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Environment Reporting
order that if it were alive it would be an
amoeba.” “DBI”—“Dull But Important”—is
the acronym Randolph said
many editors and newsroom staff who
aren’t on the environmental beat apply
to it. Many believe the DBI reputation
persists today.
Still, the beat is cyclical, a characteristic
it shares with most other newsroom
beats. Just months after
Donaldson’s broadside, the Exxon
Valdez spilled oil in Alaska’s Prince
William Sound, “60 Minutes” highlighted
the Alar-on-apples food scare
and the 20th anniversary of Earth Day
rolled around. Again, environmental
issues were front and center with the
American public and, therefore, with
America’s editors.
Again, the attention wouldn’t last.
With “greens” having “friends” in the
White House—President Clinton and
Vice President Gore—and with environmentalists
and the media having no
visible national “villain” along the lines
of Watt/Gorsuch, the beat waned
throughout much of the 1990’s, a descent
many feel continues today.
Perhaps burned by too many chemical-of-the-month
scare stories and by a
feeling—understandable though ultimately
flawed—that much of the media
was duped on the Alar scare, many
editors seemed willing, if not eager, to
back away from an always controversial,
always complex beat. After all,
environmental coverage often angered
bottom-line publishers. Competing
pressures at many news organizations—from
“dumbing down” the news
to creating smaller news holes, to devoting
fewer resources to enterprise
reporting—have made this type of reporting
tougher to do.
Today’s Environment Beat
These newsroom decisions are being
made, too, in a changed environmental
context. Today’s complex environmental
challenges are far more difficult
to explain, or even to see, than
they were in the days of the burning
Cuyahoga River or the “headlights at
noon” in some of America’s most polluted
metropolitan areas in the late
1960’s and early 1970’s. Today’s environmental
issues—desertification, environmental
immigrants, water supply,
and climate change—require far more
time and, arguably, more column
inches and air time than many news
organizations are inclined to provide.
To report news about global warming
in 10 inches of copy presents daunting
challenges to even the most knowledgeable
and skilled environmental
reporter and editing team. But the ways
in which reporters and editors, correspondents
and producers confront
these challenges—the ones inside and
outside the newsroom—will have a
large effect in determining how Americans
and their government anticipate
and respond to continuing environmental
pressures. ■
Bud Ward, for many years an environmental
reporter and writer in
Washington, D.C., is founding editor
of Environment Writer, a newsletter
for environmental reporters on
subjects that are of critical interest
to environmental journalism.
wardbud@cox.net
Connecting the Human Condition to Environmental
Destruction
‘… I kept my camera’s eye fixed on the haunting faces of children.’
By Stan Grossfeld
Adecade ago, as a photojournalist
with The Boston Globe, I embarked
on a worldwide journey
to document environmental destruction.
What I learned along the way is
why environmental issues can be so
difficult to cover and why it is essential
to connect the human experience to
what we see happening around us.
News coverage of environmental issues
can be difficult, in part, because
those who are affected—whether the
effect is economic or environmental—
routinely exaggerate their claims. Non-
governmental organization advocates
pull “facts” in one direction; big business
tugs them in another, and sometimes
neither leaves the cushy offices
in the northwest section of Washington,
D.C. Truth resides in a place somewhere
in between. But this truth can be
impossible for anyone to gauge. The
power of photography is to go beyond
statistics and offer humanity.
I listened to what scientists observed
was happening, but I kept my camera’s
eye fixed on the haunting faces of children.
At times, I allowed my eye to
wander and bear witness to the conditions
of adults, as well. Their expressions
and circumstances bespoke the
consequences of the environmental
tragedies in ways that any retelling of
the experts’ verbal arguments never
could. ■
Stan Grossfeld is an associate editor
and a photographer for The Boston
Globe.
grossfeld@globe.com
42 Nieman Reports / Winter 2002