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What I learned on the progress beat

It felt like searching for a piece of hay in a pile of needles. For every hint of progress, I encountered at least 30 distressing headlines.

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Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File
Rays of sunshine peek through a blanket of clouds in Chapada dos Guimarães National Park in Mato Grosso, Brazil.

It was June 2020. COVID-19, economic turmoil, and police brutality dominated the news. Articles about combating “news fatigue” or “media burnout” punctuated long bouts of doomscrolling. The New York Times declared, “On the Future, Americans Can Agree, It Doesn’t Look Good.” It wasn’t exactly an auspicious time to take on the progress beat.

And yet, my assignment was clear: As the Monitor’s Points of Progress reporter, I needed to identify a handful of credible progress stories every week.

It felt like searching for a piece of hay in a pile of needles. For every hint of progress, I encountered at least 30 distressing headlines. It was hard to accept that those glimmers of growth could hold much weight in the midst of such overwhelmingly grim news. But over time, I began to recognize them as fuel for hope. 

I quickly learned to spot the telltale signs of progress – and that “perfect progress” doesn’t exist. So much is subjective, contentious, fragile, or incremental. The march toward progress rarely comes in giant leaps. But each step – even the false starts – can help build forward momentum. 

There’s no doubt that this news matters. More than half of Americans say the news causes them anxiety, exhaustion, or sleep loss, according to a pre-pandemic survey by the American Psychological Association. Stories that touch on potential solutions to the world’s problems, however, have an empowering effect on audiences that can counter those trends, according to a study by the Solutions Journalism Network – a critical resource in my search for progress points.

It’s not about turning a blind eye to hardship – it’s about making sure we don’t let it obscure our sense of reality.

As we turn the corner to 2022, many of the struggles of the past year loom large in our memories. And yet we found 257 signs of progress worth highlighting in 2021, pulled from more than 120 different sources and hundreds of articles. This week’s feature highlights key themes that recurred throughout the year. Which brings me to my biggest takeaway from my 18 months on the progress beat: There’s always a reason for hope, if you look for it. 

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

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