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Environment Reporting
Four decades ago reporting on the environment was what Paul Rogers, natural resources and
environment writer at the San Jose Mercury News, calls “a fringe pursuit.” He writes that “the
craft is now firmly entrenched as a key beat in American journalism.” Even so, there are plenty
of journalistic challenges described in stories written by reporters, editors and producers who
cover this beat for newspapers, magazines, radio and television.
Philip Shabecoff, who covered the environment for 14 years for The New York Times,
addresses the ambivalence “media managers” have about such stories and “their claim on the
news hole,” as well as their concerns about how reporters focus their coverage. James
Bruggers, who reports on environment topics for The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, lets us
know how the complexities involved in coverage today make it a tougher beat. Jim Detjen,
who directs the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University,
argues for a new kind of environment reporting, blending the best aspects of traditional
journalism with an effort to educate the pubic about the importance of sustainable
development to arrive at “sustainable journalism.” And Bud Ward, founding editor of
Environment Writer, a newsletter for environment reporters, recalls another journalist asking
why the environment beat is “so far down the journalistic pecking order” and provides some
answers.
Through words and images, Boston Globe photojournalist Stan Grossfeld relives parts of
his worldwide journey to document “The Exhausted Earth.” Charles Alexander, a former
Time editor who directed environment coverage for many years, contends that by failing to
report in anything but a “scattered, sporadic and mostly buried” way on the “big story”—daily
actions and inaction leading to environmental ruin—the “devastation of the environment will
be partly our fault.” As the National Journal’s staff correspondent for environment and energy,
Margaret Kriz keeps a watchful focus on environment policymaking in Washington, while
recognizing the difficulties that beat reporters face in having to become knowledgeable about
science, health impacts, government policy, economics, business practices, and civil rights
issues. Joseph A. Davis, writer and editor of the biweekly “Tip Sheet” for environment
journalists, offers an example of government impeding access to a report that reminds us why
watchdog reporting is critical on this beat.
David Ropeik, a former TV environment reporter who is now at the Harvard Center for
Risk Analysis, explains why it is important for journalists to understand how and why people
perceive risks as a way of improving coverage of actual risks of environmental threats.
Newsday’s environment reporter Dan Fagin, who is president of the Society of Environmental
Journalists, explains how issues about reporting on identifiable risk led him to have misgivings
about many of the stories about air quality in neighborhoods near Ground Zero. As Fagin
writes, “… for journalists who are serious about reporting risk in context, the air-quality issue
was difficult, even maddening.”
Michael Milstein, who covers natural resources and public lands for The Oregonian,
examines the saturated news coverage of the Klamath River basin and dying salmon to help us
see how complexities of environmental issues can get subsumed in tracking charges and
countercharges of the effected parties. Natalie Fobes, a photojournalist whose work has
30 Nieman Reports / Winter 2002