Angry. Sad. Sickened. This is how many people feel while skimming through the sea of distressing headlines presented by major news sources. “Sometimes I will feel – I was going to say sad – but I think the proper word is sickened by what is in the news,” Dr. Jennifer Hennessey-Booth, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Eastern University, said. “So sometimes I will limit my news intake because of the feeling of dread. The events themselves make me sad. The way that they’re portrayed sometimes makes me angry.”
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), the constant negativity in mainstream news often leaves people feeling anxious, helpless and drained. In this digital age, updates on every travesty are easily accessible and easily overwhelming. As more people distance themselves from the news due to its negative impact on mental health, newsrooms are considering a shift in the way they have traditionally reported the news.
One alternative is solutions journalism: An approach to news reporting that investigates the root causes of societal issues and explores applicable solutions to such problems. “Solutions journalism provides this idea of hope and could possibly change the way that we operate as a nation,” said Dr. Julie Morgan, Chair and Professor of Communication Studies at Eastern University.
Gerbner’s Cultivation Theory
Morgan is well-versed in George Gerbner’s Cultivation Theory, which suggests that interaction with the news and media shapes the way people view reality. Gerbner posited in the late 1960s that heavy news exposure leads to mean world syndrome and “cultivates an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world.”
“The news teaches us who to be afraid of,” Morgan said. “The story is the same over and over again because it rings true, even though it’s not true, it rings true.” The volume of negative news content that people are exposed to can directly affect their view of the world and their mental health.
Antidote to Mean World Syndrome
Michael Davis, manager of training and curriculum for Solutions Journalism Network, offers an antidote. SJN is a nonprofit organization dedicated to training journalists to report on solution-focused responses to societal issues.
Davis claims that our society is “in a period of news avoidance where people have backed away from the news and said ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ It has traumatized people,” he said. “It has made them feel hopeless and helpless and all kinds of negative things associated with news avoidance. I’m not saying that solutions journalism is the only antidote, but solutions journalism is one way to win back readers that feel like they’ve had enough.”
Solutions Journalism
Traditional news sources typically report on the problems at hand, offering little to no consolation or resolution to such issues.
Hennessy-Booth said she does not check the news, “particularly if there are a lot of positive things happening” in her personal life in order to maintain a positive attitude. Traditional journalism can be so depressing and anxiety-inducing that many, including Hennessy-Booth, avoid it altogether.
Solutions journalism, however, is different.
Davis claims that people often think “news is when a plane crashes at the local airport that a hundred flights landed safely today. To which I now say, ‘Hold on a minute, maybe what we should do is a story that looks at the safety record of our local airport and maybe it’s an outlier. Maybe they haven’t had a fatality or an accident and find out why.’ Look at the responses to the aviation industry and airline crashes in the past and find a difference between what we have today.”
“Every day in this country people are making progress on lots of social issues and the progress that they’re making can be measured and weighed and shared with audiences and that leads to a healthier, more informed nation,” Davis said. “That is what I train people to do. I train them to answer the simple question: Who’s doing it better? Find them. Report on them. Share it. Discuss it.”
Investigating the “How”
Davis describes solutions journalists as “interested observers.”
“The ‘how’ questions in solutions journalism are the most important ones. Mystery questions are the “Whodunnit’s.” We call solutions journalism stories the “Howdunnit’s.” These aren’t “gotcha” stories. This is the opposite of a gotcha story. This is a story that’s holding up a mirror and trying to reflect back how things are. [It’s] acknowledging that the world has problems and we respond to problems, and here’s an interesting or promising response to a problem.”
An example of a solutions journalism story is one from July 2024 in The Philadelphia Citizen, where the paper reported on pedestrian safety solutions in the wake of the death of a well-regarded doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania. More examples of solutions journalism like this can be found on the Solutions Story Tracker website.
Limitations
One of the limitations of solutions journalism is the potential for bias in reporting on solutions to issues. Because of the potential for bias, Hennessy-Booth is skeptical about the solutions journalism from all news sources: “I really think it would depend on the news source. There’s some news that I think the solutions would be biased, so I think that would make me more angry. But if I trust the news source and I was in agreement with it, then I think the solution would offer satisfaction and hope.”
In response to these concerns, Davis replies that the secret to effective and unbiased solutions journalism is “all in the questions that you pose.” He explained that a critical part of his approach is to ask, “What do your critics say about you? How do you respond to that?” This line of questioning helps assess the credibility and balance of the perspectives presented, ensuring a thorough and fair evaluation of the issue at hand.
“I think that’s another limitation, too, that they aren’t easy-peasy stories to do and so you have to make time in your schedule and your editor or supervisor needs to be aware and on-board with you taking the time to do the stories,” Davis said. “Now I think the upside, the reward of this story, can be higher than other kinds of stories. But, like all good things, it takes time and energy to do them.”
Another limitation to this method of reporting is that “you can’t do solutions journalism until the problem is well known by your audience,” Davis said. “Sometimes the best solutions journalism is about a problem that’s been nagging the community for a while, that almost everybody is sick of hearing about.”
Feedback
Davis and his coworkers at SJN have received a lot of positive feedback from readers who are pleased with the alternative to traditional journalism. “What’s great is that our research shows that people tend to really understand and appreciate the difference,” he said. “I would say that working in solutions journalism for the past seven years has taught me that audiences really want this. That they crave it. And when they get it, they want more of it.”
Hope
“Solutions journalism is a way of beginning to rebalance the news. I think these stories provide, on occasion, hope, and I’m pro-hope. We at Solutions Journalism Network say it’s ‘hope with teeth’ and these stories have a bite to them. They are robust stories. They are rigorously reported and uphold all the standards of good journalism. It’s just good journalism trained on the response to a problem rather than just the problem and itself,” Davis said.
As solutions journalism sheds light on meaningful progress and hope, the prevalence of mean world syndrome amongst media consumers can diminish.
Josh Steen 
Shelby Sweeney