Writing for solutions with Courtney E. Martin

An evaluation and identification of the solutions journalism tenets within a solutions article.

By Berit Thorson

December 2022

Written for Solutions Journalism (Fall Term 2022)

Author and journalist Courtney E. Martin wrote a three-part solutions journalism series in 2019.

In 2019, journalist Courtney E. Martin, now 42, published a series of articles in The New York Times’s Fixes column. The three-part series focused on the racial wealth gap, and each article examined the issue from a different angle.

The series’ second story, “I Served My Prison Time. Why Do I Still Have to Pay?” was published on April 30 and explored the impact of, and one response to, criminal justice administrative fees billed to people as they leave prison. The piece is an example of solutions journalism, which focuses on responses to social problems while maintaining the central tenants of good reporting.

This article examines the structure of Martin’s piece within the tenants of solutions journalism as well as includes insight from Martin on developing the article, in hopes of providing some guidance for future reporters on how to build a solutions story.

Setting the scene: Introducing the problem and the response

Martin opens the article by instructing the reader to imagine the bills they receive from a hospital, and how large those numbers are.

“Now imagine getting that same kind of bill on your first day out of jail,” she writes in the piece. “You’ve served your time and, theoretically at least, repaid your debt to society.” But then there are hundreds of dollars’ worth of surprise bills for you to pay.

After setting the scene with the issue, she introduces the response: San Francisco is moving away from charging administrative fees to people as they leave prison. Martin differentiates between fees and fines — fees are not the same thing as paying restitution to a victim or paying a fine for violating a law; fees are supposed to make up for the expenses associated with imprisoning people.

But how did she get the idea for the article in the first place and start writing it? Martin said it comes down to “long-term relationship-building meets new knowledge and a commitment to a solutions angle.”

“I met Anne Stuhldreher, quoted in the piece, years earlier in Oakland and have kept in touch with her over the years because I thought her work was so interesting,” Martin explained. “When I decided to do a series on the racial wealth gap, I started doing table-setting interviews — getting the big picture lay of the land — and someone taught me the term ‘wealth stripping.’ I thought, ‘I want a solutions-oriented story that is about wealth stripping,’ and then got in touch with Anne to see what she was up to, and this fell in my lap.”

In the piece, Martin provides numbers to show the economic cost to the city. She writes, “$57 million in criminal justice administrative fees were charged and an average of only 17 percent were recouped. In other words, it was highly ineffective as a revenue source, and as a moral force it was downright depraved.”

Asked about challenges she faced as she wrote the piece, Martin said, “It was really hard to figure out how to talk about fines [and] fees in a way that wasn’t super wonky. I wanted the piece to feel story and character-driven and accessible, not economic and bureaucratic.”

Yet at the same time, including data and evidence, like numbers about the economic impact of a policy, is a central part of any reporting, and especially solutions-reporting. Without numbers, there is no way to know the extent of a problem or the true need for a response.

Showing the process: Noting the ups and the downs

Martin’s next sections of the article provide insight into how the response gained internal support from city and county officials — by showing an individual’s bill to people — and then giving an overview of how those officials followed through on the response.

They were met with questions wondering why they didn’t want to simply reduce the fees or let people pay what they could, rather than eliminate the fees entirely. People wondered if it would cost too much. However, Martin writes, “the coalition that had come together stuck to its vision.”

In the story, Martin includes that “the post-incarceration period is famously fragile. People often don’t have stable housing, social networks of jobs. People with unpaid fees are unable to clear their records, which can make it hard to even get a job.”

Although eliminating fees will not suddenly create a social network or stable housing, it will remove some of the “emotional toll” that comes with having debt.

Reporting on the challenges and the insights associated with a response, like needing to consider alternative ways to address the issue or that the response won’t entirely fix all the problems associated with the issue, is central to solutions journalism because it shows readers that the solution isn’t fixing everything.

Martin said she interviewed about a dozen people for the story, which quoted five people. “I did a lot of interviews early on that helped me get a big picture sense of the racial wealth gap, and more specifically ‘wealth stripping,’” she said, “so that by the time I zeroed in on this story I really needed to understand fines and fees, plus the way the legislation shift was functioning and how it might be replicable.

“I did initial interviews with Anne [Stuhldreher], and she led me to most of the other sources, though I reached out to other think tanks and advocacy groups, etc., once I had really wrapped my mind around fines [and] fees and who were the major national players on that.”

Making it human: the impact on an individual

In the article, Martin tells the story of one individual, Angelique Evans, who owes $3,000 in fees after being serving time in prison in Madera County, CA for a decade. Including an example of an individual can ground a solutions story for the readers, since writing about a response instead of a person can make the issue feel disconnected from our shared human experience.

Evans is a mother, and she wanted to buy new school clothes for her son but paying back the administrative fees prevented her from doing so. That anecdote helps the reader picture the actual human impact that the response can have.

Including a grounding human connection at the end of the story emphasizes the people that the response is meant to serve and underscores that while the response is great in one place, like San Francisco County, there are people in other places who are still suffering this specific kind of burden.

In this case, Martin said, the impact of the story mirrored the impact of the response on which it focused.

“As a result of the story, someone started a Go Fund Me for Ms. Evans and paid off the rest of her debt. That made me feel like a million bucks.”

Additionally, Martin was told by Stuhldreher that the piece was a “huge catalyst for spreading the same advocacy and policy changes to other states. [That was] also a huge honor to hear.”

Writing good (solutions) journalism

“I really just want solutions to be a part of GOOD journalism,” Martin said [emphasis hers], “not have it be a separate category that we still have to argue for.”

Writing this piece as a solutions-oriented article, as opposed to a traditional piece, gave people the inspiration, knowledge, and understanding necessary to implement the response in other places.

However, it did not advocate for the response or present it as a silver bullet; Martin does not say anywhere in the article that it was the best way to address administrative fees, that it should be duplicated in other places, or that it will fix every problem for people as they leave prison.

Instead, she presents the issue and defines one response, showing its limitations and providing evidence and insights on how it has worked in one place, and that led people to take action themselves. Good journalism helps people to learn about the world around them to make informed decisions about how to live their lives; solutions journalism is no different.