Eight collegiate newsrooms from across the nation will report on youth mental health and receive training and support from the Solutions Journalism Network
Jul 9, 2024
by Francine Huff and Michael Davis
The pioneering work of Solutions Journalism Networkâs Student Media Challenge will continue in academic year 2024â25 with eight new participants. Eight finalists were chosen after a spirited process that required applicants to propose an editorial plan to seek out and measure responses to the youth mental health crisis in college communities and beyond.
Over nine months, the grantees will learn how to incorporate and sustain solutions journalism into their media operations. The student journalists will complete reporting projects focused on ways people and organizations are addressing rising rates of anxiety, depression and suicide on campuses. Training students in solutions journalism will provide experience in covering complex social issues deeply and equitably, as well as help prepare them for internships and jobs. A key component of the program allows students to connect virtually to share reporting data, discuss challenges and brainstorm together.
Launched in 2022, the Student Media Challenge builds on SJNâs work with colleges and universities to further the spread of solutions journalism: rigorous, fact-based reporting on responses to social problems. We recognize that student media outlets play a vital role in local news ecosystems. As more communities grapple with becoming news deserts, student newsrooms are poised to assume even greater responsibility for informing the public about news well beyond their campuses.
Each newsroom will receive $7,500 to pursue solutions journalism projects. They are:
The Daily 49er is the news outlet of record at California State University-Long Beach. Celebrating its 75th year, the Daily 49er is an editorially independent, student-run publication housed within a university that serves a largely Hispanic student population of 38,000.
The newsroom will use the grant to bolster its ongoing mental-health coverage, measuring the effectiveness of an initiative created in 2022 to pair mental health professionals with campus police officers.
Stories produced by students enrolled in the inaugural solutions journalism course at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland will be published by the Capital News Service, which distributes local news of import across the state. A chief aim will be to explore the availability of mental-health treatment in all of Marylandâs 24 public-school districts using public-records requests. A second phase will cast a wide net across the nation to identify any districts that have arrived at better solutions for addressing the shortage of school psychologists and other counselors.
The Tigerâs Roar at Savannah State University in Georgia serves the campus and surrounding community at the historically Black school. The newsroom, supported by the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, has reported on a surge of mental-health concerns as a public service. Students will use the grant to pursue further stories on the unique stressors experienced by students attending an HBCU, including issues of identity, academic pressure, social isolation and discrimination.
Hilltop Views is the student news organization serving St. Edwardâs University in Texasâs state capital, Austin, which has the longest-running College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) in the nation. The publication has reported extensively on the challenges immigration-impacted students face. Hilltop Views will examine how basic needs, including food insecurity, drive mental-health problems at the small liberal arts university. Solutions journalism principles and practices have been built into the journalism curriculum.
The Stanford Daily is the independent, student-run newspaper at Stanford University, serving 8,000 undergraduates, 9,600 graduate students, and more than 18,000 staff members and administrators in Palo Alto, California. The newsroom will use the grant to illuminate non-traditional, emerging and experimental strategies to improve student well being, including measuring the effectiveness of a pilot program to offer culturally sensitive, community-based group therapy.
The Temple News is the independent student news outlet at Temple University in Philadelphia. Coverage of that cityâs challenges with gun-violence have provided ample evidence that the scourge has impacted the psychological, emotional and physical health on campus. Sexual assaults on campus have also contributed to a rise in mental health concerns. Student journalists will use the grant to expand coverage of the intersection of gun violence and mental health, concentrating on appraising how effective responses have been in addressing the on-the-ground reality in North Philadelphia.
A new course being launched at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga will apply a solutions journalism lens to the array of factors driving post-pandemic mental health concerns. Students will partner with professional journalists at the cityâs Chattanooga Times Free Press to produce publishable content for that newsroom. The Times Free Press has long embedded solutions journalism into its reportorial repertoire, shining a light on hopeful responses to societal problems in Tennessee.
The Baltimore Watchdog, a newsroom within Towson Universityâs journalism program, serves the urban campus and surrounding community. A news reporting course at the state school will explore mental health issues at the intersection of food insecurity, trauma and assault. A special reporting focus will be on student athletes and the taboo associated with seeking help. In addition, students will report on eating disorders associated with athletes feeling pressure to maintain a mandated body weight to participate in a certain sport.
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