 Good morning and thanks for joining us here live in Miami for the 2020 Night Media Forum. I'm Hari Srinivasan from PBS NewsHour Weekend. Coming up on today's coverage, we have sessions about amplifying voices from underrepresented communities, the role of data and digital in elections and democracy, moderated by none other than PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff. We'll also cover philanthropic support for nonprofit and for-profit legacy newspapers and the closing luncheon from A.G. Report for America announced in December 2019 that it will field 250 emerging journalists in 164 host news organizations to serve local communities across 46 states in 2020. I have Charlie Sennett with me. He is the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Ground Truth that helped launch Report for America in 2017. Liza Gross is also here with me from Solutions Journalism Network. Liza and Charles were both in a breakout session on Tuesday about bringing local reporting and solutions to your community. So first, for people who haven't seen it in the live stream yet, let's talk about some of the takeaways that you guys had in the conversation that both you were leading and then also maybe what happened in the Q&A. Both Charlie and I, even though we do it from different initiatives, emphasize the idea that local is where it's at. We need to rebuild local trust. We need to reenergize the local media ecosystem. So at Solutions Journalism Network, we do it by promoting the practice of solutions journalism. Which, just to explain that for somebody, yeah. It is to combat the relentless negativity of news coverage by covering just as rigorously responses to challenges that have a track record of success. It is not happy journalism. Right. It's journalism that focuses on things that work in the same way that we focus on things that don't. Added to that, the local media project seeks to build collaboratives of news organizations in communities that are focused on covering from a solutions perspective one challenge at a time that it is of great relevance to that community. It could be anything. Could be health. Could be the achievement gap in public schools. Could be aging infrastructure. Could be housing affordability. Charlie, your takeaways from yesterday? You know, I think it's the big takeaway for me is that the crisis in journalism is deepening and that this real crisis, it's multi-layered. There are a lot of reasons for it. But the real heart of the crisis and the nexus of the crisis is in local news. We're really seeing a depth of local news organizations across the country. And we're less informed as a public. And I think the crisis in journalism has become a crisis for democracy. And that what we need to do as journalists now is really stress this idea that we're not just talking about this craft that we love, like this job that we just love to do. That's important. Right. But what it's really about is our democracy. If we're going to have a functioning, thriving democracy, we're going to need really strong journalism, especially on a local level where civic debate really begins. You know, one of the things that I noticed is obviously the report for America model was not to try to build an entirely new institution. You're essentially working with existing newsrooms. Why? Because those newsrooms need help. You know, we've seen 2000 newsrooms across the country close their doors. That leaves 2000 communities with no one watching the store, no one covering the board of education, no one covering city hall or town hall. When that happens, we come apart as a society. We're seeing a lot of different ways in which this emergence of news deserts is impacting our whole society. A couple of them are. We know them intuitively, see them every day. As Liza just pointed out in the discourse we have, that's so negative. But we're becoming more polarized as a result. People are voting less as a result. And people are just generally less informed about their communities. And I think an important consequence of this crisis in local news, one that we're not thinking about enough, is the banks are taking notice. Bond ratings are dropping in those communities where there's no longer a local news organization. Why? Because they don't want to invest in community projects where no one's watching the store. And I think there's a real need for us to wake up. This is a deep crisis. And as we were discussing, it's one we as journalists need to get much better at explaining and sharing why a wider audience needs to understand. We're not just talking about journalism for journalism's sake. We're really talking about our democracy. When you watch TV and you're on MSNBC or Fox, you can feel like news is ubiquitous. How could you possibly think there's a shortage of news? It's bombarding me at every angle. That's true. When's the last time you heard about the bond that you're going to try to move to build a new school? And are you informed on your local ballot questions? And are your candidates well-profiled on a local race? This is the issue that I think we all have to really focus on as journalists. And I hope that all of America will really realize this is a deep crisis for our democracy. One of the central storytelling structures has always been what's the tension here? Who's the bad guy? Who's the villain? What's a possible solution? But we don't end up playing the solution up nearly as equally as we do the problem. And we've had, well, at least in television, rating success going further and further down that rabbit hole. I mean, we're sitting in Miami. This was the capital of this phrase, if it bleeds, it leads. That was 15, 20 years ago. It's worked pretty well. It's hard to convince news directors to say, I'm going to go walk away from the ratings and do this. So what are models or what are examples of solutions-driven reporting that actually is not only substantive, but also can be financially lucrative? Thank you for asking that question. Because we always compare in workshops solutions journalism to a James Bond movie. And I say, you know, when you see James Bond hanging from a cliff, you know, he's going to live. They need him for the next movie. That's right. So what you really want to know is how does he get out of this conundrum? How does he get out of this jam? And this is what solutions journalism is all about. It emphasizes the process. It emphasizes the how to. I also compare solutions journalism to telenovelas. We know that in the end, the boy and the girl are going to live happily ever after. But we want to know what happens in between. And this is what solutions journalism is all about. And we've had many, many cases of successful solutions series that tackled very thorny problems in our community. We have worked with over 200 news organizations so far in the United States and more abroad. So we have 8,000 articles in our archive or pieces that have been produced with our solutions, journals and perspective. But we have had small outlets like the Richland Source in Ohio that have done a tremendously successful solution series on maternal mortality in Ohio. And we've had larger outfits like the Minneapolis Star Tribune that did a fantastic series on the Somali community that at that time was the target of ISIS recruitment. And they really, really did a fabulous job of showing that, yes, Somalis have coffee shops and Somalis have stores. They are not allowed in a corner mixing uranium to a bomb or plotting to destroy the new World Trade Center. To diffuse some of that fear. That's exactly right. But show also how they are an integrated part of the community. And one thing also that we talked about yesterday when we were talking about all news all the time, we have this illusion of being connected. But many of us in cities don't know what's happening 10 blocks away. We are in bigger silos now that perhaps we were before community-wise because we are losing that common fabric. And that's what we need to regain. That's what news collaboratives with a solutions perspective do. And do you infuse some of that into your reporters? Say, listen, I know you're going to be in different newsrooms and obviously listen to your boss. But think about how you're writing these stories. Totally. I mean, one of the things we talked about yesterday also was that journalism now is going to be, I think, increasingly driven by the non-profit model. That those of us who think of our organizations as mission-driven like North America is a non-profit, Solutions Journalism is a non-profit, PBS NewsHour is a non-profit. I think a lot of the really quality journalism that's being done is being done in a non-profit model. Because our mission isn't to get more eyeballs. It's to really try to enlighten and inform. And I think that business model helps. Partnership is a key. So what we do is we train our journalists for Report for America. Giving them the Solutions Journalism toolkit to go out and really think about that every day in your reporting. If you're highlighting a problem, well, report just as hard on the solution. And even if it's a bad solution that's been proposed, report hard on that. But if you find a good solution, that should move up in your story. Because it is what people are looking for. And Hari, I just wanted to say when you said, you know, if it bleeds, it leads. And it's hard to argue financially with the success that models had. The question we have to ask is, who is it working for? It's definitely not working for citizens. Right. I think no matter where you come from politically, you'd see that we are in a terribly divided moment. We're not listening to each other. And more importantly, people in much of the country don't feel heard. And journalism's job is to be there and to listen and to really bring their stories forward. And I think that's what we do at Report for America. And we do it even more effectively in partnership with Solutions Journalism. OK, well, we haven't been jumping around enough. We've started to turn the lights out on us. And get the session going. Charlie Sennett and Liza Gross, thank you both for joining us. Thank you very much, Harry.