Focus on Rural Development – Framework

Summary:

Focus on Rural Development is an editorial beat dedicated to coverage of rural development,

which will highlight and analyze the systemic problems faced by small farmers, and agro-
tourism entrepreneurs.

Goal & Objectives:

Our goal is to develop a framework of journalism that is story driven, public-powered, and
solutions oriented, in order to create awareness, belonging, trust, and affect change. To get
there we have identified three principles our journalism needs to adhere to as it zooms in on
rural development, and eco-tourism:

● Story/character driven: we recall information when packaged in the form of a story

of a character struggling to overcome an obstacle. We connect with complicated
realities when packaged in the form of such stories. These stories stick. Thus, we aim
to write stories that enlighten, entertain and educate, following this age old narrative
form: we’ll focus on a specific character or event, dive deep to report, use literary
tools to write, and, in the process, reveal the universality of the tale.

● Public-powered: too much journalism is editor or reporter-generated. We want to use

new tools of engagement to derive our stories from the needs of the respective
communities. For example: we plan to hold meetings with local stakeholders (farmer,
public officials, customers), facilitate conversations, involve the public in deciding the
truly relevant stories, maybe involving them in the reporting itself. This would not
only make the stories more relevant and interesting to the community, but can also
increase trust in journalism as a form of sharing information that people could use to
work and live better, as well as make better decisions about their personal, and
professional futures.

● Solutions oriented. The default of journalism is to focus on what doesn’t work. We

want to use solutions journalism tools to show how policies, initiatives, ideas are
implemented to change the status quo of a community, whether they have achieved
their goals or not, and what the learnings are for others.