By the time our group gathered in the grand, historic lobby of the Herald Examiner Building in downtown Los Angeles for the official 2025 Solutions Journalism Educators Academy group photo, I realized something: This wasn’t just another academic conference where people politely sip coffee, nod a lot, and collect tote bags they’ll never use again.
This conference — hosted by the Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), Arizona State University’s Cronkite School, and NEWSWELL — was a room full of journalists and educators with a cause: to push back against a world saturated with stories that only tell us what’s wrong without showing us who’s trying to fix it and how they are doing it.
