“Every end is a new beginning and we can only go as far as we know.”

It’s a new dawn for us at Hello ICON Magazine, as we launch a new series uniquely designed to nurture the nurturers of our society — Journalists. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized, especially in an ever-evolving world where knowledge is power and the new currency.
As journalists, we continually water our world with the integral information, reports and beyond the surface knowledge that helps it flourish and thrive beyond all odds. The BIG QUESTION is, how do we ensure we also water ourselves to serve from a place of replenished energy, love and conscious care, not the reverse?

At Hello ICON, our focus within the past three years has been on revolutionizing the Creative Industry by uplifting the voices of underserved Creatives globally, with a special focus on exploited African Talents.
However, this new series will take an inside-out approach uplifting the voices of underserved Journalists and telling the stories that matter to us as a professional community.

We Tell The Stories of Others, But Who Tells Our Stories?

While the focus for us as journalists have always been on uplifting voices and telling important stories, true sustainability of impact lies in also refueling our energies and guarding ourselves with the safety tools and up-to-date information we need to thrive. And these are just some of the highlights of the design and purpose of this new series— a one stop platform to access beyond the surface information, relatable stories, integral tools, updates and communities all aligned with the goals of Solutions Journalism and Safety in Journalism.

In a world where knowledge is both power and the new currency, we begin the series with foundational knowledge on what Solutions Journalism and Safety in Journalism Means, 6 ICONIC Professionals who double as attendees of the just concluded ACOS Annual Meeting share their powerful thoughts and deep insights on these two often overlooked topics which ironically are some of the main pillars of the Future of Journalism

6 ICONIC Professionals . 6 Powerful Thoughts. 1 Platform

Mariona Sanz Cortell Breaks The Ice

Solutions Journalism is the art of looking into any topic from a constructive perspective, focusing not only on the problem, but incorporating creative avenues and examples that foster positive social change. Solutions journalism moves and motivates the audience to become an agent of change.

Safety in Journalism is the key to professional journalism. Both journalists and media organisations should be aware of its crucial importance. Without physical, digital, legal and psychological safety, journalists are not able to speak freely on the issues that matter.

David Tarazona Connects The Dots

Solutions Journalism means to tell stories in a broader angle, taking into account both the negative and the positive facts or evidence happening around a community or subject. It means telling the story without the need to show only the bad, but to give the whole picture. It’s also giving more visibility to people who are doing the right thing and should be encouraged and their initiatives could inspire other communities to implement them.

Safety in Journalism means life. It means taking into account a story is not worth a life. It means having a holistic risk assessment to treat the trauma and the associated risks so you can be more protected or at least you have a plan when attacks might happen. Also, you become more conscious of the risks associated with your work so you can decide how to tackle it.

Unreserved Truth With Dr. Lauren Walsh

Solutions journalism involves focusing not simply on the problems that impact individuals or society. It entails reporting on the attempts to mitigate problems, the continued efforts in response to problems, and the solutions implemented as well as insights gained (from both successes and failures). It is a reorientation of traditional journalistic practice, requiring a follow-through after the problem has been identified to comprehensively cover how it gets addressed. Like all journalism, it requires rigorous and accurate reporting.

On Safety in Journalism: I feel that all journalists should receive safety training, and that training should be holistic, covering physical, emotional, reputational, financial, legal and digital threats. I also feel that all journalists should understand what a ‘risk assessment’ is so they can implement it into their practice, in order to prevent or mitigate the potential risks that arise in their journalistic work.
Unfortunately, in many places, being a journalist means contending with challenges, risks and threats, and so it is my hope that journalists are empowered to protect themselves, that their news outlets strive to assist and protect them however needed, and that the news consuming public understands the value of journalistic work to better support this vital profession.

Now Let’s Take a Deep Dive With Charlotte Maher

Solutions-journalism has been a media ‘buzzword’ for some time and it is often applied to describe a vast array of content and coverage. I find sometimes that this large cache all term can be lost on audiences. It is meant to describe a focus away from the problematic ‘if-it-bleeds-it-leads’ stance where only ‘doom statements’ make big money headlines, with an investment in more hopeful output, written with answers to the issues at the centre up top. This doesn’t mean glossing over all of the bad news, but reframing it so that readers can see the possible paths forward. For me, solutions based journalism approaches really work when the individual or group at the centre of the solution are spotlighted. I previously covered Climate Change, the biggest problem of all, with a solutions-based approach for a global young audience. We spotlighted several young people around the world who were tackling this huge global problem on a local scale. From turning banana leaves into hair to combat plastic pollution to building robots to monitor and help combat the great barrier reef decline. All filmed from their perspective, through AR spectacles. We took the solutions focused approach to its limit, giving the audience access through the changemakers own perspective, but the overall communication with the audience of ‘this is happening , but people are tackling it like this, so you can help too’ really resonated with the younger audiences we were trying to reach. We found people around the world were using our Augmented Reality lenses, partnered with each story to help raise awareness of what they had just watched, this type of active engagement is hard to drive on climate change stories where many feel hopeless.

Safety in Journalism
I’ve worked across continents in my career and the concept of ‘safety’ changes depending on your reporting base. In large parts of the world ‘safety’ means just being able to publish. I am lucky to be resident in a ‘safer’ country and primarily working online, remotely, also allows me more autonomy. But I think worldwide the level of respect and amount of protections for media professionals has changed in recent years and its becoming harder and harder to protect yourself, your personal and work devices and your friends and family from some of the inevitable repercussions of our line of work. It’s particularly becoming harder and harder to operate as a female journalist with gender based violence and misogynistic attitudes on the rise. I think more newsrooms as a whole need to think about better protections for their journalists and freelancers. Making sure all parties are involved with risk assessments and can have their ‘acceptance of risk’ heard. Ensuring mental and physical support is in place for those involved prior, during and after investigations take place. Providing routine financial, physical and digital security training is just smart, to protect your assets as an organization but also the livelihoods of your reporters. I’m extremely lucky to be working for an organization that does this extensively but arguably still has room for improvement also. Working at my current outlet has outlined to me how woefully unprepared others are to tackle attacks on their media houses. Networks like the ACOS security initiative are a great way of ensuring cross-industry protections and training and I think we should be investing in more and more of them.

Forbidden Stories and The SafeBox Network Takes Us on a Powerful and Explanatory Brief

Solutions Journalism means highlighting citizen-driven initiatives coming as answers to current issues involving environment, social, politics, etc.

Safety in Journalism is respecting the principles of press freedom, offering good work conditions to journalists and fighting misinformation, which is a big threat for the work of journalists.

Alex Spoerndli Reveals Beyond The Surface

Solution-Journalism goes over the mere retelling of news, but explains how and why things are solved (or not). It approaches a story from different angles looking for deep explanations and the mechanisms behind the topic it covers.

Safety in Journalism is not limited to physical and psychological safety of the journalists. It’s also the responsibility for journalists to keep their sources and audiences safe.

Here’s to A New Dawn

Here’s to The Future of Journalism 

Here’s to You