3 questions to Carla Rosch

In each edition, we like to bring you behind the scenes of our Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This time, we would like to share with you Carla Rosch’s work as an ambassador for solutions-based journalism in the UK. Carla is a journalist currently working in visual journalism at BBC News in London. In her spare time, she likes to do freelancing, particularly features and solutions journalism pieces. 

1)  Why do you think solutions journalism is relevant? And how popular do you think it has become in the UK? 

For me, solutions journalism is a way to balance the news. It gives a spotlight to responses to social issues in a fair and balanced way that examines their efficacy and limitations. It can provide important insights and inspiration and it is also for accountability. I think it is definitely growing in the UK, although probably more in specialised outlets rather than generally integrated into newsrooms. 

2) For your project within the Solutions Journalism Accelerator,  you produce podcast episodes where you interview journalists who reported on a solution. Can you tell us more about how you came up with the idea? 

For a long time, I wanted to try doing solutions journalism because I loved the concept and understood the theory, but I wasn’t sure how to put it into practice. So I looked at other’s work for inspiration, and I often came across really great solutions journalism pieces, but I had so many questions about how the reporter found the story, how they reported it (especially if it was in another country to where they were based), how they found evidence about the response’s effectiveness, and so much more. I  thought that students or others interested in solutions journalism might also have similar doubts. That’s why I came up with the idea that having direct conversations with the journalists who published the stories would be a useful way to help us clarify and understand the process better.  I wanted to go ‘behind the solutions’ and share this as audio, which I find a very good format for longer interviews. 

3) If you had to give one piece of advice on how to approach solutions journalism, what would it be? 

Always challenge yourself to look at social issues or news from a different angle and beyond your immediate surroundings. Ask yourself… Has this been an issue before or somewhere else? Have there been attempts to confront/solve this issue? Chances are you might find an interesting story.