Communications and Society Program

Journalism and the Environment

The Conference on Journalism and the Environment
July 11-13, 2005
Aspen Meadows, Aspen, Colorado

Fast-paced, deadline-driven journalism has difficulty covering complicated environmental issues that are slow to develop but likely to have serious long-term public consequences. Washington Post columnist William Raspberry, reflecting on the limitations of journalistic coverage as it is often practiced today, recalled the comments of a critic who once said, “If we [modern journalists] had been around 2000 years ago, we would have covered the hell out of the crucifixion and missed Christianity.”

The Conference on Journalism and the Environment brought together executives, editors, news directors, and reporters from leading news organizations to examine journalistic coverage of the environment and, by extension, other important issues that are slow to develop but likely to have serious long-term consequences. The 2005 conference

1. Examined the impact of newsroom practices and journalistic values on the quality of reporting on the environment, particularly with regard to issues such as the communication of uncertainty and the weight of scientific evidence,
2. Developed  concrete strategies and realistic policies to strengthen the information value and impact of news coverage of the environment and similarly complex issues, and
3. Identified innovative approaches and best practices for improved news coverage of the environment and other slow-to-develop stories that also recognize the important economic, social and technologic transformations occurring in American journalism.

In his keynote address Peter Goldmark, former publisher of the International Herald Tribune, challenged participants to be forward looking rather than to focus merely on yesterday’s events. Participants ultimately offered a set of recommendations aimed at encouraging newsroom leaders and managers to rethink their coverage of the environment and build newsroom structures that sustain informative, engaging and locally relevant coverage of the environment for their readers, viewers and listeners. Participants included leading editors, news directors and reporters from important regional newspapers and broadcast news organizations, leavened by a handful of environmentalists, industry representatives, journalism educators and a climate scientist.

Slow Fuse: Journalistic Approaches to Climate Change, the report of the Conference on Journalism and the Environment written by Larry Pryor, suggests 10 steps that newsroom leaders should consider to help their organizations develop a franchise around innovative and compelling reporting on climate change and similarly complex, long-term issues. The report includes Peter Goldmark’s keynote address delivered at the conference. Download Report in PDF.

The conference was sponsored by the Catto Charitable Foundation and the Nicholas Institute and organized by the Aspen Institute Program on Energy and the Environment and the Communications and Society Program in collaboration with the Nicholas Institute.