Story Search Results

Advanced Search

There are so many ways to search the solutions journalism stories in this database. Explore our searchable fields:

Search Results

You searched for: -

There are 230 results for your search. View and Refine Your Search Terms

'It's on the writers': How The Correspondent drives interaction between members and its journalists

Lucinda Southern

October 14, 2020 |

Digiday |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

To entice paying subscribers to its ad-free news site, and to spark informed discourse in its comments section, The Correspondent promotes an unusual degree of interaction between its journalists and readers and actively seeds discussions with experts’ comments. Unlike often-toxic discussion forums on other news sites, The Correspondents' forums foster collaborations between writers and readers on prospective articles and in analyses after publication. While it's too soon to tell if the strategy will retain and expand subscriber rolls, the forums show an unusual level of quality and civility.

Read More
Go to Original Story
With unemployment hotline overloaded and stimulus on hold, PA boosts chatbot 90x

Layla A. Jones

October 13, 2020 |

Billy Penn |

Text |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: United States, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Accessing information about unemployment compensation online just got easier for residents of Pennsylvania. The current chat box capacity is 500 but will be increased to 50,000 by the end of the year. The phone hotline currently receives about 20,000 daily calls and has been difficult to get through since the unemployment benefits began in the wake of the coronavirus shutdown. The website also features a virtual assistant, which answers hundreds of commonly asked questions.

Read More
Go to Original Story
‘Smart Buses' roll WiFi to students without access

Lex Gray

October 12, 2020 |

WAVY-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

Under 3 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Virginia

In order to bridge the digital divide one school district in Virginia is putting Wi-Fi routers on its school buses. They call them Smart Buses. They buses drive out to neighborhoods where students don't have access to fast, reliable internet. “Four of the Smart Buses go out every day. Each can serve about 40 students, covering about three-quarters of the need in the district.”

Read More
Go to Original Story
How one state is sending thousands of WiFi hotspots to keep students in school

Anne Maxwell

October 12, 2020 |

WSPA-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Travelers Rest, South Carolina

In South Carolina, 180,000 households don’t have access to Wifi, according to estimates. A problem for students who are trying to attend virtual classes. Using CARES funds, the state purchased hotspots. In one county, almost all of the students are connected. “The hotspots are working well, with just about all of the county’s 77,000 students logging on to learn.”

Read More
Go to Original Story
How one Native American tribe in S.D. created its own wireless education network

Nick Lowrey

October 07, 2020 |

South Dakota News Watch |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Lower Brulé Indian Reservation, United States, Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, South Dakota

An indigenous community has tapped into new technology to provide broadband internet access which is critical for virtual learning during the coronavirus shutdown of schools. Digital radio waves were used to broadcast a high-speed internet signal covering hundreds of miles of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe reservation. Using radio waves to access internet was only possible due to a ruling passed by the FCC in 2019 that allow radio waves to be leased. Tribal governments were given priority access to broadcast licensing.

Read More
Go to Original Story
How schools are finding thousands of students they couldn't reach when the pandemic began

Jennifer Sanders

September 18, 2020 |

KXAN-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Leander, Texas

For one school district in Texas, using personal relationships established before the pandemic, proved the best way to reach bilingual students in rural parts of the district who weren't showing up to remote classes. One librarian and a parent “went door-to-door there to track down students and find out how they could help families transition to virtual learning. They also had parents fill out note cards showing how many children lived in the home to make sure no child was left behind.” Other Texas districts are similarly relying on home visits to check on students. Data shows those methods work.

Read More
Go to Original Story
No WiFi at home? One Virginia school district has a creative solution for students

Lex Gray

September 18, 2020 |

WAVY-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Suffolk, Virginia

A school district in Virginia has implemented a two-prong solution to provide internet access to rural students during the pandemic. The indoor solution allows students to make appointments to be inside the school to access the internet. The outside solution, equipping three schools in the district with equipment to boost their Wi-Fi signals, allowing students who can’t make indoor appointments a way to access the Wi-Fi. “We just took advantage of something that was already happening in the district."

Read More
Go to Original Story
The Wayback Machine and Cloudflare Want to Backstop the Web

Lily Hay Newman

September 17, 2020 |

Wired |

Text |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: United States

The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine crawls and caches websites to preserve a history of deleted pages. The Wayback Machine has archived a large amount of the public web over the past two decades, adding more than a billion URLs a day to its databases. The archive has over 468 billion web pages in total, and more than 45 petabytes of data. A new partnership with the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, which caches a static version of websites, has had promising results. Powering Cloudflare’s work with the Wayback Machine’s interface has allowed them to find more sites to archive.

Read More
Go to Original Story
Maryland Stands Up Online Grants Application in Just 8 Hours

Andrew Westrope

September 02, 2020 |

Government Technology |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Maryland

The Maryland Department of Information Technology adapted an existing system to quickly distribute small-business grants and loans due to Covid-19. The Maryland OneStop platform, a single site for state licenses, permits, and certifications, was built with an agile approach decoupling front-end user experience from the back-end where the program does the work, which allowed quick front end modifications to launch the loan and grants online when coronavirus hit. The system processed 18,000 applications in the first 3 days and 56,000 within a month. The success was preceded by many years of planning and work.

Read More
Go to Original Story
How to Meet New People, Even at a Distance

Julia Hotz

August 29, 2020 |

The New York Times |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

Coronavirus-related loneliness increased demand for groups that help people make personal connections and new friends, even if at a distance. A New York MeetUp, “I wanted to do that … just not alone”, has seen attendance at socially distanced activities increase. “Living Room Conversations,” an online platform where volunteers host discussions on timely topics, saw 1,000 new members since March and a 62% increase in page views. The groups encourage vulnerability and connection, but are not meant to replace professional mental-health counseling for those who are struggling with loneliness and other traumas.

Read More
Go to Original Story