In this week’s episode, we’re talking collaborative, solutions-based journalism. We’ll be joined by Diana Alba Soular — a former reporter for the Sun-News — and my former co-worker — who is now Project Manager of the Southern New Mexico Journalism Collaborative, and Reyes Mata III, a reporter for the Southern New Mexico Journalism Collaborative and a freelance reporter for the Las Cruces Sun-News. For the past year or so, he has written the Border Report, which you’ll often find in Sunday’s edition of the newspaper and online at www.lcsun-news.com.

At the Sun-News, we’ve been involved with the Southern New Mexico Journalism Collaborative from the ground up; in 2021, loyal readers may recall Walt Rubel’s coverage of a very unusual Legislative session — due, in large part, to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And that brings us to the Collaborative’s next steps — a deep dive into solutions-based journalism, looking at how COVID-19 has impacted southern New Mexicans and the steps forward — toward recovery, rebuilding and resilience. Reyes will be tasked with covering that effort for news outlets across Southern New Mexico through his new role at the Collaborative.

But what is solutions journalism? And what will this mean for readers of the Sun-News? We try to explain that.

This podcast was originally published by the Las Cruces Sun-News.