“Had we not learned about Constructive Journalism, we would probably have conducted the project without such a holistic approach. It reminded us… how to create a bigger impact by offering solutions, exploring nuances, listening to our audience while facilitating dialogues among all the stakeholders.”

A handbook to guide Indonesia journalists

This concise handbook in Bahasa is for journalists in newsrooms throughout Indonesia. It offers key issues to think about, important questions to ask and practical exercises for every step in the reporting cycle.

Magdalene’s constructive approach

At Magdalene they have developed a set of values combined in one model, their Constructive Compass. The goal for the compass is to guide the journalist to a constructive starting point right from the outset of covering a story.

Magdalene’s Constructive Compass builds on a constructive compass developed by the Danish regional TV station TV2 Fyn (see our page on Constructive news room tools for further details).

The values of the compass are:

•  Critical (analysis)
• Nuances
• Solutions focus
• Promote democratic conversation
• Listen (Magadalene’s own addition to the compass)

The team developed the compass during their constructive journalism project on sexual education and have now gone on to use it in order to design and plan their campaign titled Mendobrak Bias (Breaking the Bias)  which marked the International Women’s Day Celebration on March 8, 2022.

Print out the compass and use it to keep your journalism on a constructive course or alternatively develop your own compass which meets the needs of your reporting.

Magdalene’s constructive approach

Combining the constructive journalism approach with data journalism – Magdalene created a journalistic series on sex education – a highly sensitive issue in a very conservative country.