The Changing Climate Issue: Reporting Ahead Of The Curve
June and October 2007

The University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, the Climate Leadership Initiative at the University of Oregon and the Society of Environmental Journalists are collaborating on a series of day-long seminars for journalists on one of the most pressing and debated issues of our time: climate change.

The topic of climate change has expanded beyond the science section to encompass business, finance, outdoor, lifestyle, health, and political beats. More than ever, reporters in every part of the newsroom must understand the effects of climate change in order to explain it to their publics. These seminars provide an opportunity to hear presentations and panel debates by national and regional scientists, economists and policy experts, as well as journalists who have experience reporting on climate change. The seminars provide a forum for discussion and generate story ideas for members of the media covering many beats.

To date, two events have taken place, both in Oregon: October 27, 2007, in Portland, and June 9, 2007, in Ashland. A series of workshops more easily accessible to media in rural parts of the region is planned: in Ashland, La Grande and Florence, Oregon; Spokane, Washington; and Redding, California. You'll find a climate change sourcebook, past seminar details (including agenda, speakers and bios) and information on upcoming seminars here.

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SEJ Toronto Affiliate — Pub Night
April 2007

On Thursday, April 12, journalists gathered at The Madison Avenue Pub in Toronto, Canada to discuss environment stories.

The Centre for Environment at the University of Toronto and local members of the Society of Environmental Journalists organized the event as an opportunity for reporters, editors, producers, news personnel, academics and budding journalists/writers to talk about environmental issues that surface in everyday news coverage. Climate change is a big part of that, these days, but environmental issues affect everything from municipal planning and budgeting, to business and healthcare.

The Centre for Environment is an inter-disciplinary undergraduate and graduate teaching and research unit at the University of Toronto. A major academic goal is to serve as a doorway to environmental research and teaching across academic disciplines.

For information on future get-togethers, contact SEJ member Saul Chernos, 416-364-0725.

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Summit on TV Coverage of the Environment
July 2006

On Friday, July 28, a summit on environmental reporting on TV was held in New York City. This meeting was co-sponsored by the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University and the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Speakers included, among others, Dr. James Hansen, a top environmental expert on climate change at NASA, and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University who discussed "The Challenge of Sustainable Development." Andrew Tyndall of the Tyndall Report related his latest research findings about the state of environmental reporting on TV.

In addition, many top journalists from CNN, CBS News, New Jersey Public Broadcasting, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Houston Chronicle, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Louisville Courier-Journal, Chemical & Engineering News and other news organizations participated. The goal of the summit was to stimulate some creative thinking about ways to increase accurate reporting about environmental topics on TV.

For a summary of Tyndall's findings (including total minutes coverage and top stories per year, since 1988), surf over to Watchdog Earth, the blog of Jim Bruggers, SEJ member and environment reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal. SEJ member Robert McClure was also at the summit, and he reports in Dateline Earth on comments from SEJ member Peter Dykstra, of CNN, about global warming skeptic Patrick Michaels.

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The Platte River at the Crossroads
March 2006
By Wendy Hessler

Sandhill cranes on the Platte River. © Photo courtesy of David Story. More photos.

There we were. Twenty-one environmental reporters, freelancers, students and professors all huddled and shivering in an unheated blind on the Platte River. We were waiting in the breezy, 20 degree cold for thousands of lesser sandhill cranes to return from feeding in the corn fields and roost for the night on protective sandbars. Each spring, the cranes leave their southwest wintering spots and stop in central Nebraska to rest and eat before heading out to their Arctic nesting grounds.

Time passed. Our fingers and toes numbed but cameras and binoculars remained ready. We watched the bright orange sun sink below the horizon, the sky darken into night, the moon rise and the stars slowly appear overhead. Still, the cranes defied their nightly ritual and remained overhead, squawking to one another and showing no interest in resting. After almost three hours, we left the blind, cold, hungry and a little disappointed the birds had not landed.

That's how it is with wildlife. You never know. Each night is different, our guides told us. Those of us who had seen the spectacle before knew it was true. But, that night's late roosting surprised even the experienced guides. The birds finally settled past 9 p.m., well after we and everyone else had left the blinds at the National Audubon Society's Lillian Annette Rowe Bird Sanctuary near Gibbon, Neb.

Like the 500,000 or so migrating cranes, our group had descended on Nebraska's Platte River valley March 23 and 24 for the "Platte River at the Crossroads" conference. The conference committee of local SEJ members, chaired by Carolyn Johnsen, pulled together a program of experts who covered a full range of Platte River issues, starting at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) on Thursday morning and ending in Grand Island on Friday afternoon.

The regional conference was co-sponsored by SEJ and UNL's College of Journalism and Mass Communications. The university's vice chancellors for research and academic affairs provided financial support, keeping the event affordable for journalists.

As journalists, we came to hear the diverse batch of speakers tell us in great detail about underlying issues of the three-state Platte River Cooperative Agreement and the soon-to-be-released management plan. The agreement was signed by Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming in the early 1990s to combat loss of endangered species habitat, dwindling water supplies and increased legal battles over water.

The Platte River valley and its neighboring Rainwater Basin host about 12 million nesting and migrating cranes, geese, ducks, and other water birds every year, said Paul Johnsgard, author and ornithologist at UNL. The area he calls the avian Serengeti represents "one of the most spectacular concentrations of migratory birds to be found anywhere in the world."

But, continued loss of water — due to overuse and drought — is damaging the Platte River's unique character. The North Platte in Wyoming and the South Platte in Colorado converge in central Nebraska to flow east as the Platte and empty into the Missouri River.

Historically, the river had many channels and flowed wide and shallow. Each spring, floods and ice would flush the river, destroying vegetation and altering sandbars, channels and flow. Today, low spring and yearly flows have created a narrower and deeper river lined in places with trees and shrubs.

A big lesson learned at the conference is this: water is scarce and undervalued in the arid west and needs are great. Irrigation (up to 75 percent of the Platte River's water), recreation, municipal use, power plants, industry and wildlife all compete for the limited river water and its groundwater counterpart in the dwindling Ogallala Aquifer.

Watering crops takes the heaviest toll in agriculture-heavy Nebraska, which is second only to California in irrigated acres, according to Ann Bleed, acting director, Nebraska Department of Natural Resources.

The new cooperative agreement is a step towards balancing use of the limited water resources. Under it, the states, along with the Department of Interior, were to develop a basin-wide management plan to restore wildlife habitat for endangered and threatened species — the whooping crane, piping plover, least tern and the pallid sturgeon — while meeting human water needs. After 15 years of haggling and more delays than can be counted, the Integrated Management Plan for the Platte River is due out this spring.

"The river in itself is in a stage of jeopardy. We are at a critical point," said Steve Anschutz, Nebraska Field supervisor, US Fish and Wildlife Service. Other animals not yet listed are also declining, such as the plains top minnow and the Platte River caddis fly.

The 13-year program, if approved, will provide 80,000 acre feet of water to increase spring flows, protect and restore 10,000 acres of land for habitat and mandate research and monitoring using adaptive management. In addition, current water users will retain their rights, dams and other facilities will be relicensed without protracted legal hearings and states will monitor new wells and other water related activities.

The states are buying in to save money and reduce legal hassles, although Colorado and Wyoming have the most to gain. For a start, the federal government will pick up the biggest portion of the shared cost of the basin wide plan, now estimated at $317 million. Participating will also stop legal conflicts on projects built before 1997 and help avoid future battles around water issues. States will share the water and still retain some say over how it is used. Liability is another concern. Under the plan, projects finished since the start of the planning process will be grandfathered in and exempt from endangered species laws.

But, the controversial plan is not without its critics. In fact, many of the conference speakers representing government agencies, environmental groups, a law firm, farming interests and power districts voiced a range of concerns and pointed out numerous problems with the plan. Most worrisome are funding, program delays and changes, regulatory uncertainty, questionable wildlife benefits, lack of trust among participants, fair sharing of resources and increased federal oversight.

The management plan is still a long way from getting off the ground, though. The Department of Interior just approved the completed final draft document in May. The required environmental impact statement, the record of decision and the US Fish and Wildlife's biological opinion are expected soon. After all of the federal approval, the three governors must approve the plan, and Nebraska is in an election year. Then, Congress can appropriate the money. Start date may be as late as fall 2007.

So, we came as journalists to hear about the Platte River basin's water woes and as tourists to see one of the top birding experiences in the world.

After leaving the blind and grabbing dinner and a few hours sleep, we returned to Rowe Sanctuary to watch the birds lift off for their daily corn feed. We walked back to the blind in the predawn dark and seven degree temperatures. Not far away, thousands of the red-headed, gray-feathered critters stood in the shallow water and on the sandbars protected by the flowing river. Later, shortly after daybreak, the birds took off en masse. The raucous, deafening chatter filled the air as their silhouetted bodies blackened the sky overhead. Yes, we were there.

Resources:

• Endangered and Threatened Species of the Platte River. 2004. Committee on Endangered and Threatened Species in the Platte River Basin, National Research Council. 336 pp.
• Platte River Odyssey, University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications. Collection of stories from the year-long series published in the Lincoln Journal Star. $10 from Judy Yeck, attn: Platte Report, UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications, 147 Andersen Hall, P.O. Box 8804433, Lincoln, NE 68588-0443. For questions, contact Carolyn Johnsen, 402-472-5840.
• Rowe Sanctuary
• Crane Cam, down until 2007 spring migration

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SEJ at UNITY 2004 Convention
August 2004

The UNITY: Journalists of Color convention boasted more than 8,000 registrants this year (staff was still counting at the time of this posting), marking the world's largest gathering of journalists to date, and the Society of Environmental Journalists was right at the heart of it. The SEJ booth, across the aisle from Time Inc. and Reuters, attracted droves of registrants; SEJ walked away with 47 new members. And SEJ enjoyed high attendance at the Converging Rivers Ecotour and the Environmental Journalism panel.

UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc., a national alliance comprising the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA), held its third convention August 4 to August 8 at the Washington, DC, Convention Center.

"I was very proud to represent SEJ at UNITY events in Washington, DC, both at our exhibit table and through activities of the Council of National Journalism Organizations there," SEJ Executive Director Beth Parke said. "The scale of this convention was stunning. Virtually every key player in the news industry and the field of journalism training was represented there."

"SEJ has been a part of all three UNITY programs to date, in 1994, 1999 and 2004. But I have to say that the sheer magnitude of the Washington meeting brought every aspect of our involvement to a new level: from the full-day tour and well-attended panel cosponsored with our close partners at NABJ and NAJA, to an all-time high in new member recruitment," Parke added. "I'm grateful to UNITY organizers for giving SEJ such an exciting way to build visibility for and expand the community of environmental journalism today."

The full-day Converging Rivers: Intersection of Native and African-American Cultures and Environmental Effects on Waterways in the DC/Virginia Region Tour, coordinated by SEJ in conjunction with NAJA and NABJ, took place August 4. It gave conference registrants the opportunity to look at historic and present-day environmental and sociological issues involving Native Americans and African Americans in the DC area.

"I think it was even more successful than I had expected it to be because we had vibrant and articulate speakers who are tops in their fields; the best people to talk to," Tour Leader Cris Carl, reporter for the Hampshire Gazette, Greenfield, Mass., said. "Plus these were really good sites to visit. I felt the whole day wove together. It was very richly textured."

The first stop was at the Matthew Henson Earth Conservation Center, where David Smith, river keeper at the Earth Conservation Corps, discussed the corps' cleanup efforts at the Anacostia River in Washington, DC.

Next, participants went to the Reed Educational Center (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center) in Edgewater, Md. Here, they walked through the historic Java Trail, and Kimbra Cutlip talked about the land and its influences on Native Americans and African Americans. Participants also saw a small-scale tobacco farm.

Then the group traveled to Galesville, Md., where author Vince Leggett talked about the Black Watermen's Association, its impacts on the community, and historic information regarding both African Americans and Native Americans during the times of slavery. Leggett gave copies of his book, "The Chesapeake Bay Through Ebony Eyes," to registrants.

Afterward, attendees went to the Piscataway Museum in Waldorf, Md., and had lunch. They met Natalie Proctor, director of the museum, and her grandmother, Gladys Proctor, who is a clan mother and tribal historian. They talked about current issues facing the tribe and historic factors that impacted it as well as its historic connections to African Americans. The Piscataway tribe is one of few still established in the Chesapeake area. The Proctors' presentation drew many questions from reporters.

On the way back to the convention center, Washington Post reporter Gary Lee talked about the mixing of peoples and cultures between African Americans and Native Americans. Mr. Lee, whose heritage is both Native American and African American, is presently working on a book focusing on this topic.

"The tour was excellent," LaShinda Clark, a Philadelphia Inquirer photographer, said. "The highlight of the tour for me was the first stop at the Matthew Henson Earth Conservation Center, where I learned about the projects for inner city kids that help the center and the children."

"I loved going to see the site where they will be cleaning up the river," Theresa Halsey, radio producer for KGNU Community Radio, Boulder, Co., said, adding she enjoyed most of the tour stops. "Those of us that live out west don't expect to still be able to see an Indian reservation, even if it isn't state or federally recognized."

On August 6, journalists had an opportunity to learn about covering the environment in the panel Environmental Journalism: Wading Through the Issues of Race, Class, Science, Politics and Social Justice. The panel, moderated by Roger Witherspoon, senior writer at The Journal News, showed attendees how the environment beat lends itself to reporting on communities of color.

"We were trying to tell people there's a justice angle to a great many environmental stories," explained panelist Joe Davis, SEJ WatchDog Tipsheet editor. He said reporters were concerned about how to cover the environment if their publications did not have environment beats. "Environmental stories can be sold as business stories, outdoors stories, lifestyle stories or social justice stories. We were urging people not to worry so much about the label, and tell the stories that are important in their own localities."

According to Davis, about 50 journalists attended the panel, which was cosponsored by SEJ and NAJA. "It was a very busy convention, and the very in-depth session we held was one of a whole bunch," he said. "It pulled an audience in spite of lots of competition, and we felt good about that."

The other panelists were Florangela Davila, race and immigration reporter for The Seattle Times; Jennifer Lee, reporter for The New York Times; and Marley Shebala, senior news reporter and photographer for The Navajo Times, Window Rock, Ariz.

Deborah Gates, at The Daily Times, Salisbury, Md., said she walked away from the panel with a wealth of information. "We should seek out diversity in covering environmental stories," she said. "We need to deal with minorities, not only covering negative issues, but giving more public service."

She also learned two things that will draw the reader: "Put a person, a face on the story," she said, and break down technical information. "People don't understand the impact it has on them. Break it down and explain how it impacts them and put it in laymen's terms."

SEJ's work with UNITY 2004 was made possible in part by a grant from the Earth and Environmental Science Journalism Program of Columbia University and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory with underwriting from the National Science Foundation.

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SEJ Ontario affiliate pub night
December 2003

Click to enlarge and see who's who.

SEJ members and friends began holiday celebrations early at the Elephant & Castle in downtown Toronto, Canada. The gathering brought together a diverse group with a common interest — environmental journalism. The group discussed the state of EJ locally, how SEJ can serve to link up and provide resources (especially the multitude available on www.sej.org) to this segment of the membership, and the advantages of advancing EJ in Canada through the power of numbers and SEJ's lessons learned. The occasion also marked the first meeting of SEJ's Ontario members with staff and board of the Canadian Science Writers' Association. SEJ is joining with CSWA as an Association Partner for their 2004 annual conference, H2Oh / H2eau: The science of water and how it affects our lives, taking place in Toronto on June 5 - 7, 2004.

The SEJ group will be holding monthly pub nights, on the second Thursday of the month, at the same downtown location. Please check the upcoming regionals page for details.

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Tour highlights tribal environmental issues
June 2003
By Colleen Kaleda

In June, SEJ co-sponsored a two-day eco-tour with the Native American Journalists Association. The tour helped kick off NAJA's 19th annual convention at the Oneida Nation, just outside Green Bay, Wisconsin. Patty Loew, a public television reporter and producer and University of Wisconsin professor, handled the logistics and planning of the eco-tour (June 17-18).

The first stop was the Forest County Potawatomi Reservation. En route, tribal elder Jim Thunder sat at the front of the bus and told the journalists stories — oral history, he noted, that wasn't in books. He told participants that Chicago — once a Potawatomi village — actually means "place of the skunk" in Potawatomi. "In '80 we got paid for Chicago," he said, cracking a smile. "By that time, we didn't want it back."

Our first stop was to the tribe's Red Deer Ranch. Reporters rode on a flatbed full of hay bales

Bruce Shepard, Red Deer Ranch manager, takes questions from eco-tour participants taking advantage of 'alternative transportation'.

SEJ member Chuck Quirmbach of Wisconsin Public Radio gathers munching sounds from a deer at the Potawatomi tribe's Red Deer Ranch.

pulled by a giant tractor. Bumping along the ranch roads, the journalists listened to Bruce Shepard, the ranch manager, talk about how the deer are raised for the tribe's smoked venison business. Photographers went literally "in the field" and snapped close-ups of the large, healthy deer. Chuck Quirmbach, a Wisconsin Public Radio Reporter and SEJ member, ventured close enough to place a microphone near where a deer munched on the grass.

Next on the itinerary was the tribe's EPA building, where staffers talked about the issues the tribe faces in its effort to earn the EPA's purest clean-air classification. A tribal member also talked about the problems in recent years in finding healthy birch trees for making traditional birch-bark canoes.

On the way to the next stop, the tour bus wound though the North Woods to the Sokaogon Chippewa Community near Mole Lake. There, reporters were treated to a traditional feast of fish and wild rice at the tribal EPA building.

Rice Lake may soon not be able to live up to its namesake — if developments and boat recreation continue to deplete its wild rice stocks.

Mole Lake tribal leaders Fran Van Zile and her husband, Fred Ackley, both spoke about the tribe's decades-long fight to fend off mining companies who want to cut into a nearby hill that is sacred to their tribe. Another key issue for the Mole Lake Sokaogon Chippewa is the decline of the wild rice in nearby lakes — including Rice Lake, where the eco-tour stopped next. A traditional food for Wisconsin Indians, the loss of the sensitive stocks to development and boating activity is drawing concern in this tribe and others across the state.

In the evening, reporters got settled in Keshena, Wisconsin for the next day's activities at the Menominee Nation. At 234,000 acres, the Menominee is the largest Indian reservation in the state. Dinner conversation at the Menominee casino-hotel took the form of informal roundtable discussions on sustainable development, genetically-modified foods, and other topics.

An inside look at the sawmill on the Menominee Nation that processes timber from the tribe's sustainable forest.

The next morning, reporters visited the College of the Menominee Nation to get a primer on Menominee history and issues from Al Caldwell, director of the tribe's cultural institute. A highlight was the success story of the Menominee Forest, which covers 94 percent of the Menominee reservation. The forest, prized by the tribe, is a model of sustainable forestry.

"We don't cut any more out of this forest than it can grow in a year's time," Caldwell said. The forest, containing 47 different tree species, has garnered the tribe national and international attention — even the attention of passing NASA satellites. According to tribal members, when viewed from space, the dense forest stands out so sharply against the developed land around it that NASA has told the tribe they sometimes use it to tweak their satellites.

Eco-tour participants interview Marshall Pecore, manager of the Menominee Forest.

After leaving the college, eco-tour participants donned hard-hats and got a rare peek inside the tribe's working sawmill, which processes timber entirely from the Menominee Forest. Radio reporters enjoyed recording the ambient sounds here: the clanking of just-cut boards, the churning of a wood chipper, and the thumps of heavy logs being rolled, sliced, and lifted by machinery.

The last stop of the eco-tour was a short walk in the sustainable forest, where Marshall Pecore, the forest manager, answered last questions from the participants. The June sun filtered through the trees, a nice image to end the day. But the mosquitoes were fierce and for some, afternoon deadlines loomed. The tour ended with the drive back to Green Bay.

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Covering California's Water Story
March 2003

This SEJ co-sponsored event took place on March 15, 2003, at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The one-day workshop addressed the complexities of California's challenging political problems following a century and a half of development. Topics included: Sources of water, and how the plumbing moves water around the state; Growers, cities and wildlife battle for bigger shares/San Francisco Bay and Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta issues; and the Colorado River's history and law/the compact and Imperial Valley water transfers.

The event's sponsors were: UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism's Program in Environmental Journalism, University of California Water Resources Center Archives, Society of Environmental Journalists and Society of Professional Journalists. Financial support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Jane Kay was the contact.

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Informal gathering of Toronto (Canada) area SEJ members
January 2003

A half-dozen SEJ members and friends in Toronto, Canada got together to quaff and talk at a local pub on January 15th. The informal group has been dormant for the past year or so, but there are rumblings of activity. Those who attended this little gathering discussed plans for a local panel on sprawl in late March and ways to contribute to the annual convention of the Canadian Association of Journalists in Toronto this May. Congratulations to Brian McAndrew, environmental reporter at the Toronto Star, who has been named assignment editor on the city desk.

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Boston-To-Baltimore Regional Briefing: Uncovering and Covering the Region's Unexplored Environmental Stories
January 2002

The Sept. 11 terrorism attacks caused news editors across the country to reassign many environmental reporters to coverage of terrorism or military events. But environmental journalism will not go away, according to a plenary panel that spoke Jan. 18 at SEJ's 2002 Boston-to-Baltimore Regional Briefing.

Paul Brodeur, a New Yorker writer who pioneered stories on asbestos, depletion of the ozone layer and shipyard health issues, said environmental reporting has always been a casualty to some other, larger issue.

But he said the need for good environmental reporting never goes away. Be skeptical, he told an audience of more than 100. Follow the money. And never accept at face value environmental assessments by governmental officials.

Ground Zero photo courtesy of Dale Willman

He said one issue that needs more examination right now is asbestos in the World Trade Center. He held up stories quoting a government official saying there were no asbestos problems. Brodeur said that's just wrong. Forty floors of steel in one tower were treated with asbestos, he said, and that was blown all over southern Manhattan when the building came down.

Tim Wheeler, assistant state editor at the Baltimore Sun, said changes in government disclosure policies have made it more difficult to get information. And concerns about terrorism have made everyone rethink what information is safe to publish and what might help the enemy.

"Things are starting to creep back to normal," Wheeler said. "But it's a changed normal. We're all on pins and needles. Will there be another attack?"

On a positive note, Mark Dowie, a veteran writer, editor and author, said terrorism has caused the suspension of frivolous journalism and left the environment beat as important as ever.

"Environment stories may seem irrelevant to your editors. But they will not go away," Dowie said. "And we must keep doing them, even if they run inside and are short."

Important stories are still to be done on arsenic, energy, nonpoint pollution, endangered species and water, Dowie said.

"Don't give in to leaders who say questioning our consumption values is unpatriotic," Dowie added. "This consumption train needs to slow down."

"I really, truly believe we will be back on the front page again," Dowie said. "But not until we convince our producers and editors that post-9/11 environmentalism is more important than ever."

A total of 207 journalists, scientists and public officials attended the two-day conference at Rutgers University that was organized by SEJ member Michael Rivlin. It was one of the largest regional conferences ever sponsored by SEJ.

The Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute at Rutgers was host and co-sponsor.

In opening remarks, Rivlin noted that he canceled a planned visit to a National Marine Fisheries Laboratory because the government would only admit American citizens.

"I don't think the danger we need to be concerned about is imminent terrorist attack," Rivlin said. "It's from creeping super-Patriotism. As journalists, this is not the time to put down our pens and pads, to succumb to political correctness and to pick up the flag. We need to continue to insist on having access to places and people of importance. These are dangerous times. Let's hope they pass quickly."

Stephen R. Kellert, a Yale ecologist, opened the conference Friday morning by discussing "the big disconnect in our society — the presumption that while the environment may have an amenity value, there's little recognition of its importance to our health and well-being."

During the next two days, panels discussed Lyme Disease and West Nile virus, the looming garbage crisis and our troubled commercial fisheries. Regional Environmental Protection Agency officials appeared before one group. Other panels looked at disease clusters, global warming, new trends in environmental law and new chemical contaminants that are causing concerns.

In a lunchtime talk, Robert H. Boyle, a Sports Illustrated columnist and founder of the national riverkeeper movement who broke the story on PCB contamination of the Hudson River, lamented the fact that SI has become "pretty much a jock magazine" and doesn't cover outdoors issues anymore.

He complained of a general dumbing down of a great many news organizations. It comes from editors and bean counters, he said, who are trying to appeal to "people 28 to 36 with big incomes who basically want to see nude people on TV. There is very little serious journalism anymore."

Late Saturday morning, conference goers boarded buses for trips to Ground Zero, a tour of fishing issues on the Jersey shore or visits to new "green" buildings in Manhattan.

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Note: This event contributed to the following stories:
Superfund falls short; PCBs impact unclear by Dan Shapley, Poughkeepsie Journal
The Air Down There by Todd Bates, Special to Poynter.org

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Cape Cod Conference on Environmental Reporting
September 2001

A dozen journalists bravely traveled to Cape Cod for SEJ's regional conference at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., Sept. 20-22. The refreshing combination of first-rate speakers, mostly good weather and intriguing field trips took the writers' minds off the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Participants said they left with story ideas, a source list and new colleagues.

The conference, co-sponsored by SEJ and the Marine Biological Laboratory, also drew support from the Knight Fellowship program at MIT. SEJ board member Perry Beeman organized the sessions with help from Pamela Clapp Hinkle of the MBL staff and Heather Dewar of the Baltimore Sun.

Speakers described evidence of warming in the Arctic, the loss of eelgrass beds off Cape Cod and the proliferation of toxic algae and other problems related to fertilizer runoff worldwide. Field trips examined pollution problems at Cape Cod National Seashore and Waquiot Bay.

Lasting images include the sight of SEJ board member Peter Thomson and freelancer Sara Pratt of Nashua, N.H., donning chest waders to net fish from a stream for MBL scientist Linda Deegan's lesson on marine life at the national seashore.

Kudos to the long list of personable and helpful scientists from MBL (including last-minute sub Bruce Peterson), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the University of Rhode Island who took time to make presentations.

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Ohio Regional Conference on Forestry
April 2001

USDA's Dan Yaussy welcomes SEJ to Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest

SEJ's April 27-28 regional conference began Friday night with a slideshow that offered a birds-eye view tour of the forests of the Appalachian mountain range from Vermont to Alabama narrated by a photojournalist and a day in the woods few could forget.

Jenny Hager, photo journalist, co-editor of 'An Appalachian Tragedy'

Saturday, most of the day was spent in a hay wagon in sunny, 70 degree, and perfect springtime weather going through the Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest with numerous speakers. The Vinton land is owned by the Mead Corp. and co-managed by Mead and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service.

By the close of the conference, attendees had heard varying views on best management options for forests and varying views about whether air pollution is linked to forest health.

The reporters — about equal number of SEJ members and non-members — said they planned to use what they learned to help in future stories, mainly special projects.

Pete Woyar, forestry professor at Hocking College, explaining Best Management Practices

Andie Hannon, Marietta Times' education reporter, and Joe Barrett, Chillcothe Gazette's special projects reporter, cover environment in addition to other assignments

**All Ohio photos courtesy of Sara Thurin Rollin

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