By CHERYL HOGUE
It seems improbable — a regulatory agency officially inviting polluters to secretly influence the scientific judgments it uses in crafting cleanup plans. But it happened earlier this year.
And it's likely to have impacts in the communities you cover, especially if they're facing pollution threats from a nearby military base or a Department of Energy or NASA facility.
By TIM WHEELER
No story dominates environmental news coverage these days like climate change. To be sure, there still are pressing environmental issues that have little or nothing to do with climate, such as human exposure to toxic chemicals. Butclimate affects so much of the natural and human world that it encompasses—or at least connects with— many of the traditional environmental stories reporters have covered for years, including fisheries, energy, endangered species and pollution, to name just a handful.
By BILL DAWSON
Beth Daley began her Journalistic career 19 year ago at the Newburyport Daily News in
northern Massachusetts. In 1994, she joined The Boston Globe, where she has covered breaking news
and features and was the education reporter before moving to the environment beat in 2001.
By ROBERT BRULLE with MIRANDA SPENCER
One core tenet of environmental journalism is the inclusion and explanation of complex physical and natural scientific facts into coverage of environmental issues, and it is expected that reporters invest a considerable effort into understanding the science behind these topics. The journals Scienceand Natureare virtually required background reading, and physical and natural scientists typically serve as the sources for interviews.
By BILL KOVARIK AND KEN WARD
The 18th annual SEJ conference in Roanoke, Va., Oct. 15- 19, hosted by Virginia Tech, is shaping up to be one of the most memorable and practical yet.
• Memorable, because of the extraordinary speakers, the beautiful location, and the easy access to fun networking events.
• Practical, for you as a journalist, because of the wide variety of craft sessions in fully equipped computer labs focused on helping you survive and thrive in a changing news business.
Here are some of the details:
By BILL DAWSON
"Doing more with less."
The phrase is now often lampooned as a preposterous cliché, but newspaper executives must have thought at first that it was an artful way to spin the bad news of escalating staff cuts.
Publisher Joe Pepe of The Commercial Appeal, for example, used the words when he announced in late 2005 that the Memphis newspaper would slash its workforce of 774 by 170 employees.
By MARK NEUZIL
Editor's note: We are fortunate to be able to excerpt a small bit of The Environment and the Press: From Adventure Writing to Advocacy, by Mark Neuzil, that many SEJ members will find interesting, a history of environmental journalism and its roots. We have removed the footnotes from this section, taken from Chapter Two, "Journalism's Prophetic Voice."
By PETER DYKSTRA
When Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species in May, the political trench warfare over global warming flared up anew. Environmental groups professed surprise that a reluctant Bush Administration acted at all. Global warming deniers said the decision was ludicrous. They cited a polar bear population — a five-fold increase since the 1970s, a doubling since the 1950s, a quadrupling since the 1960s.
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