A Better Way to Cover Civic Life: Building Trust Through Listening and Solutions Reporting

Course Details

Date

On Demand

Language

English

Alternative

Modules

4

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On Demand

$0.00

A Better Way to Cover Civic Life: Building Trust Through Listening and Solutions Reporting

Welcome to our on-demand course, “A Better Way to Cover Civic Life” produced by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas in collaboration with the Solutions Journalism Network.

This is an updated version of a live course, “A Better Way to Cover Elections: Campaign Reporting that Centers Communities and Solutions,” originally offered in 2024—and it’s now open to all journalists and newsrooms looking to improve political coverage, whether it’s an election year or not.

The public is clear about what they don’t want: Horse-race political reporting that focuses on polls and pundits. And many newsrooms are finding much more traction by listening more deeply to their audiences, reporting on progress, and utilizing strategies that build trust and reduce polarization. That was true in 2024, when this course started, and continues to be true as communities struggle with challenges tied to immigration, education, housing, public safety and climate adaptation.

This free course offers a fresh, proven and practical approach to covering politics and public life—one that’s rooted in what your community needs, not what candidates say.

You’ll learn from experts at the Solutions Journalism Network, Trusting News and Hearken how to:

Move beyond horse-race and conflict-driven coverage
Build trust and engagement through transparent reporting practices
Use solutions journalism to deepen coverage of local issues, and give the public the information they need in working to solve them.
Report in ways that reduce polarization and support informed civic participation.

This course was designed for reporters, editors, students, and aspiring journalists around the world. It’s for anyone who is dissatisfied with traditional coverage of politics, elections and democracy and wants tools and strategies that are key to developing an alternative approach that audiences want.

This course is organized into five modules:

Introduction Module: Led by Jaisal Noor, this module will cover the challenges associated with traditional ‘horse-race’ political coverage, the importance of newsrooms adopting a pro-democracy stance, and an overview of essential skills and strategies for achieving a more effective approach to political journalism.

Module 1: Led by Lynn Walsh, this module focuses on fostering transparency and openness in newsrooms while teaching participants how to craft mission statements and share coverage goals effectively.

Module 2: Instructed by Jennifer Brandel, this module explores strategies for community-driven journalism and advocates for better engagement with diverse audiences.

Module 3: The third module, guided by Jaisal Noor, introduces solutions journalism as a tool for enhancing campaign coverage, including integration into existing beats and real-world examples from newsrooms.

Module 4: Co-instructed by Lynn Walsh and Julia Hotz, the final module addresses polarization in election reporting and offers practical techniques to avoid amplifying extreme views while promoting fairness and credibility in reporting.

Jaisal Noor is Solutions Journalism Network’s Democracy Cohort Manager. He leads the Advancing Democracy Fellowship, helping newsrooms reinvent how they cover politics, deepening their election coverage beyond the horse race. Over the past decade, Jaisal has reported for Democracy Now!, The Atlantic, Bolts Magazine, The Real News Network and Baltimore Beat. He is also an organizer with US Democracy Day, a movement supporting pro-democracy newsrooms.

Lynn Walsh is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who has worked in investigative, data and TV journalism for more than 15 years. Currently, she is a freelance journalist and the Assistant Director of Trusting News, where she works to help rebuild trust between journalists and the public. Lynn is also an adjunct professor at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, CA where she teaches journalism and communication classes. She is a past national president and Ethics Chair for the Society of Professional Journalists.

Jennifer Brandel (she/they) is Co-founder & CEO of Hearken, a company that helps organizations around the world develop and operationalize participatory processes. Brandel is an award-winning journalist, and founded and led the ground-breaking audience-first journalism series Curious City at WBEZ Chicago. She is also co-founder of Zebras Unite, a global movement and network of entrepreneurs, funders, investors and allies creating a more ethical, inclusive and collaborative ecosystem for mission-based startups. Brandel received the Media Changemaker Prize by the Center for Collaborative Journalism, was named one of 30 World-Changing Women in Conscious Business, is a Columbia Sulzberger Fellow, an RSA Fellow, a member of the Guild of Future Architects and the National Civic Collaboratory.

Julia Hotz is Solutions Journalism Network’s Fellowships Manager. She created and leads SJN’s LEDE Fellowship and Complicating the Narratives (CTN) Fellowship, and supports both colleagues and partners to create solutions journalism fellowship programs. She’s currently reporting “The Connection Cure” (Simon and Schuster, 2024), and has written solutions journalism about mental health issues for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Wired magazine, Scientific American, Bloomberg, Time magazine, and more.