Recommendations and Conclusions

This series of discussions offers an opportunity to learn from residents in an underprivileged area whose voices are rarely heard reflecting constructively on how their own community’s story is told. Those interviewed gave advice for how the media could better cover their South LA neighborhood and reflected on their particular media preferences and practices. From these conversations, we can offer the following recommendations for media outlets, as well as those organizations working with media:

  • Adopting the Metamorphosis Project model of strengthening “storytelling networks” between community organizations, local/ethnic media, and residents is a primary way to develop local, community-based solutions journalism. These network connections are critical to long-term impacts on civic engagement and local involvement.

  • Expanding engagement opportunities for resident involvement in various stages of story development and dissemination is one method for strengthening this model. Residents and organizations should be given opportunities to learn how to connect with media. Community foundations should invest in workshops that train community members around the best ways to communicate with journalists, and journalists to effectively listen to communities. This should create critical feedback loops that are cultivated over the long term.

  • In underserved communities of color where audiences feel neglected and even harmed by traditional media coverage, solutions journalism offers a pathway to rebuild constructive and mutually beneficial relationships of greater trust. Even while looking for positive outcomes, reporters should take care to include thorough analysis of social problems as part of their coverage.

  • Journalists seeking local sources in traditionally stigmatized communities should consider whom they ask to speak for that community, and, when appropriate, seek articulate and knowledgeable representatives. Reporters should be careful that while pursuing “characters” for a story they do not uncritically reproduce negative stereotypes.

  • Local solutions journalism requires an investment in local reporting resources to enable follow-up coverage and the development of lasting relationships with communities beyond one-time stories. In addition, to cultivate trust within underrepresented areas, media must seek to develop reporters who come from the communities they report on—or, at minimum, enable reporters to embed themselves within communities in a way that allows them to be responsive to local sensitivities and concerns regarding representation.

Complementing these recommendations, additional research on local solutions journalism could further our understanding of the format’s potential. Future research might benefit from comparing the cumulative consumption of media diets that have either a greater number of solutions-oriented stories or more traditional stories in a longitudinal study. Such research may include a second control group—making for a total of three types of stories:

  1. solutions-oriented;

  2. a non-solutions, problem-oriented, or “bad news” story; and

  3. a “good news” story that highlights exceptional individuals doing positive things, usually without critical analysis or discussion of systemic change.

This would allow for an exploration of the hypothesis that readers of both “bad” and “good” news stories are likely to become or remain disengaged when they come away with a sense that there is nothing to be done. This research would require care to insure significant variance between good news and solutions-oriented stories, and additional resources to hold more focus groups. Lastly, the research could include study of local television and Internet sources to assess the broader potential for local solutions journalism, and potentially the circulation and validation of stories within social networks.

Studies such as the current one could be duplicated in multiple areas of the same city (for example, in a more affluent area such as West LA) to see how residents from different ethnic and class backgrounds respond to stories which are in close proximity but concern the “other.” Research might explore how residents react given that they are likely implicated in the power dynamics of the story (public resources may have historically been diverted to their neighborhoods; they may have greater resources to contribute to problem solving, etc.).

Finally, researchers should take care not to assume that questions developed for studies of national or international news can be applied without substantial adaptation to local contexts where audiences have firsthand experience with subject matter, and place-specific histories and power relationships with media.

Solutions-oriented journalism does not offer a magic bullet for engaging audiences as either media consumers or civic actors. We believe, however, that particularly in communities with a long history of overwhelmingly negative coverage stories featuring community perspectives that take a critical look at responses to social problems offer an opportunity to strengthen connections between residents, media, and community organizations. At the end of our discussion sessions, participants asked us how they could learn more about the issues raised in these stories. Many wanted to get involved. We hope our study showcases a few insights for media, other researchers, and community organizations as they explore how local news can become a more constructive actor in engaged and informed communities.