What if the people who know a community best worked together to address its most pressing problems?

That’s the idea behind the Charlotte Journalism Coalition, a partnership including Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, WFAE, WCNC, QNotes, QCity Metro, La Noticia, the Charlotte Observer, Free Press, and Queens University.

The Coalition is part of the Solutions Journalism Network which is funded by the Knight Foundation, and its goal is to provide solutions journalism – an approach to news reporting that focuses on the responses to social issues as well as the problems themselves. Solutions stories explain how and why responses are working, or not working. For this first year, the topic is affordable housing, and the partners hope to change the conversation locally, and introduce best practices that have worked elsewhere.

In addition to serving as a hub for meetings, research and historical context, the Library will also host all the stories together on the digital branch. Seth Ervin, the Library’s Chief Innovation Officer, explains “Our involvement in the Coalition is an opportunity to prototype a different use case for the Library. As traditional local news disappears because it’s not profitable, what will take its place? It can be the Library – we aren’t concerned with profit. We’re hyper-local and neutral. I’m committed to the Library generating, archiving, and distributing quality community media.”

Learn more about the Charlotte Journalism Coalition – and affordable housing solutions! – on the Library’s Digital Branch.