The six things that disqualify a story from being solutions journalism.
Solutions journalism has grown quickly, and with growth came confusion. As more outlets claim the label, it's worth being precise about what doesn't qualify as solutions journalism.
If a journalist offers their own ideas about how to fix a problem, that's an opinion piece. Solutions journalism covers responses that have already been implemented and can be evaluated. Expert opinions on hypothetical fixes don't qualify, even if they're thoughtful and well-sourced.
No solution is perfect. A SoJo story that presents a response without naming its limitations isn't journalism, it's PR. Cost barriers, scalability issues, dependencies on specific conditions: these must be reported. A story about a response that failed can absolutely be solutions journalism, as long as it honestly examines why.
Adding a "what can be done" section at the close of a problem-focused report doesn't make it solutions journalism. In SoJo, the response is the story, present from the first line, not a footnote at the end.
A person who overcame disability or poverty to reach success is an inspiring human story. But if their success doesn't resolve the systemic problem facing others in the same situation, it's not solutions journalism. SoJo addresses community-level problems that require community-level responses.
When coverage centers on how remarkable a person is rather than how their intervention works, it stops being journalism and starts being a profile in admiration. CNN Heroes, for all its appeal, is not solutions journalism. The focus must stay on the solution, not its founder.
The moment a story includes calls to donate, join a movement, or support an initiative, it has crossed from journalism into advocacy. SoJo's job is to verify whether a response works, not to champion it.
