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3 questions to our Solutions Journalism Accelerator ambassador Jan Scheper May 15 2023

If you missed our last Q&A blog on Solutions Journalism, you can find it here.

Because of all the crises, wars and catastrophes, you can't or don't want to hear or see them anymore, because the abundance of this information overwhelms us, tires us and, in the worst case, makes us lethargic or even depressed. But this is a high risk for democracy!

-- Lilien Wege

Can you walk us through your journey into solutions journalism?

Community-based constructive journalism - this is the form of journalism that you can expect from us since day 1. It's our answer to the fact that probably every one of us has already turned off the news (no matter what channel) at least once in the past month because it was too negative for us. Because of all the crises, wars and catastrophes, you can't or don't want to hear or see them anymore, because the abundance of this information overwhelms us, tires us and, in the worst case, makes us lethargic or even depressed. But this is a high risk for democracy!

While many established media are just now discovering the potential of this form of journalism, we were the ones who brought this form to German local journalism. When we started in 2020 with the help of Ulrik Haagerup and his team of the Constructive Institute in Aarhus/Denmark, apart from the Sächsische Zeitung, there was no local newspaper in Germany that had already had any notable experience with this form of journalism.

We only see the world with both eyes. Where there is light, there is also shadow. Where there is a problem, chances are someone in the world has tried to solve it at least once. Where there are loud opinion criers, there are also minorities on the fringes, and where topics will still be important tomorrow, a constructive exchange is important.

At Relevanzreporter.de, you practise local solutions journalism. What does it look like and why do you consider it relevant?

For us, constructive journalism is not a fig leaf with an article hanging somewhere between sections 5 and 6 once a month and marked with a "constructive" tag. No, we do NOTHING else than that: We, Relevanzreporter, strive for this future and solution orientation in each of our research. And we combine it with a community-based approach: We strive for a variety of perspectives by inviting people with different experiences and backgrounds to come to our community and get actively involved in order to build a colourful, diverse range of media for everyone with us. We want you to have your say and thus make it visible.

We strive for democratic debates in which the citizens of this region can exchange ideas fairly in order to gain their own opinion and thus be able to actively shape their immediate environment in a self-determined manner.

For example, we invite the citizens of the city to our free events. There is always the opportunity to get actively involved by asking questions to experts or by participating in discussion rounds. In advance, we also collect the ideas and wishes of our community via surveys.

What resources do you have for media looking to dive into solutions journalism?

On our website are the characteristics of how we define constructive local journalism. We have also written a guide on how people can get actively involved. We also offer free seminars for interested people who want to delve deeper into the topic of constructive local journalism. Just recently at the Nuremberg Digital Festival, we held an open editorial conference, where really anyone could drop by and slip into the role of editor, photographer, or social media manager and tackle a topic with us. So the next possible community research can start.