Dipin Damodharan, Editor-in-Chief of EdPublica, has won the Second-Place Prize in the Best of Solutions Journalism in News Articles (Small Newsroom) category at the 2024-25 Solutions Journalism Network (SJN) Awards for his story, Why Kerala Has Struggled to Replicate Perinjanam’s Solar Success.
The award recognises outstanding journalism that examines credible responses to pressing social challenges through rigorous, evidence-based reporting.
Dipin’s award-winning story explored the community-led rooftop solar initiative in Perinjanam village in Kerala and analysed the structural, financial and policy barriers that have prevented the successful model from being replicated elsewhere in the state. The article was produced as part of the Earth Journalism Network (EJN) Renewable Energy Reporting Fellowship.
The winners were selected by an international panel of more than four dozen judges.
Announcing the awards, the Solutions Journalism Network said this year’s winning stories “span issue areas and media formats. They come from around the globe, from outlets large and small. And most importantly, they represent an entirely different way of understanding news—not as a mechanism mainly for chronicling the world’s woes but also as a window into people’s creativity and resilience in trying to address them.”
The US-based Solutions Journalism Network is one of the world’s leading organisations promoting solutions-focused reporting and constructive public-interest journalism. Its annual awards honour journalism that combines rigorous reporting with a critical examination of responses to social, environmental and governance challenges.
Through extensive field reporting, Dipin’s story documented how a community-driven renewable energy initiative evolved into a successful decentralised solar model while also highlighting the policy and implementation gaps that continue to limit wider adoption across Kerala.
The official list of winners has been published on the Solutions Journalism Network’s website.
Dipin Damodharan is a Kerala-based journalist and the Editor-in-Chief of EdPublica, an independent media platform covering science, environment, education and public-interest journalism.
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