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Environment Reporting
never missed his mark. Something has
changed, and this uncomplicated scene
captures it perfectly.
And that second shot—it wasn’t in
Sandy’s original script. But he told me
about it, and I urged him to put it in.
The point had been made, and the
scene would have been complete without
it, but there was just something
about lingering in the scene a little
longer with that piercing-the-silenceof-nature,
make-no-mistake-about-itsmeaning
sound of that gunshot, hanging
in the air for the second time, and
missing again. It just added immensely
to the weight and resonance of the
moment. With the sound of the rifle
shots, the dull quiet of the desert and
the hushed voices of the young men,
listeners can feel that they are right
there with them. No other medium can
take us this close. This story also pulled
down a couple of awards for “Living on
Earth.”
Environment Stories and the
Rhythm of Real Life
In 1999, I went to Alaska as the 10th
anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil
spill was approaching. I was the reporter
this time, and I found myself in
the kitchen of a couple who were both
former fishermen and whose lives were
basically shattered by the event. They
had been telling me about how the
spill nearly destroyed the market for
wild Alaska salmon and how their town,
Cordova, had since been torn apart by
unremitting anger, depression, divorce
and suicide. I tried to recreate this
moment in the piece as I’d experienced
it—as one of profound sadness
and despair. But in the middle of it,
their dog ambled blithely into the
kitchen. I recorded the familiar scritchscratching
of its claws on their hard
floor, the clinking of its collar, and the
madcap flap of its ears as it shook its
head.
The dog’s appearance had absolutely
nothing to do with “the story,” but I
decided to put it in anyway. It broke
the tension and gave listeners—just as
it had given us—some relief from the
gravity of the moment, without stepping
back from its intense intimacy.
The dog soothed us in the story in the
way that pets do in real life. It was real
life. I didn’t comment on this in the
script; instead, we merely hear the
sounds, the woman saying “That’s a
good dog!” and me saying, “Sheelagh
and Ross’s dalmatian trots in from the
other room.” This gave the listeners a
chance to catch their breath and gave
me the opportunity to steer the story
toward a small scrap of hope that
Sheelagh and Ross, and their community,
were hanging onto. No awards for
that one, I’m afraid.
Radio also has its limitations. While
it’s particularly well-suited to some
environmental stories, with others its
limitations can be more pronounced.
Environmental stories are about connections
and relationships, many of
them subtle and unseen. They tend to
evolve slowly over time and often need
a good deal of exposition of background
and context. They usually involve a
broad array of perspectives along with
the head-scratching science that is often
at once arcane and highly uncertain.
This complexity makes some environmental
stories particularly
challenging to tell in a medium as
ephemeral as radio.
Sound can’t capture everything.
Newspapers or television can feature
Corrections:
images of cryptosporidium microorganisms,
for instance, but those bugs
don’t make any noise. Nor does drinking
water contaminated with them
sound any different coming out of the
tap than clean water does. But a little
creative thinking or even dumb luck
can always help. When I was reporting
a story on drinking water quality for
“Living On Earth,” I happened to be
staying with a friend in Philadelphia
who runs her tap water through a Brita
filter. I used the sound of her filling up
her water container and complaining
about the city’s bad water. Later, in
reporting the same story, I went to a
farm to look into agricultural contamination
of waterways. One of the cows
obliged me by defecating right in front
of my microphone, a few dozen yards
from a creek. I used it in the story.
We got an award for that one, too. ■
Peter Thomson was the founding
editor and producer of “Living on
Earth” and in nearly 10 years with
the program also served as senior
editor, west region bureau chief,
senior correspondent, and special
projects editor. He’s now a freelance
journalist based in Boston.
bluepearmain@earthlink.net
Because of an improperly informed change that we made to Robert Lee
Hotz’s article, “The Difficulty of Finding Impartial Sources in Science”
(Nieman Reports, Fall 2002, V. 56, No. 3) contains an error. In the print
version, Ashley Dunn is referred to as “former technology editor at the
Los Angeles Times.” Dunn is in fact science editor at the Los Angeles
Times. In “The Devolution of a Science Page” (Fall 2002), the name of
the Star Tribune’s reporting team was misidentified. The team is the
Health, Environment and Science team.
Both errors are corrected in the online version of the magazine (at
www.nieman.harvard.edu). We regret both errors. ■
72 Nieman Reports / Winter 2002