Earlier this month we introduced you to Aloha State Daily, a new online media organization that marked its second anniversary last week.
Another publication, Overstory, launched a month ago, but what makes it different from other online media?
Perhaps it's fitting that the new media outlet was launched in the Year of Our Community Forests. Overstory is a nod to the canopy in a forest.
Kauaʻi-based journalist Noelle Fujii-Oride is helping to nurture the seedling.
She said the online newsroom is an editorially independent program of The Kūpaʻa Network, whose fiscal sponsor is the aio Foundation. That's the nonprofit arm of aio Hawai‘i, a company backed by local businessman Duane Kurisu that also owns Hawaiʻi Business Magazine, where Fujii-Oride previously worked.
She spoke to The Conversation about Overstory's commitment to a solutions-based approach.
"It's an online publication that covers the systems and solutions behind Hawaiʻi's most pressing issues," she said. "Much of our journalism focuses on how communities are responding to Hawaiʻi's challenges, and this really follows a framework that's being used around the country called solutions journalism."
"This is rigorous reporting that examines the effectiveness, the lessons learned, and the limitations of various ways that people are addressing the problems they're encountering," Fujii-Oride continued.
She also emphasized Overstory's coverage of communities on all the islands.
"We didn't want to replicate what other existing journalism organizations are doing. We saw the gap for solutions journalism and also just the declining coverage on the neighbor islands. And so our reporting will embrace the mindset that there's a lot to be learned from all Hawaiʻi community, and we'll especially be keeping an eye on the neighbor islands," she told HPR.
"We're trying to give people hope with accountability by connecting them to effective approaches and useful information that can just help them understand something better or meaningfully get involved in their communities."
Overstory is covering housing, environment and health to start — with articles published every other Wednesday.
This interview aired on The Conversation on March 18, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m.
