Are Environmental Journalists an Endangered Species?

For all the media reports about a surge in "green jobs," one place we won't likely be seeing them is in the media itself.

The past few weeks and months have been devastating for environmental journalism. Just after Thanksgiving, Fortune magazine gave layoff notices to Marc Gunther, one of the leading business writers on corporate environmental practices (whose blogs also appear on GreenBiz.com), along with Todd Woody, whose coverage of clean technology has led the pack. (Gunther has been asked to stick around as a "contributing writer" and again chair next year's Brainstorm: Green event.) Over at CNN — which has been pushing hard its new Planet in Peril series — the network's entire seven-person environmental team, including stalwarts like veteran anchor Miles O'Brien and pioneering producer Peter Dykstra, was let go. Even the Weather Channel, which has been hyping its climate change program, Forecast Earth, extinguished the Environmental Unit that produced it. (It did this, by the way, while turning its normally blue logo green as part of NBC's Green Is Universal promotion.)

It goes on. In recent months some of the better journalists covering the environment have taken buy-out packages offered by their financially beleaguered employers: Claudia Deutsch at the New York Times, Marla Cone and Janet Wilson at the Los Angeles Times, Ilana Debare at the San Francisco Chronicle, and others.

What's going on here? For starters, the mainstream media business has been tanking along with the rest of the economy. With ad sales and consumer spending down, bloggers and other so-called "new media" providing low-priced competition, and general panic on Wall Street devaluing media stocks, business reporters are finding themselves a part of the same economic meltdown they're covering. Like so many industries, the media business is in the throes of a transformation, with yesterday's leaders becoming — well, fish wrap.

But it's more than that. Corporate environmental topics have long had a volatile existence within most mainstream media companies. For years, few newspapers, TV networks, and business magazines would touch stories about companies improving their environmental performance, or at best were ambivalent about them, even when such stories were substantive. And when these stories were covered, they often were positioned as precious, offbeat stories, novel corporate antics, or shallow efforts to ward off activist or consumer protests. While some of that may have been accurate — a lot of companies have done the minimum needed to "green up" their image — countless stories of companies' efforts to systematically wring out waste, pollution, and inefficiency, and improve business performance along the way, were dismissed as unworthy of coverage. When I launched a monthly newsletter, The Green Business Letter, in 1991, I was one of only a handful of writers covering these topics.

In the mid 1990s, I had the opportunity to lead a panel at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, a professional organization. At the panel — the group's first ever on business reporting — I posed a question couched in the classic terms of "Man bites dog." As Wikipedia explains: "The phrase Man bites dog and the related phrase Dog bites man are used to describe a phenomenon in journalism, in which an unusual, infrequent event is more likely to be reported as news than an ordinary, everyday occurrence."

So, I asked my SEJ colleagues, if the headline "Company Pollutes" represented the "Dog bites man" story — that is, an ordinary, everyday occurrence — shouldn't "Company Innovates, Reduces Risks and Improves Environment" be seen as its "Man bites dog" counterpart — in other words, News?

My panelists agreed that it should be, but the reality was that reporters weren't typically lauded for telling good-news corporate stories. Their reward system was based on slaying dragons — that is, bringing big, powerful entities to their knees.

Things have changed somewhat since then — stories of proactive corporate environmental initiatives are now regular media fare — but as I've noted earlier this year, mainstream business writers still seem ill-informed and overly cynical about company efforts to be greener. Like the preponderance of their readers, editors and reporters seem to start with the assumption that most environmental activities undertaken by companies, especially large companies, are done primarily for P.R. reasons. True, healthy skepticism is the currency of a good journalist, but undying cynicism is more the norm when it comes to environmental business reporting.

The recent spate of downsizings of writers, editors, and producers covering environmental issues will only exacerbate this, relegating green business coverage to reporters with less knowledge, context, and historical perspective on the transformation taking place in business. I hear from such reporters every week: general-assignment reporters from newspapers and broadcast stations around the U.S., niche trade magazines, and others seeking comment or context on a story they're covering. I can tell you unequivocally that the nature of their questions reveals a high degree of ignorance. I'm happy to bring them up to speed, but it's a slog.

The timing of the recent media layoffs is all the more troublesome given everything that's about to happen: a new administration and Congress with a big appetite for environmental regulation, green jobs, renewable energy, and carbon management — with the potential of countless billions of dollars, and millions more in lobbying, devoted to such efforts. The automotive industry — bailout or not — is undergoing a revolution, a phase-out of the hundred-year-old gas-powered internal combustion engine in favor of electricity-powered ones — creating the need for a new, smarter energy grid that will have vast ripple effects throughout the economy. Wal-Mart and other large players are driving their suppliers harder than ever before to reduce packaging, improve energy efficiency, and eliminate toxic ingredients in their products. The construction industry is undergoing a green revolution. Food growers and producers are seeing the beginning of an antiglobalization backlash, and a relocalization of some farming and food processing.

It goes on from there.

Who will be there to cover it all? Who will bring the deep knowledge and big-picture perspective necessary to create informed stories, not just sound-bite "content." Will the less-experienced reporters and editors be overly enthusiastic or hopelessly cynical?

Yes, of course, there are niche publications covering green business (including, of course, GreenBiz.com and its constellation of sites, of which I am executive editor). And there remain several strong (for now) environmental reporting teams at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, and a handful of other mainstream media. But even on their best days, their combined reach includes only a small fraction of the audience — business people, activists, regulators, policymakers, investors, business students, and others — that need to understand the trends and developments in the greening of mainstream business.

As we enter a new year, a new political era, and, arguably, a new environmental ethic, we'll need a more informed society than ever before. We'll see how it goes.

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Comments

[Anna]

Joel, I was disheartened by your article of so many E-journalists being let go. It seems that their expertise is expendable. Kind of like anyone can write a story.

Also, I am worried about the sound bites and misinformation that you read through the blogosphere. So many people do not do their homework. As you said, in order to cover a story accurately, you have to know the right questions to ask first.

Perhaps quantity not quality is still the standard these days.

[Barb Haig]

Joel, your assessment is right on. I've attended several SEJ conferences, and as a former journalist, I was astonished at how closed-minded many working reporters are about reporting on business and the environment. I've suggested to SEJ that they include more sessions on business to no avail.

A trend I see, however, is local reporters (especially Thomas Content at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Tim Wheeler at the Baltimore Sun) developing great stories about how businesses are both embracing and struggling with green initiatives. They have done a service to their readers by jumping past the PR aspect and going to the triple-bottom-line impact on local communities.

Perhaps the pendulum will swing local for awhile until national media outlets understand what's really important.

[Pam Strayer]

I went to the SEJ meeting in 2007 at Stanford and was shocked then to hear about cutbacks were already affecting environmental journalists, who, due to staff downsizing overall, were being asked to cover non-environmental beats to make up for staff shortages.

I've been warning for some time that the burden of covering the environment will fall on the shoulders of environmental groups. We must train them more to produce content and help them learn how to use the state of the art tools to get these messages across using social media and networks, much like the Obama campaign did.

Recent developments are accelerating the need for help for those who care to become information providers and trusted sources.

The biggest irony of course is that all these big companies and media want to wave the green flag on eco-goodness for their brands, yet who is stepping up the plate and defending environmental reporting? In the long view, this may go down as an error equally colossal or perhaps greater than the current subprime meltdown sparking global financial crisis.

[Don Carli]

Great insights Joel...

Until the bean counters and their creditors count triple bottom line beans, we can expect the ranks of environmental journalists at over-leveraged media companies to continue to thin. The trend seems to be that local news outlets, journals, newsletters, trade publications, blogs and social networking sites like Twitter are where environmental journalists will be found.

Never has there arguably been a greater public need for independent, high quality journalism in the United States. Perhaps the answer is crowd-funded nonprofit sustainability journalism.

[Don Carli]

Nonprofit and "crowdfunding" vehicles like www.Spot.us and www.kiva.org are among of the ways independent environmental journalist finance their work.

Sites like http://newstrust.net/ can help to establish trust. The key questions remaining are:

What is the perceived value of a story vs. the talent, skill, time and cost required to research and write it... and are these business models sustainable?

[carol cone]

Is there anyway to start a groundswell of outrage from citizens who want to be informed in a sophisticated manner by journalists, like Marc Gunther and others, who have deep expertise and context for our green future?

Can you start a social media revolution, Joel towards this end?????

[Danna]

Thanks for the news Joel. If they were interested, I wonder if those top notch reporters laid off could come togather as a media coop and market themselves well enough to get the attention of business and lay alike? Yes reader/viewer supported as well as sustainable business supported--in all areas. Let it begin the revolution in earnest.

[Carolyn]

Thanks for sounding the alarm on this. Very disturbing -- and agree with Carol that a collective burst of outrage is needed. Within the bad news is the opportunity to provide briefings (webinars?) for this non-expert reporters and editors, beyond your one-to-one phone commentary. As part of this effort, let's break down the silos that separate business and NGO/issue coverage. It's time to connect the dots between the scientific news (e.g., on climate change), policy developments, NGO work/concerns, and business contributions. With fewer journalistic ears (or email boxes), it's time to work together to integrate the stories we're telling -- to send one message instead of one hundred a day.

[Poet LLC]

Maybe that's why I had to go to foreign web sites like the BBC to get continuous coverage of Poznan?

[jennifer]

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[Jennfier]

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[sayenjole]

no, most environmental journalists are fiction writers.

[newport driving school]

no, most environmental journalists are fiction writers.Thanks for sharing.

[Make Money Online]

Whoa, even the CNN layoff its reporters. I thought since CNN is a trusted news media, it shouldn't lay off its well experienced journalists. Well, probably, going green is not important right now.

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