get far more coverage than reasonable people, so we think that that's what t other side thinks.
There are studies that show that the more you watch the news, the less you are actually aware of what the other side thinks. News is harmful to that perception. It gives you bad information. There's a lot more agreement among Americans than we think.
Carrie Fox:
But that's such a fascinating comment, because you're part of the news, and you're changing it. How do folks who are listening make sense of the news that reinforces their views, and the news that informs wider views?
Tina Rosenberg:
Well, first of all, a lot of people are aware of the need to teach media literacy, especially to young people, so we can sort out what is mis and disinformation in the news.
My feeling is the most important kind of misinformation, not disinformation because disinformation is deliberate, is the bias towards the negative of the news. Journalism is set to consider only what's wrong as news, and therefore we are producing a very distorted picture of reality. One that really ignores a lot of what works in society, and a lot of stories about what people are doing that confounds the stereotypes through which we journalists normally cover people.
Carrie Fox:
You are teeing me up again for the next one, because you're talking about how so much on the news focuses on what's broken. But that really was your, and David Bornstein, Courtney Martin, your moment to say, "We could change it." Or, "Could we change it?"
As you've said many times, you weren't the first to do solutions journalism, but you created a system for it. You created a framework for it. Solutions Journalism Network has now been around for more than 10 years. Today, nearly 60,000 journalists are trained in solutions reporting. It's been a real interesting process to watch, as journalists have thought, and in some ways I think told themselves, that it's okay to do journalism in a different way.
Tina Rosenberg:
We need permission, yes.
Carrie Fox:
Right, right.
Tina Rosenberg:
The most fearless investigative reporter who will hold the most powerful people to account is terrified to do a story about what works, lest it come out seeming like advocacy, or cheerleading, or fluff.
Carrie Fox:
Well, that's a really important point, because the solutions journalism, the what works journalism is not about the good news, feel good news. In some ways it is, but it really is interrogating.
So then, what happens? You've seen this now for 10 years. What happens when journalists move to solutions journalism?
Tina Rosenberg:
Well, lots of different things. First of all, I want to just make the point that we now have accredited solutions journalism trainers in 68 countries. We are a global empire.
What happened is, first of all, journalists are happier. A lot of journalists are pretty darn depressed about their jobs and about the state of the world. It's a lot more fun to be doing some stories in the mix about what works. But also, it really helps to repair the existential crisis that journalism has been going through.
Journalism, since approximately the turn of the Millennium, has been going through two crises. The economic crisis, because of the departure of advertising. And the existential crisis, where we realize that people don't like us very much, they don't trust us very much. How can solutions journalism help with that?
For us journalists, investigative reporting is the highest form of the art. I actually do agree with that. But for civilians, it isn't. Civilians consider that kind of work as simply sitting on the side and sniping at people. They want to know that we are responsible civic actors who write about bad things when they happen, but also write about good things when they happen. That don't just have it in to say bad things about our city. Doing these kinds of stories is very important to regaining that kind of relationship with the public.
It's also important in another way. Journalists tend to cover marginalized communities through the lens of their worst stereotype and only that. We go to Appalachia, we look for people with four teeth. We go to inner-city Chicago, we knock on doors and ask people about gun violence. As if nothing else happened in these places. Solutions journalism gives journalists a system for finding a different kind of story. One that really acknowledges the agency of people in these communities as they try to solve their own problems.
Carrie Fox:
If we go back to that opening question, are we as polarized as we think, you don't have to go much further than to your own story tracker, which is on your website, and it has now I think more than 15,000 stories. But it has more than 400 stories on election-related topics. If people are questioning, "Is democracy even working," they can go find out how. That's why I love that solutions story tracker.
Curious if you ever thought about how big, you say global empire, how big this would become?
Tina Rosenberg:
When we started, we anticipated we'd get a lot of pushback about the idea. "It's not kosher. It's not real journalism." That has really been much easier than we thought. Within about five minutes, I can convince you that, in fact, this is journalism with high standards. As you said, it's interrogating solutions. It's looking at what doesn't work about them as well as what does work about them. That's been easier than we thought. Part of the reason is that journalism, which is normally a very defensive profession, is much more open to new ideas than it ever has been because of these crises that it's going through. We know change or die, those are our choices.
What's been very hard is behavior change. Trying to crack through the pull of business as usual, and the way newsrooms are set up. A lot of journalists want to do solutions journalism, and they come out of workshop very excited and they're ready to start, but they can't do it today because they have three other stories they need to do today, so they'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. That's a big problem that we are working to overcome. There is a lot of inertia.
Carrie Fox:
Well, I know someone who knows a thing or two about peer pressure, and that's you. Because my favorite book, it still sits here on my desk. In it you write, "The more important and deeply rooted the behavior, the less impact information will have and the more people close their minds to messages that scare them." It's hitting me that actually that could be translated to also be relevant to journalists, and the shift that they have to make.
Tina Rosenberg:
It's true. Yeah.
Carrie Fox:
"The more important and deeply rooted the behavior, the less impact information will have and the more people close their minds to messages that scare them." We talked about that 10 years ago. But I can't read it now and not think about where we are today.
Tina Rosenberg:
Yeah.
Carrie Fox:
I want you to weigh in. When you hear that now, is there hope that deeply rooted behaviors can change?
Tina Rosenberg:
Well, there's been a lot of great work done about how to do that. For example, we have a project called Complicating the Narratives, which helps journalists cover polarizing issues in depolarizing ways. A lot of it is how to listen and how to talk to people in a way that jives with what we know about human behavior.
There is nothing that will make you tune out the rest of the world, and focus and embrace your closely held biases more than me yelling at you about them. The only way you're going to open up is if I listen to you. I don't have to agree with you, but I have to show that I understand you. Those kinds of conversations, they don't just apply to journalism obviously. I think those are very important, and there is evidence that these and other things do work to make people more open to facts.
Carrie Fox:
Does solutions journalism require that journalists listen differently?
Tina Rosenberg:
It's better if you do. It does require we ask different kinds of questions. It's less, "Whose to blame for this mess we're in?" And more, "Let's look at this project, and why it works, and whether it can help our city." Those are two very different kinds of questions.
Carrie Fox:
You mentioned early on that the way you tell a story can reinforce or challenge a stereotype. Trabian Shorters, the great catalyst for asset-based framing-
Tina Rosenberg:
He's the chair of our board.
Carrie Fox:
He's the chair of your board! I love that on so many levels. I'm curious what effect has his thinking had on you, and on how the Solutions Journalism Network does their reporting and telling of stories?
Tina Rosenberg:
Oh, it's had a big effect. It's not the same as solutions journalism.
Just briefly, asset framing is leading with your subjects assets and aspirations, and not their deficits. You can get to the deficits in paragraph two. But the first introduction we have to someone is so powerful, and it's so much becomes a part of our unconscious that it's actually unchangeable. The way we meet people in that first sentence is hugely important. Journalists are starting to become aware of that.
Young journalists are embracing all these different ideas because we have a different ... We, they. I'm not a young journalist. Have a different idea of what journalism should do. I think the feeling now, more, and more, and more, and it's going to kop growing, is that we are here, as your last guest said, to serve our community. And to be radically helpful to our community. What does our community need? How can we be part of the solution of them? What information do people need to be able to live good lives and solve problems? That's a very different definition of journalism than we've had since the mid-70s, I would say.
Carrie Fox:
It is, it is. I know you're speaking through a journalism lens, but I can't not think about nonprofits who are listening, particularly nonprofit communicators who are listening, and they think about how they tell that story, how they shape that story. What if you challenged how you told that story? Rather than starting with the person who's down on their luck, that you shift it. You completely change it upside down.
I love what you just said, because it really reminds me, Tina, that if you are leading in nonprofit and you are in service, it's not about you. It's about your community. How deeply are you listening and understanding that community to reflect them accurately? Not to reflect them the way you think you should reflect them.
Tina Rosenberg:
Exactly. Exactly.
Carrie Fox:
All right. We titled this lab Going Where the Mission Requires. We're talking about mission through and through today. But really, that's a nod to how successful your organization has evolved. How you've shifted, based on what you've learned from your community.
You mentioned not too long ago in an interview, I think it was around your 10-year mark. You said, "Once you were in the center of the growing movement, you now let the movement lead you." Your seat has changed. I've worked with hundreds of organizations, and I know that adjusting course in order to stay true to your mission is not easy.
I want to ask you how did you do it? How difficult was that? And was it worth it?
Tina Rosenberg:
Well, it was done out of necessity. What we were doing was not working very well. We were mainly focused on training newsrooms, and they did great solutions stories when we were there with them. As soon as we left, it went back to business as usual.
We shifted to focus ... We still train newsrooms, but we know what they need to be able to really make this switch. One of the things they need is passionate people. Now what we do is we train passionate people. Our mission now is to build and support a network of solutions journalism trainers all over the United States and all over the world. That switch has been relatively easy because, again, change or die. We knew we needed to do it.
Carrie Fox:
Well, I said it at the top and I'll say it again, I think you, David, and Courtney are brilliant with what you started, and I'm so thrilled to see how much it has grown. I remember being in your office, you probably don't, but probably about 10 years ago, when you were just getting started and you were thinking about your own strategy. It's been remarkable really, Tina, to see how its grown.
Tina Rosenberg:
Well, it's a product of the times in a way. If we tried this 15 years ago, nothing would have happened. Yeah. Never let a crisis go to waste.
Carrie Fox:
Well, you've given folks a lot to think about today. Storytelling extends far beyond journalism. For those who are listening who tell stories in any form, challenge yourself to think about do you tell solutions stories. Go check out the story tracker, because it's a fantastic tool to really understand-
Tina Rosenberg:
It's a [inaudible 00:16:39].
Carrie Fox:
It is!
Tina Rosenberg:
It's so much fun.
Carrie Fox:
To learn what's working. Yeah.
Tina Rosenberg:
Thank you.
Carrie Fox:
All right. Thanks for being here. Bye.
That brings us to the end of another episode of Mission Forward. If you like what you heard today, I hope you'll stop right now, and give the show a five-star rating wherever you are listening to this podcast. Maybe even forward it to a friend who you think would enjoy today's conversation. And of course, check out the show notes for all of the links referenced in today's show.
Mission Forward is produced with the support and wisdom of Pete Wright and the True Story production team, as well as the wonderful Sadie Lockhart of Mission Partners. You can learn more about our work over at missionforward.us. Of course, reach out to me any time at carrie@mission.partners. Thanks for tuning in today, friend. I'll see you next time.
