FOCUS Online launches Germany's largest constructive series: The reportage series "14 Countries, 14 Reporters" presents solutions that can serve as a model for our society. Fourteen of our editors have travelled around the world for this purpose.
Fourteen weeks, fourteen role models
FOCUS Online editors research social trend topics on site: education, digitalisation, competition and internal and external security. Together with renowned experts, the citizens of the respective country and German emigrants, they analyze solutions for social issues. The goal: to show perspectives for Germany's social and societal future. Until the end of the year, articles from one country and on one of the five topics will be published every working day at FOCUS Online and on the social media channels of the news portal. The first destination of the constructive world trip is Sweden. With its combination of liberal economic policy plus a strong welfare state, it is one of the happiest countries in the world. Japan will follow in the second week, followed by other destinations including Israel, France, Singapore and Canada.
Show solutions, encourage, initiate change
The fourteen reporters specifically look for positive deviations from negative trends. They enrich the pure description of problems with fresh, solution-oriented impulses, surprising facts or a new perspective. In the long term, FOCUS Online aims to contribute to improving the lives of people in Germany. Always with the aim of showing that the world is not as bad as it is always suggested.
Wir möchten weg von der verzerrten Wahrnehmung, dass alles schlecht ist, und stattdessen die Lebenswirklichkeit abbilden. Und wir fragen konstruktiv: Wie weiter? In welchen Ländern läuft es besser und was können wir hierzulande von unseren internationalen Vorbildern lernen?
We want to get away from the distorted perception that everything is bad and instead depict the reality of life. So we ask constructively: What next? Which countries are doing better and what can we learn from our international role models in this country?“
Lived solution journalism
Since 2017 BurdaForward has been working specifically on constructive journalism. In the individual departments of the brands there are so-called "solutionists" - employees who pay specific attention to how topics can be implemented in a solution-oriented manner. Even when the news situation is bad, the editors ask "What next?" and illuminate the topic from all sides.
Johanna Schallehn
BurdaForward Communications
For more than eight years I have been writing texts about our company and our brands, organising trade fairs, talking to journalists and being chronically in far too many meetings. Whether at home or in the office - it doesn't get boring and sometimes I just put out the fire. If not, then I am most likely to be met in the mountains, with my daughter on the Isar or in my home country and the most beautiful city in the world: Hamburg.