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Environmental Journalism in the Greenhouse Era



Looking for climate news beyond corporate media



By Miranda Spencer



Extra! February 2010



 http://www.fair.org



The need for informed and nuanced environmental reporting has never been
greater: The scientific evidence of global warming demands urgent action,
climate change already underway affects every corner of society, and climate
issues unavoidably arise in economic and energy debates. That a recent poll
showed declining concern about the planet’s state (Pew, 10/22/09 ) only
accentuates the need for coverage that explains what’s at stake.



But the ongoing migration of audiences and advertisers to the Internet,
heightened by the current recession, threatens the very existence of
conventional news media from which we seek information about this complex
issue.



Environmental journalism in particular is at risk, as demonstrated by the
beat’s downsizing over the past few years at major regional papers and on
cable networks. CNN’s standalone science and environment team was eliminated
(SEJ.org, 1/15/09), and the Weather Channel’s weekly climate program,
Forecast Earth, was canceled (WashingtonPost.com, 11/21/08).



Though the New York Times launched a seven-reporter environmental unit in
January 2009, designated climate specialist Andrew Revkin (see "NYT Cools on
Global Warming," Extra!, 2/10) took a buyout less than a year later as the
Times sliced 100 jobs. Revkin says he will continue to contribute to his
Times climate blog DotEarth (CJR.org, 12/14/09 ), but it is not yet known
whether his newspaper reporting will be replaced.



According to the upcoming book Environmental Journalists in the 21st
Century, 50 percent of daily newspapers (but only 10 percent of local TV
stations) surveyed between 2000--05 had a reporter assigned to the enviro
beat. The job has tended to be part of the duties of a general assignment
reporter, or one responsible for a related area such as health. (At local TV
stations, it’s often the weather forecaster.) Only about a quarter of
reporters surveyed spent two-thirds or more of their time pursuing eco
stories; the average portion was 43 percent.



Today, “there are fewer staff jobs for specialized environmental reporters
and fewer resources available to those who do have jobs,” according to
Curtis Brainard, who writes about science reporting for CJR.org (SEJournal,
7/15/09 ). Indeed, the venerable Columbia University Graduate School of
Journalism signaled its pessimism last fall by suspending its dual-degree
graduate program in environmental reporting.



Environmental Reporters in the 21st Century co-author James Simon, a
professor at Fairfield University who spent a decade as an AP environmental
reporter, told Extra! he worries that the generalists now doing eco
reporting may not be “able to do these stories as well as someone devoted to
the beat. Readers and viewers will be the losers." They may make a point to
seek out environmental stories elsewhere, but, he predicts, “Casual
[readers] and viewers are less likely to see them in the daily paper.”



Fortunately, what’s left of traditional media is not our only option for
climate news and related environmental issues. There’s also what might be
called the Green Press, much of which operates on a nonprofit model. These
print magazines and other outlets have followed global warming since before
it was a household phrase. Taking the scientific reality as a given, they
aim to help the general public see connections between climate change and
myriad other issues. Now, after years of preaching to the choir, they are
targeting a bigger and broader audience.



These national outlets provide a benchmark for the type of environmental
journalism that is possible and necessary in a world where threats to the
planet challenge the traditional journalistic tenets of “balance” and
“bias." Though facing their own financial pressures, they are managing to
survive and sometimes to grow.



Among them are veteran environmental media published by large environmental
advocacy or science organizations, such as Sierra and National Geographic;
independents, such as E: The Environmental Magazine; and for-profit
magazines such as the adventure-oriented Outside and warhorse Scientific
American. Cable television offers the Planet Green network; though mainly
lifestyle-oriented, its Focus Earth offers serious, nontechnical news on
climate and the environment.



E, published by the nonprofit Earth Action Network since 1990 and currently
with 180,000 readers, was founded by now-publisher Doug Moss and his wife
using a home-equity loan. (Disclosure: I’ve been a contributor.) Focusing on
spotting and reporting trends “before they’ve fully emerged,” the bimonthly
had a cover story on global warming as early as 1998. Moss told Extra! that
climate-related stories--such as one on the environmental effects of raising
meat--have been followed up by conventional media, though E isn’t always
credited for the ideas. It also offers a free weekly Q&A column,
 “EarthTalk,” that appears in some 1,800 national and local news outlets. In
the case of tiny papers, says Moss, “‘EarthTalk’ is their environmental news
section!”



E recently has been tightening its belt and has mounted a reader fundraising
drive to help offset steep falloffs in foundation funding and ad revenue.
Nevertheless, it’s moving forward with plans to reach a much larger
audience, including modernizing its website (currently claiming 100,000
monthly visitors), redesigning the print version and mounting a major
publicity campaign. To that end, E staffers are already making the
rounds--discussing climate topics on, of all places, national and local Fox
News shows.



Unlike E, most of the newer environmental media are exclusively online, and
typically provide a combination of original reporting and news aggregated
from outside sources, plus educated commentary. Some sport a hip, playful
tone to offset what many consider an intimidatingly technical or dour topic.
These outlets are becoming home to former mainstream reporters and editors,
and there is increasing cross-pollination between them and more traditional
outlets.



Perhaps most famous of these is the nonprofit webzine Grist, which (to quote
its “About” page) has been “making lemonade out of looming climate
apocalypse” since 1999, “way before most people cared about such things."
Grist is a pioneer of original daily reporting on climate change and a gamut
of other green issues, with a website and nine topical email newsletters;
most content is staff-written. A search of the site with the term “climate
change” turns up more than 6,200 results (i.e., an average of more than 600
stories a year), with 185 items on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill
alone--not to mention pieces indexed under “jackassery” and “lying liars.”



Now claiming some 800,000 readers, Grist is gaining additional eyeballs via
partnerships with traditional media, including the Washington Post and the
New York Times website (where Grist staff writer David Roberts tweeted the
Copenhagen conference). Economically speaking, Grist has stayed afloat not
only by accepting advertising (including “targeted sponsorships”) but thanks
also to a generous infusion of foundation funding.



Others in both the nonprofit and for-profit news sectors consider the
climate beat important enough to invest in. Most strikingly, the independent
magazine Mother Jones, founded in 1976 and an early model of successful
nonprofit investigative journalism, has always been proactive about
environmental issues. It recently initiated a cooperative reporting venture
that brings together several news organizations to set aside professional
competition to do coordinated in-depth reporting on global warming--a
process AdAge.com (10/22/09) referred to as “crowdsourcing...with actual
journalists." The evolving group, which met formally for the first time in
December, included Slate, the Atlantic and the Center for Investigative
Reporting, among others.



Mother Jones co-editors Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery explained the
inspiration for the project in the magazine’s special issue on global
warming ( 11--12/09 ), which featured the work of writers from five
different outlets. “If climate change is the most important story of our
time, why is it being covered piecemeal...?" they wrote, declaring, “Working
together, we can cover this story better than any of us could on our own.”



Then there’s Climate Central, a new model of news organization: Its team of
scientists and journalists, including former Time magazine science
correspondent Michael Lemonick, collaborates to produce accurate, accessible
news about global warming in a variety of media. Helmed by climatologist
Heidi Cullen, late of the Weather Channel’s Climate Code, Climate Central’s
original reporting has been utilized by Newsweek and PBS’s NewsHour, among
other outlets.



Other increasingly popular for-profit eco e-news sites with regular climate
coverage include the consumer-oriented Daily Green and Treehugger, and the
Atlanta-based Mother Nature Network (MNN). Many of MNN’s staff came from CNN’s
dissolved environment desk. Co-founded by environmentalist (and Rolling
Stones keyboardist) Chuck Leavell, it’s helmed by managing editor Emily
Murphy, formerly of USA Today online. MNN debuted in January 2009 and,
according to Murphy, produces 70 percent original multimedia content on
eight online “channels.”



In more specialized media, there’s Daily Climate, published since 2007 by
Environmental Health Sciences, as thorough a global warming webzine as one
could imagine. Departments include Causes, Consequences, Solutions,
Adaptation and Sea Level, among others. It both produces original content
and aggregates stories from sources including Reuters, the London Observer
and Scientific American. Editor Douglas Fischer, formerly of the Oakland
Tribune, recently wrote a piece on October’s underreported “350” day of
grassroots climate actions.



Other respected outlets include Yale Environment 360, which publishes
original features on climate by the likes of New Yorker staffer Elizabeth
Kolbert, and the Center for American Progress’s Climate Progress, written by
Joe Romm, whom Time magazine ( 10/5/09 ) called “the Web’s most influential
climate-change blogger." ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative reporting
project funded by the Sandler Foundation and helmed by ex--Wall Street
Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, includes climate-related energy and
environment stories as a regular part of its mix, offering its articles free
to news media through a Creative Commons license.



Clearly, even in today’s foreboding media and economic climate, some are
deciding that the future will see a demand for environmental reporting by
people trained to do it. New York University’s Science, Health and
Environmental Reporting Program is going strong, and the University of
Montana will begin offering a master’s degree in environmental journalism in
fall 2010.



It’s still an open question whether the nonprofit and other new models of
journalism will survive long term. Foundation funding fluctuates with the
stock market, where many endowments are invested. And if successful, these
ventures may be bought up by more circumspect corporate media, as Treehugger
was by Discovery Communications, which also owns Planet Green.



If the nexus of news outlets doing climate-change reporting isn’t
economically viable and our veteran reporters are forced out of the field,
vital information to enhance public knowledge and participation may go the
way of the glacier. And that won’t just hurt the polar bears.



Research assistance: Lisa Palmer.