integrating sustainability themes into media - Collaborating Centre ...

www.scp-centre.org
Possible future developments
Utopia recently launched a new version of the platform in May 2009 to facilitate
user participation and place an even stronger focus on the community and on behaviour
change. There are plans for a cross-media expansion of the platform, including
Utopia Events (trade fairs, exhibitions, workshops), a print magazine &
book series and a Utopia shop (online & offline).
3.3.2 The Guardian (international good practice example)
General description
The Guardian is one of the most popular daily quality newspapers in the UK and
has a strong tradition of covering social justice issues. It has also played a pioneering
role in providing coverage of environmental issues dating to the 1970s. The
Guardian was at that time the first newspaper to employ an environment correspondent
and by the end of the 1980s it launched the first regular environment
section in their newspaper. As environmental problems grew more urgent in recent
times, climate change being most prominent, the board of Guardian News & Media
(GNM), publisher of both The Guardian and The Observer, a sister Sunday publication,
decided to define environment as a core coverage area.
The Guardian’s intensive environmental coverage is part of GNM’s sustainability
strategy, a first in the media industry to be initiated by top management. Furthermore,
GNM is the first publishing company in the UK that has obligated itself to
continually cover ecological, social and ethical topics. With the aim “to be the
leader on sustainability within the media industry”, GNM developed the first commercial
sustainability team in the media sector, reporting directly to the managing
director
Prior to June 2009, the Guardian contained a regular environment page with
weekly environment and ethical living news and comment, however owing to the
quantity of content this material is now presented exclusively online. There are ten
annual supplements that focus on a special sustainability issue such as water or
health. GNM’s environment strategy puts the Guardian environment website
(www.guardian.co.uk/environment) at its centre given space restrictions inherent to
the print format to enable a high quality and quantity of environmental coverage.
Another benefit of the website is that it can reach a far larger and truly international
readership which is important for globally relevant environmental topics. The environment
website was launched in autumn 2006 with the stated aim to make it the
leading resource in the world. In order to reach this goal the environment team was
doubled and environment correspondents were dispatched to different parts of the
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