SJN’s network strategy responds to the question: How do we drive the adoption of solutions reporting among more journalists with lower investment? It complements and syncs with our newsroom approach, which relies on direct, in-person training and project-based learning. But it is anchored in network linkages and peer-to-peer learning. It relies on recognition, support, and connection to spread the solutions approach. We expect that, over the next three years, the universe of solutions journalism practitioners increasingly will be populated by our network activities.

Community Building Across the U.S.: In-person events in our four communities (Bay Area, Philadelphia, D.C., and New York City) led by paid, part-time coordinators have engaged at least 350 distinct participants in activities from pop-up Q&As with social entrepreneurs and high-profile journalists, to trainings and workshops grounding journalists in the practice of solutions reporting and helping them develop their story ideas. Coordinators have shaped the emerging communities, seeding new participants, building relationships and connections, amplifying connections with newsroom activities, and spotting new innovations, best practices, and growing trends. By year-end 2019, we aim to have 5,000 journalists as part of the online network, with most communities led by volunteer coordinators.

Our Online Presence: We launched a redesigned SJN website in May, featuring our new online network, the Hub. Membership in the Hub surpassed 2,400 people by the end of year, well past the 1,500 we had projected. By year-end, our website page traffic was up 7.5% to an average of 13,000 pageviews per month. Users spent 24.4% more time on our new website and viewed 21.1% more pages per visit than they did in 2015. On social media, our Twitter followers increased 57% to 7,989, with an average reach per month of 136,000 impressions. In the fall we launched a Facebook discussion group, reaching 557 members by the end of the year.