Positive-Deviant Health Data Journalism

The SJN partners with newsrooms and data organisations to advance investigative techniques including the "positive deviance" approach to journalism - "that is, highlighting places where data outcomes are better than expected - and supporting newsrooms to research stories using this method." The SJN partners with the Institute for Health Metrics & Evaluation (IHME) to "surface new and different types of data to identify stories that are essential for advancing public understanding about improving health systems." The goal is to train reporters and editors in 10-15 newsrooms in 15 months to integrate rigorous reporting about potential solutions into their coverage.

"For each newsroom partnership, Solutions Journalism Network will run a dedicated orientation for health reporters and editors (and other interested staff) and help frame an editorial strategy that incorporates positive health data from IHME and other sources. We will orient journalists about how to get at this data; how to identify positive outliers; how to form and test hypotheses suggested by the data; and how to craft richly reported stories that draw on instructive examples. As the reporting commences, we will provide an expert journalist-mentor to guide newsroom staff to relevant data, sources, and models that can inform stories."

In addition to the pilot training, SNJ hopes to build a teaching model for positive deviance journalism. They also seek to "codify two processes in ways that make them easily replicated. First, based on our work with IHME, we want to model a 'concierge' function at data providers, showing them how best to connect reporters to positive-deviant data. Second, we want to codify best practices in newsrooms: How do reporters and editors find and analyze this data; and how do they deploy the analysis to develop stories that meet newsroom needs?"

Also SJN intends to set up a story fund to "catalyze high-quality reporting based on positive-deviant data" through grants to participating newsrooms to support travel and related expenses.

Health, Media Development

The Knight News Challenge, focusing on the question: "How can we harness data and information for the health of communities?", chose Solutions Journalism for sponsored partnership, making them eligible to receive support from California HealthCare Foundation's "Big Data on a Local Scale" competition.