DEADLINE: Business & Sustainability Initiative at Solutions Journalism Network

This SJN initiative supports coverage of businesses' role in solutions related to sustainability issues such as climate action, clean water, biodiversity and renewable energy, with a focus on communities served by the solutions. As climate news takes center stage this year, this initiative can support newsrooms that want to cover the climate story through solutions-based reporting.

Solutions Journalism Network sees an opportunity for critical reporting that moves past “greenwashing” and marketing claims to examine the real impact of corporate responses to environmental and social issues. That’s why we launched a two-year initiative to support news organizations’ coverage of businesses’ role in solutions related to sustainability, focusing particularly on environmental issues such as climate action and resilience, clean water, renewable energy and biodiversity, as well as on social challenges highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’ve chosen our first 18 newsrooms and now we are ready to bring on our final set of four to six newsrooms to join this growing community of practice. The first reporting projects serve as good examples of the type of reporting we are looking to support. The newsrooms are investigating a range of subjects, including green banking; regenerative agriculture; wind farm impacts on local communities; and Black-owned businesses bringing sustainable solutions to both energy and food access in Rust Belt cities.

This initiative, supported through a grant from Porticus, offers news organizations funding (up to $5,000), training and ongoing support by Solutions Journalism Network staff. Importantly, it will bring together a cohort of up to 24 newsrooms over two years that commit to forging a community of practice, sharing reporting methods, story ideas, challenges and successes in covering business’s role in addressing sustainability issues.

The deadline for the one-question application is August 6, 2021. Finalists will be drawn from these applications. Once these short project proposals are reviewed, I will be scheduling 45-minute calls to discuss the proposed project with those we’ve chosen to move ahead to the semi-finalist round. If a project is a good fit for the initiative, the organization will be asked to complete a more formal application. We will make our final selections by late August. This is our final call for applications for this initiative.

More information.