Cover the Planet

By David Poulson

About a half-dozen years ago I attended a conference on science journalism in Hanover. A foundation had assembled a bunch of university types and magazine editors to discuss a new curriculum for teaching science journalism at German universities.

Among the presenters was a German professor who laid out the case for establishing quote banks and description depots.  The idea was to warehouse thoroughly vetted quotes, descriptions and other elements of science journalism. Then journalists could select from these stockpiles the prefab parts needed to assemble entire news stories.

These parts could be reused in different configurations and to varying degrees, helping journalists create different stories from the same stockpile. The proponent argued that this was good for credibility. All of the material would be pre-approved for accuracy.

Many of us - well, at least many of the Americans - looked at each other in horror. I distinctly recall one of them leaning over and whispering, “That’s exactly how I teach my students not to write.”

I believed then, or at least chose to believe then, that this could never come to pass. But check out this story in the New York Times regarding the rise and fall of the media. It refers to the development of algorithms that assemble facts into narratives without the benefit of writers. Not only are the parts prefab, in this scenario robots replace workers on the assembly line.

Fine journalism crafted by real writers may not go away. But I am troubled by this sentence in the Times story: “The results would not be mistaken for literary journalism, but on the Web, pretty good — or even not terrible — is often good enough.”

Where does that leave journalists? Well, I guess we’ll always need parts manufacturers. But I sure hate to think that fine journalism ends up with the same fate as handcrafted automobiles - rare and expensive to produce.

I find hope at the end of the very same news story. It is here where reporter David Carr makes the case that young writers come to New York armed with ideas, energy and technology, and to bust down doors to a new brand of journalism.  That’s exciting.

But perhaps the true hope lies in Carr’s final sentence:

For them, New York is not an island sinking, but one that is rising on a fresh, ferocious wave.

I’d like to see the robot that can craft an ending like that.

Errr…actually not.

By David Poulson

I’m a strong advocate of visual storytelling. Giving readers an understanding of the “where” of a story is an underappreciated but especially critical component of environmental writing. How are people supposed to know what’s at stake unless you paint them a picture?

I tried to hit that lesson in class last week by using for an example Jef Mallett. He once was a graphics artist at a news service where I covered the environment. Nowadays Jef draws the nationally syndicated Frazz comic. Perhaps no one understands visual storytelling better than cartoonists who cram a story into three- or four-panel strips. Jef clearly gets this. His characters address complex issues briefly but with a great mix of humor and insight. It’s one of those rare strips that often teach me something.

Jef also writes, bringing his visual talent into that venue as well.  He’s just written a new book called Trizophrenia. I look forward to its release later this week.

But with this post I want to address a short piece Jef wrote that came out of a tour of military hospitals by cartoonists seeking to cheer up the troops last April. It’s not an environmental story.  But it is a masterful example of establishing place with strong, descriptive writing. Jef reports how one of the patients described how he was wounded. I’ve reprinted it below so that you can appreciate it without interruption. What follows is the same piece with my comments.

Here’s the same piece with my comments in bold:

This Navy Corpsman was third man in, with two Marines clearing an abandoned house when a booby-trapped refrigerator blew up and cut them down. He couldn’t get to his feet, didn’t even have both of them anymore. So he dragged himself to the squad leader and applied a tourniquet to what was left of the sergeant’s leg, then gave him orders: I’m going to save the other guy; I need you to keep yelling “I will not die” at the top of your lungs.

As long as he could hear his leader screaming, he knew he was clear to attend to his other squad member. Same touniquet application, same orders to scream. Ah, here’s the answer. Our curiosity is immediately rewarded. How cool is that? He dragged himself back and forth between the two men several times before he took the time to put a tourniquet on his own leg. He remembers cutting open his squad leader’s pant leg and watching a shin roll away like a fireplace log, neatly sheared off at the knee and ankle. Wow! Nothing like a strong simile to put you there. That’s an approach that can backfire. Writers often overreach with similes. The only way I keep from doing so is to test them aloud on someone else.  I think Jef hit just the right note here. So how did he pull it off?

The corpsman did not use that simile, Jef said. He described the injury with a lot more words and hand gestures. But the image of the rolling shin came to mind immediately. It remained just an image until it came to writing it without the luxury of the corpsman’s time and hand gestures. “I guess I had subconciously already done the refining and editing and I just wrote it down,” he said. “It’s pretty gross, isn’t it?”

He remembers being a little surprised at the trail of blood-mud that described his path between the two men. He remembers, just before passing out as he was being hoisted onto the medevac, being able to see the sun shine clearly between two perfectly cauterized holes through his foot. Had he had a better angle, he could have seen the sun shining through most of his lower leg that way.

Another nice set of descriptions with the wonderfully alliterative “blood-mud” which is something quite different than writing that it was a trail of blood and mud. And Jef effectively uses the corpsman’s recollection of the sun shining through his wounds - something he even extends to describe another wound that the guy couldn’t see himself.

A year later, just about all of it spent in the same room on the same floor at Walter Reed, he was showing a bunch of slackjawed cartoonists the scars on that leg. The other leg was gone, and this one was still touch and go. Somebody called him a hero, but he snorted. He just did his job, that’s all. Give the Navy credit for training him so well, he said. But he did allow that he was up for a Silver Star for valor. Someone else snorted. What does it take to get a gold one, for crying out loud?

Stay dead, he said. He had died, for two minutes, but his timing was good. His heart stopped while surgeons were already inside his torso clearing out shrapnel, so it was an easy reach to massage the heart back to silver-star status.

The previous passages are a nice flash forward. We don’t continue the chronology but hint to the reader of a long recovery that occurred during the period we’ve jumped. I particularly enjoy the answer to the question about what you need to do to get a gold star: “Stay dead, he said.” It is short, powerful and alliterative. The only way I would improve it is to set those four words into their own paragraph to give them even more emphasis.

So what was next? This guy seemed capable of anything except what he wanted, which was to return to the fighting and save more Marines. But he would get his nursing degree and return to that same floor at Walter Reed. Nobody knew the floor better than him. Nobody knew what the patients had been through better than he did. Nobody, but nobody, was going to tell him no.

Putting on my subjective news editor hat, I’d probably edit this last paragraph. It’s got a bit too much of the writer in it for my taste. Others are certain to disagree with me.  And it probably works in the context it was intended, which is more of a column than a news report.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

My point is that description done right is a powerful tool. It is jettisoned too often in the pursuit of brevity. And you certainly can go overboard. The trick is to make the best of what you’ve got without going over the top.

And if you want to enjoy some fine writing from Jef in a lighter vein, buy Trizophrenia.

By David Poulson

I like to preach that journalism equals content plus engagement. I tell students that they can write an incredibly important story, but it isn’t journalism unless people - hopefully lots of people - consume it.

Important but boring is not journalism. Something no one reads but the writer is not journalism. That’s more like a diary entry - perhaps helpful to the writer but certainly not journalism.

Social media and other digital tools have given reporters new ways to escape that fate. Over at Great Lakes Echo we’re experimenting with Facebook quizzes. Recently we launched one that assesses which lake best suits your personality. The concept initially appealed to me as the engagement piece of the equation. My hope was that it would drive interest in and traffic to the site where readers could consume the other more serious content that’s already there.

But can a Facebook quiz be a self-contained unit of journalism - one with engagement and content? I asked a class that question recently. The reply: “Can reading the back of a cereal box be considered journalism?”

Maybe.

We just asked readers to help us create a new quiz: Which Great Lakes invasive species is your former significant other? Judging by private e-mails and the comments on the site we’re succeeding with the engagement piece. But just maybe we’re delivering content as well. Check out this comment on that post:

Spotted knapweed – a loner with a toxic personality – sucks the fun and energy out of life (poor palatability for herbivores and takes up all the water in the area, possibly releases a toxin that kills other plants), likes chaos and disorder (colonizes disturbed locations)

We’ll have fun with that and the other suggestions - there is a great one comparing an ex to the Asian carp poised to invade Lake Michigan:

He’s huge, gross-looking, and he frequently pops up when I least expect him too. I wish there was an electric fence to keep him away…

And we will research more ourselves, perhaps serving as a front door to more information that we link to.

It strikes me that at the same time we will be delivering serious content, perhaps raising just a bit the level of awareness readers have about important environmental issues.

I’m not exactly ready to petition the Pulitzer Committee to expand its categories to include Facebook quizzes. But it strikes me that there is something going on here that journalists should be exploring.

By David Poulson

The scarlet dye trailed across the ice like blood on a bedsheet.

Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceangraphic Institution had lugged nine pounds of the concentrated pigment to a fissure in the Greenland ice sheet. The plan was to use the dye to trace the water melting from the ice as it disappeared to the land a half-mile below, lubricating the bedrock and speeding the ice’s march to the ocean. It’s an important mechanism to understand as scientists look at how the melting of the ice pack accelerates with global warming even faster than once predicted.

Students at Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism got an up close look at the research last week from Woods Hole science writer Amy Nevala.

Amy, a Knight Center graduate, accompanied the researchers in 2008 to tell their story with regular reports from the field and articles in the institution’s Oceanus magazine. Later she edited a multimedia account of the trip, including the dye experiment. It’s a pretty good taste of some fascinating research, except…

Well, the scientists never did find where that dye came out.

A researcher 25 miles away each day for a week tested the water where satellite imagery seemed to indicate the dye should appear. No luck.

I have to admit that my initial reaction to this part of the piece was disappointment. I wanted to see that dye come out from beneath the ice sheet. But then I began to wonder: Where did it go? Did it get hung up in some vast lake suspended in mid-ice? Was the volume of water large enough to dilute any trace of the dye? Did the dye follow an entirely unanticipated route? Was it just slower than expected and later emerged after the researchers left?

My reaction perhaps was not unlike the researchers themselves. After all, just because an experiment does not work as expected doesn’t mean it is a failure. As my frustration turned to wonder, I felt a compulsion to turn the page, to read the next chapter of this story.

It is the kind of impulse that environmental journalists can use to their advantage. Unlike other journalists, our stories rarely conclude. Crooks get arrested, streets get paved, elections produce winners, city councils approve budgets, lawmakers pass laws. But the environmental story often is open-ended, leading to yet more speculation and uncertainty.

So use it.

Think of the environmental story as one of the world’s great mysteries. Tell it like the mystery story that it is. Put in the false starts, add the suspense, milk the frustration and dazzle with wonder. Unravel it as far as the facts allow. Take your reader to the brink of understanding. Then leave them with a cliffhanger.

If nothing else, you’re creating an audience for those hungering for the next installment.

The Woods Hole researchers planned to take what they learned and redesign their experiment. I sure hope Amy lets us know what happens next.

By David Poulson

Even if you’re suffering Michael Jackson overload, you’ve just got to love this tribute to the pop star that was recently performed at Toolik Lake, Alaska.

It features scientists at an arctic research station dancing in what some claim to be the northernmost production of Thriller. I’m not sure who would contest such a claim. But make sure to check out the costumes topped with netted headgear. They’re well-suited to tundra research on the north slope of the Brooks Range.

And if you doubt the need for the nets, watch for the mosquitoes flicking by the camera lens.

I spent two weeks at Toolik eight or nine years ago on a science writing fellowship. I can easily believe that these researchers welcomed the chance to get down. Miles and months from civilization along with 24 hours of sunlight make for a recipe for spontaneous zaniness.

The year I visited, the crew staged a Fourth of July parade featuring some floats that could be described as R-rated. (Sorry. What happens in Toolik does not necessarily stay in Toolik.)

This year’s production was no hastily put together event.

George Kling, a University of Michigan scientist and longtime Toolik researcher, reports by e-mail: “They practiced for several nights, all together, small groups in the lab (but not while they were filtering, I saw to that…), and it was good fun for them all.”

Journalists in camp this year shot the video and reported the event.

What’s this got to do with the environment? I’ll argue that this is a significant environmental story. But the angle isn’t the science. It’s the fact that scientists, just like the rest of us, like to have fun.

A story about scientists going a little nuts in the midst of an intense research effort can go a long way toward making them more accessible to the public. There is nothing in the journalism rule book requiring that they be portrayed as uptight, white-coated eggheads devoid of humor - unless they are.

A good example is this story about a scientist who was the first to discover a harmful fish invading the Great Lakes. I remember it not because of the discovery, but because the discoverer is also a blues guitarist.

In honor of his discovery, he composed - and often performed - a piece called The Galloping Goby Blues.

My advice: You catch a scientist busting a move, you’ve got a prime hook for capturing attention for a story that might otherwise go unread.

By David Poulson

Perhaps in my quest for reader eyeballs and Web clicks I went a little overboard today.

As I mentioned, we’ve launched an experimental environmental news service. The Great Lakes Echo aggregates environmental news stories from our region and supplements them with original stories.

That content is provided largely by Knight Center students and another journalism project at MSU called Capital News Service. CNS covers the news coming out of Michigan’s state capital.

Perhaps someday we’ll raise enough money or partner with enough other journalism schools that we can feed the beast daily with quality original copy. Meanwhile, to extend our offerings we’re also souping up some glorified links to stories produced elsewhere.

Today we did that with a story that ran first in The Windsor (Ontario) Star. The story was about the growth of invasive species in the Great Lakes. It mentioned that the bloody red shrimp is the latest of these critters that cause all kinds of ecological havoc. The story has a nice image and a villain with a colorful name. Maybe our treatment drove some traffic toward the Windsor Star, giving that reporter greater justification for environmental stories.

I do a bit of social media marketing in hopes of driving some traffic our way. Today, my Facebook status read: Bloody Red Shrimp attack the Great Lakes. See Great Lakes Echo: http://tr.im/i2G

Carol Swinehart, who works at Michigan Sea Grant and does a lot of communication work regarding invasives, noted on my post: “You do know that we’ve been dealing with them for three years, right?”

I did. But making the attack sound imminent certainly sold the story better. And technically, it’s true. They attacked the Great Lakes three years ago and they still do. And how can you resist hyping something called the bloody red shrimp?

So I had my salesman’s hat on in this case. But was I misleading? Did I sow distrust of the media? Was I ethical?

What do you think?

Carol didn’t seem to mind. To my suggestion that Attack of the GIANT Bloody Red Shrimp would make a great movie title, she responded with “Co-starring Helga the Hydrilla, of course!”

Hydrilla is another Great Lakes invasive. Helga is a character Carol sometimes plays - in costume - as a creative way of communicating their threat.

I suggested that we had the beginnings of a great new monster partnership like Godzilla and Rodan and with a cliched tagline: They came from the deep!!!

Carol put a wet blanket on that one. “Well, hydrilla doesn’t go super deep…so far,” she said.

I hate it when the facts get in the way of a good headline.

By David Poulson

Dan Egan at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel just won a National Headliner Award with his series Great Lakes, Great Peril.

That’s just the latest national accolade in a career that has produced some remarkable environmental reporting from a guy who modestly characterizes himself as a feature writer with curiosity.

Not that we’re claiming there is a direct correlation, but I will note that Dan is a graduate of the Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute. You might want to check out how to apply for this year’s upcoming institute which is taught by the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.

Again, we don’t promise that attending the institute will result in receiving national recognition for environmental reporting. But maybe we can push you in the right direction.

Perhaps most impressive is that Dan isn’t the only one churning out environmental stories with impact over at the Sentinel. Reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissenger have received a boatload of national recognition this year - Meeman, Oakes, Polk - for their aggressive reporting on the health effects and poor regulation of a plastic additive.

This list is not inclusive of all the recognition these fine journalists have received. But wow. There must be more than invasive species and Bisphenol A in the water over in Milwaukee. Whatever it is we need to bottle it and distribute it to news organizations nationwide.

Alas, you cannot bottle institutional commitment. Here’s to the Journal Sentinel for recognizing the importance of environmental issues.

By David Poulson

Mark Neuzil has a nifty story on MinnPost.com about the challenges of raising sustainable beef.

I like his writing technique here for a number of reasons. Check out this description:

The temperature is in the low single digits, but these cows are not, nor have ever been, inside a barn. They have never had a shot of antibiotics, growth hormones, steroids or eaten a bushel of corn. Their coats are so long and thick that by mid-March on the prairie a person’s hand can disappear into them and not touch hide.

You know what lets you write like that? You have to be there. The forgotten “W” of journalism’s who, what, where, when, why is always the where. It is the casualty of thinly stretched journalists forced to do too much reporting by phone or e-mail. Yet to a writer scrambling for tools to tell a story, this “W” is critical, particularly with environmental stories.

You have to stick your hand into that thick coat in the middle of March if you want to describe it the way Mark does here.

The quotes are sweet, too. Check this one out:

“They called us tree-huggers,” Mary Jo said. “And then we started cutting down almost all the trees.”

You’ll need to read the story to get all the nuance wrapped up there.

But perhaps what I like most about this story also makes me the most uncomfortable. Mark has very deliberately inserted himself:

I am a customer. A fellow from the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia has sent me to the Forbords’ organic farm with his highest recommendation for its all-grass-fed, all-natural beef. I have nicknamed my steer “Larry,” although my wife and children prefer the number 713, which was on the tags Luverne attached to his ears. I am attempting to follow Larry/713 from Starbuck farm to St. Paul plate.

With rare exceptions I work hard to keep myself out of my stories. I always felt that technique best reserved for columns. But like it or not, Web writing is establishing new rules.

Mark, whose day job is as a journalism professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, also struggles with the adjustment. He writes three to four stories a month, although most are not this long.

“I gotta tell you as an old AP and newspaper guy, the hardest thing I do in these Web stories is to make them more personal,” he wrote in an e-mail. “And the editors are always asking for that… or more analysis off the news. We don’t really do breaking news per se at MinnPost.

“Funny thing about the Larry story is, I wrote it basically without looking at a single note. And I interviewed the farmer twice on the phone and then spent the better part of the day on the farm. And a zillion e-mail follow-ups. And I thought it flowed pretty well, all things considered.

“I’m learning, too. And I’m over 50.”

Me too.

By David Poulson

A highly critical analysis of climate change journalism was produced recently by a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

A crude summary of Eric Pooley’s piece might go something like this: Most journalists have finally stopped reporting climate change science as if there are two equally credible and balanced sides. It took at least 10 years to get there. But now they’re repeating the mistake by failing to challenge faulty and biased studies that inflate the costs of addressing climate change. And we don’t have 10 years to get that story right.

I don’t want to touch those fights off here. There are plenty of other places where you can try to shoot holes in the climate change science and economics with which you disagree.

What I’d like to address is Pooley’s vision of a journalist: Reporters who merely take dictation - writing he said/she said stories - shirk their responsibilities. And reporters who prefer to be judges or advocates should get a column or a blog.

But Pooley says there is another path, one where reporters act as referees “keeping score, throwing flags when a team plays fast and loose with the facts, explaining to the audience what’s happening on the field and why.”

That’s hard work. Such reporters must be transparent, Pooley says. “When they make a judgment, they must present the evidence upon which it is based.”

That can make journalists less than popular. “By stating conclusions rather than merely hinting at them, referees can make themselves targets, open to attack from aggrieved combatants,” Pooley says.

No kidding. Look what happened to New York Times reporter Andy Revkin when he recently called climate change fouls on both former Vice President Al Gore and conservative columnist George Will.

But you know what? Too bad. To tweak Pooley’s analogy in honor of March Madness, practicing journalism - good journalism - may mean taking a few elbows. And maybe you have to throw a few. The pursuit of truth is a contact sport.

There is nothing the matter with journalists taking the side of truth and accuracy. Yeah, I know - easy for me to say. That kind of journalism takes an incredible amount of work, time, knowledge, experience. Meanwhile the people and institutions that practice our profession in the traditional way dwindle. Who, how and how well they’ll be replaced is anyone’s guess.

But as we figure that out, I’d like to keep in sight that metaphor of journalist as referee, one with a loud whistle - but who can also take a few elbows in the paint.

By David Poulson

The (Indiana) Post Tribune on Wednesday reported one of those stories that reporters just hate to cover: the dreaded lengthy public hearing with angry people.

Here’s the lede on this one about a proposed utility rate increase: “GARY — Repeated requests to remain silent couldn’t quiet hundreds of outraged attendees at a more than five-hour public hearing Tuesday on NIPSCO’s proposed electric rate increase.”

So lots of people are mad about a rate increase. Is that news? And the hearing lasted a long time. Do I care?

But further into the story we find this gem of an anecdote from a woman who claims the increase will amount to about $12 a month: “You know what a person on fixed income can do with $12? They can get a loaf of bread for $1.19, a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk for $3.69 and three pounds of ground beef. That’s $11.95. Then they have 5 cents they can maybe do something with.”

Wow. There’s plenty of meat there to craft something that grabs a reader by the throat from the get-go. And there’s more from another source: “What are the options of the people, heat or eat?”

Still, I’m looking for context - the attribute that should define good journalism. When covering events, journalists - especially environmental journalists - should remember that they are free to report information gathered from outside the event.

Too often we feel chained to what’s going on in front of us. But we’re not covering a fire, we’re covering the environment - an issue that begs for repeated context.

In this story there is an attempt at balance gathered from the hearing itself.  It tells readers that some participants had good things to say about a utility’s corporate citizenship.

You know what? I don’t care. I just want to know why they want the money. Alternative energy? Clean coal? Dirty coal? Salary increases? Address climate change? Build a nuke? Winterize senior citizen housing? Keep up with spiraling costs?

Just because a lot of angry people attend a hearing doesn’t make them right. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that they should get the bulk of the story.

I don’t want to nail fixed-income senior citizens with a rate increase that will harm their food budget. But I come away from this story with two questions:

Will that really happen?

And whether it does or not, what am I getting for that rate hike?