April 27, 2011

UWP 104C
Magagnini

Environmental Journalism: The Best Beat on Earth

Top 10 Reasons to be an Environment Journalist

1. Change the course of history!

Silent Spring, 1962.

Published in 1962, Silent Spring is one of those rare books that really did
change the course of history. A journalist and scientist, Rachel Carson
documented the widespread ecological degradation from pesticdes. She
argued that for the first time in history, humans were exposed to chemicals
that stayed in their systems from birth to death. Silent Spring did not so
much define the social problem of pesticide use, which had already been
done, but rather accelerated public awareness of it. Following publication,
environment became an entry in the vocabulary of public policy and
environmentalism became a formidable social movement, and
environmental journalism grew with it.

2. Expose the soft and gooey underbelly of industry regulation!

Tankers Full of Trouble, 1989, The Seattle Times

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/exxon/
When the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaskas Prince William Sound stunned
the nation, tenacious reporter Eric Nalder and an investigative team of The
Seattle Times investigated the disaster and exposed weaknesses in the
regulations on tankers. David Boardman, then the city editor said, The key
to our coverage was the fact that we were able to step back, half a step, and
write about the profound issues and explain what it meant to people not
living in Prince Sound. Winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for national
reporting, the series laid bare the spills effect on fisheries, the cozy
relationship between big oil and the state government, drinking among
tanker men and most importantly laxity in the regulation of the tanker
industry. The series influenced the passage of the federal 1990 Oil Pollution
Prevention Act, which among other things requires double hulls on new
tankers, and rapid response teams to be on constant standby alert for spills.
3. Get paid to explore the great outdoors and write to match its scenery!

Sierra in Peril, 1990, The Sacramento Bee

The reporting trail began with a wholely unfocused story idea. The metro
editor at the time, 1988, asked reporter Tom Knudson to do a story on
environmental problems in the Sierra. Most any other reporter would not
know how to put their arms around such an open-ended assignment. But
Knudson, a new hire from the New York Times who had won a Pulitzer for
his reporting on the dangers of farming as an occupation, had a gift for
seeing the forest for the trees. After more than a year of exhausting reporting
and traveling throughout the 400-mile-long range, Knudson and Bee
photographer Jay Mather produced the first environmental assessment of the
Sierra Nevada as a whole. The series prompted Congress to launch a
massive scientific study that for the first time benchmarked the
environmental health of the entire mountain range. (Sierra Nevada
Ecosystem Project, 1996.) The stories also inspired the formation of
grassroots forest and watershed protection groups in the Sierra (The Sierra
Nevada Alliance, for one) and helped usher more holistic, bioregional
approaches to natural resource protection in California.

4. Uncover dirty secrets!

The Plutonium Experiment, 1993, Albuquerque Tribune

Eileen Welsome, a reporter at the Albuquerque Tribune, was researching a
story in 1987 on a radioactive waste dump in New Mexico when a footnote
on a document caught her eye. The footnote, which alluded to a government-
sponsored radiation experiment on human beings, led her on a six-year
odyssey to try to find some of the experiment's unsuspecting victims. The
result was a three-day, 44-page series chronicling the stories of five
Americans subjected to plutonium injections between 1945 and 1947.
It was a compelling saga of government malfeasance and human tragedy.
Welsome was able to tell the stories of the individual victims identified only
as case numbers in 50-year-old Atomic Energy Commission documents. But
a paper the size of the Tribune, a 40,800-circulation afternoon daily, didn't
have the clout to put the story on the national agenda. Read more at
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=1312
5. Follow the money and raise a stink!

Boss Hog, 1995, The News & Observer, Raleigh. N.C., Joby Warwick and
Pat Stith
http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/5892

A friendly source called investigative reporter Pat Stith at The News &
Observer and told him about a state veterinarian who seemed awfully
chummy with the North Carolina pork producers he was supposed to be
regulating. Stith was working with Joby Warrick, another reporter, on a
couple of stories involving the state agriculture department, so they added
this tip to the list they were scouting. Eventually they found out more about
the state vet, who was indeed taking favors, but the piece about his
wrongdoing had to wait. Along the way, Stith and Warrick nosed out a much
more important and compelling story: Corporate hog production was
expanding rapidly without oversight; the expansion was harming water and
air quality and driving independent farmers out of business, and pork
producers had won tax breaks and jimmied the laws and rules to disable the
system that should have been regulating their industry. The news hit the
paper in the form of a five-part investigative report called Boss Hog: N.C.s
Pork Revolution. The series and months of follow-up reporting awoke
citizens and leaders to a host of concerns surrounding their new local
industry, and eventually brought the states first significant regulation of hog
farms. Hogs were nobodys top agenda item in North Carolina, with the
exception of a citizens group concerned largely with odor from large hog
farms. The N&O series changed that. Read more at
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/102023/1996-Needed-Long-
Haul-Commitment.aspx

6. Experience the Eureka! in mining the depths government data!

A Growth Plan Run Amok, 1998, Los Angeles Times

http://www.barlowcoweb.com/LAcountyOverdev.pdf
T. Christian Miller was one of the first reporters to demonstrate the power of
computer-assisted mapping programs called Geographic Informatioin
Systems in uncovering big environmental stories, the ones right under our
nose.
7. Be the first to say, I told you so!

Washing Away, 2002, The Times-Picayune

NewOrleans Times-Picayune reporters John McQuaid and Mark
Schleifstein drove home southern Louisianas vulnerability to hurricanes
three years before the regions destruction. Its an account into the dreadful
inadequacies that existed prior to Katrina, an indictment of the Washington
officials who failed to act, and a scientific investigation into why these huge
storms are coming now. The pairs prophetic reporting turned the publics
view of natural diasters on its head. Retrospectively, it framed the Katrina
catastrophe as a man-made unnatural diaster, rather than a natural one. A
CNN interview ith Schleifstein: http://www.c-
spanvideo.org/program/191274-1

8. Help people connect to their environment, from farm to fork!

The Omnivore's Dilemma, 2006

Michael Pollan's 2006 investigation and explanation of the origins of our
food in modern America. It may already be one of the most influential
environmental books since "Silent Spring."
http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/

9. Help people connect to their environment, from cradle to grave!

Chemical Fallout, 2008, The Milwaukee Journal; Susanne Rust, Meg

Kissinger and Cary Spivak. The pair goes up against the powerful chemical
industry lobby and conducts their own environmental testing to show the
prevalence of toxins in everyday consumer products, including baby bottles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmciQ6klaZw

10. Write science stories that work for Bubbas and Einsteins alike!

Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis, 2009

Independent freelance journalist Alanna Mitchell joined the crews of leading
scientists in nine of the global oceans hotspots to see firsthand the many
ways humans are altering most everything about the marine environment --
temperature, salinity, acidity, ice cover, volume, circulation and marine life.
Mitchell explains the science behind the story in an accessible yet
authoritative account. Listen to an interview with Mitchel and download an
excerpt of her book on coral reefs here:
http://www.granthamprize.org/winners/2010-winner