Connecting in shared purpose helped them better inform communities. Three years in, the Granite State News Collaborative shares what they’ve learned. — Since 2018, the Granite State News Collaborative has grown to include 20 media and educational partners across New Hampshire. These include New Hampshire PBS, NHPR, the Concord Monitor, many weekly newspapers and Franklin Pierce University. Recently, the Collaborative finished its two-year residency with our Local Media Project. They’ve raised more…

A new fund will support reporting on COVID-19 in New England, with an eye toward what’s working to address the region’s many challenges. Application deadline: Aug. 7 — The Solutions Journalism Network is supporting reporting projects​ about ​what’s working to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic — efforts to contain the virus, cope with its social and economic impacts, and help communities recover. Today, we are announcing a new fund specifically for newsrooms based in the New England states…

‘It’s not just about the news.’ Local news organizations are a foundation for civic engagement, and they’re undergoing major changes. — This analysis of local news and information ecosystems in the New England region was prepared by the Solutions Journalism Network, based on research conducted between September 2019 and April 2020, and supported by the Barr Foundation. This work was led and authored by Rachel Edens, Emily Roseman, and Leah Todd.

A conversation with Washington Post health and medicine reporter Lenny Bernstein, who has worked at the paper since 2000 and whose honors include a George Polk Award for uncovering how pressure from the pharmaceutical industry led to lax regulation of narcotic painkillers. By Leah Todd, New England region manager, Solutions Journalism Network In recent weeks, headlines from Washington Post reporter…

A race like this will probably never happen again. — I heard music coming from the woods. I don’t just mean the wind rustling the leaves and grass. Human music. Guitars. Bluegrass? I had heard people describe rural New England as “banjo country.” Is this what they meant? Worse, I had been running for eight hours already. …

Tackling a big project? Here are five hacks for solutions journalism in a small newsroom, from our network of editors and reporters. — Constraints on editors and reporters in small newsrooms have been well documented. Staffs continue to shrink. Fewer people remain to produce ever more stories. Travel budgets wither. Morale can, too. Today we’ll take a solutions journalism lens to journalism itself, and study a few cases where small shops produced great…

Solutions journalism covers local issues — but also looks for effective models from elsewhere. Asking, “Who’s doing it better?” can lead you to a story away from home. Here’s how to make that work, in the words of our network. — For booming Bozeman, Montana, a town buoyed by ski tourism and a growing technology start-up scene, the conversation about how to handle unbridled growth never stops. The local Bozeman Daily Chronicle newspaper has charted the rapid rise in population and tracked its effects: packed classrooms, rising housing costs, and local…

A dialogue about trust, diversity in journalism, and reporting on more than just the crisis. — SANTA FE, NM — Dramatic shifts in journalism’s traditional business model have challenged news organizations today. Employment at newspapers alone in the U.S. has fallen by nearly half since 2006, according to the Pew Research Center. The line between real and fake news continues to blur, and media condemnation grows…

How do you connect solutions stories — and possible solutions — across geography? We have some ideas. — Earlier this summer, 30 people gathered among the exposed red brick and tall wood beams of a refurbished industrial space in downtown Denver called The Alliance Center. They came from 15 communities across the Mountain West — from most towns, one journalist and one civic actor. What problems, they asked…