Society of Environmental Journalists
By Ron Steffens, Professor of Communications , Green Mountain College
Good works get republished. So I’m pleased to wear the second press run of a tee-shirt listing the top 10 reasons to be an environmental journalist. I bought the shirt, a fund-raiser for the Society of Environmental Journalists, at their annual convention, held an hour up the road from the Vermont college where I teach. At the convention, my college announced it would purchase half its electricity from a local “cow-power” producer. The next week, the student newspaper (which I advise) went tabloid with the sensational headline: “Cows charge campus.”
The tee-shirt offers no advice on manure-to-methane power production, but it does include # 3, “Learn to spot contaminants in your home” and # 9, “Free guided tours of sewage plants” (…and I’ve been there…I even covered the American Standard toilet factory explosion of 1980 in New Orleans, a comparatively minor tragedy that briefly threatened a national toilet-bowl shortage).
If you can twist with this shirt’s dark humor, you’ll find other benefits to reporting the environment, such as:
# 7. Learn what PCBs are – and how to spell them.
# 5. Be first to know where the beach will be when the sea level rises.
Of course, the # 1 reason is that we “Cover stories that REALLY matter.” This was never so clear as at the convention this past October. There was big news: most everyone in the hall agreed to the necessity of recognizing climate change as a theory that appears to be in motion, now. Therefore it is news. Yet news, this ever-evolving narrative of our public and private lives, succeeds in part because a committed yet impartial reporter will balance competing facts and interpretations. To confirm this balance, some of the best environmental journalists in the country discussed the reason why “Global Warming” skeptics shouldn’t get equal time. The key skeptic was Marc Morano, a staffer on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired until this past election by Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe.
At the convention, spokespersons for Wal-mart and Coca-Cola discussed plans for their civic and environmental engagement, sharing the podium with Bill McKibben trying to keep them honest (and to note held them to the task. Sen. Patrick Leahy asked a packed room of journalists to demand a government that followed the principles of justice and openness…and a week later, the elections returned Leahy to chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Good works should be read and read again. Read the working journalists’ report of the history, tragedy, and future that is New Orleans, Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans & the Coming Age of Superstorms, by John McQuaid and Mark Schelfstein.. Browse this year’s award-winning environmental journalists at the SEJ Conference Awards summary or walk through a virtual re-play of the conference. Follow the reporters on their field trips to the Intervale Center, an innovative community farm that leads a movement to feed Burlington, Vermont up to 10% of its food from local sources. Or visit the Proctor Maple Research Center, where scientists track the effects of climate change on maples, mercury deposition from coal-fired power plants,, and the science of making maple syrup.
It’s heartening to know that the most focused environmental journalists working today are the friendliest group of skeptics I’ve met. So I began to wonder how to teach the next generation of environmental activists and writers. What might they gain from these working professionals? My own very wordy tee-shirt (requiring at least a XXXL) began to write itself…
WRITING GREEN: Five ways to practice environmental journalism…
5. I’m a shy man who’s learned we don’t have the luxury of being shy. Ask engaging questions of those in charge (and seek out those who shrink from their civic duties, and give voice to those who’ve been denied access to participation). Ask questions that enlarge the discussion and our choices. Don’t push an agenda or pre-judge the answer. And remember to test the answer you’re given (since an untested answer is a lazy-man’s version of propaganda).
4. Remember to apply the SEJ tee-shirt’s #4 reason: “You get to go outside (sometimes).” My best assignment was trapping, sedating, and tagging a grizzly bear in Wyoming. I’m just as happy when I’m leading a short field trip of student writers down to the river on the edge of campus. Don’t be afraid to ask a field scientist, activist or professor if they need a “documentary unit” (you, carrying a camera and a notebook).
3. News is about change, some bad, some good. News of the green is often quite blue. We’ve lost a huge chunk of the Gulf Coast and but there are good changes to report. As we help these coastal cities recover, we’re also beginning to ask what our energy use costs us and what we could gain if we started eating local produce. The good news: everywhere I’ve written and taught, neighbors care about their neighborhoods. The students at my college reduce their energy use and invest a portion of their tuition in a Greening Fund. And when it’s time to celebrate, we seek the local restaurant that buys from local farms.
2. Live local but write global. In my college days, the environmental newsletter and community newspaper I edited in New Orleans bemoaned the loss of wetlands, and we’re still losing wetlands (and we’ve lost so much of that dear wetland-city). So…write bigger headlines. Find a new angle to engage readers with their land, today and tomorrow, and FOCUS the headlines so we CONNECT. Forget the old headline truism, Man bites dog? How about forecasting, “Man’s dog will be lost in flooded city.” The “sky-is-falling” headlines are no longer sensational or extremist, in part because so many people ignored how far and how much we must plan ahead if we’re to successfully manage the climate-change era.
1. Don’t preach (he says, while preaching) but write for change that will sustain our values. Learn to write and broadcast the human stories about those who would change us, those who might guide us into inhabiting this world instead of conquering it. The grizzly biologist (see #4) started each morning’s grizzly round-up with donuts, not for the grizzly but for us. On the long drive to the edge of wilderness, we laughed at Paul Harvey’s pious radio pronouncements (the forerunner of Fox News?). The grizzlies are still in trouble, yes, but they’re doing better because we study and care about them, and they’re doing better because we laugh as we work for these huge animals and for the huge landscapes they need to survive. Laugh so loud that the mountains echo with humor, because it’s human warmth that will out-shout the global echo of our human warming.
Learn more about Ron Steffens.
