Collaborative Solutions Journalism Research Project
Ashoka Canada Storyteller-in-Residence Fellowship
One year ago, we launched Discourse Media to help us make sense of a shifting media landscape. We wanted to know how we could collaborate more deeply with organizations and individuals to better inform our reporting on solutions. We wanted to explore how to work with media organizations to leverage that reporting. And, in order to pursue more ambitious solutions journalism projects, we needed to innovate funding models while maintaining journalistic autonomy and integrity.
Over the past year, we’ve scratched the surface and come to some conclusions, but there is much more to investigate. So we are delighted that Discourse Media was awarded the first ever Ashoka Canada Storyteller-in-Residence (STiR) fellowship in Canada. With this generous grant, founders Erin Millar and Christine McLaren will dig deeper into these questions by conducting a three-month research project on how traditional and start-up media organizations in Canada and beyond are integrating collaborative, solutions-oriented journalism frameworks into their current models.
Our goal is to foster a dialogue with the private sector, social entrepreneurs, philanthropic organizations, NGOs, government and journalism communities about how we can better collaborate to improve journalism about solutions. We will engage in dialogues with media organizations across Canada to better understand how they might integrate these practices here at home. Where are there barriers? Where do they see the potential? We will share our findings through a report, public forum and resources for entrepreneurial journalists both within and outside media organizations.
We will also tap in to the Ashoka Foundation’s rich network of “changemakers” — social entrepreneurs and innovators — to better understand how they are currently working with media to improve public discourse about solutions to social challenges.
The Ashoka STiR program has existed in Europe since 2012. While the fellowship is usually awarded to an individual journalist, due to the collaborative nature of this project Ashoka Canada agreed to let Discourse Media partake as a team. STiR fellows are neither obligated nor expected to write about Ashoka, its projects or its fellows during or after the residency.
