This paper investigates how local journalists in Austin, Texas reported on a 2021 ballot initiative mandating increased police staffing. Representing a backlash to 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the initiative followed efforts to reallocate funds away from the Austin Police Department. Grounded in interviews with journalists who described their news choices and positionality in relation to the initiative, this case study reveals how contentious solutions to intractable social problems exacerbate tensions inherent to dominant journalistic norms. Journalists adhering to impartiality described the initiative’s underlying conflict narrowly to avoid the appearance of bias; more alarmingly, some acted as unfiltered conduits for false information by viewing coverage as a public forum for debate. We evaluate these findings against solutionsoriented journalism—an umbrella term for emerging paradigms that prioritize constructive reporting on solutions to engage news audiences in civic life—and demonstrate how these models fall short when solutions themselves are sites of intense social struggle. Inspired by journalists who resisted norms of impartiality and balance to investigate histories and trajectories of local social action, we encourage proponents of solutions-oriented journalism to prioritize rigorous, factual reporting of the long view for audiences to engage with solutions as people continuously struggle to enact them.