Cover the Planet

By David Poulson

It was interesting to see that McClatchy-Tribune Information Services announced Monday a weekly package of environmental stories.

It aggregates features from E/The Environmental Magazine, the Mother Nature Network, FamilyFun, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Jose Mercury News and Chicago Tribune’s RedEye. MCT reports there will be about a dozen items a week, often with art, and available for purchase by other news organizations.

I hope they make a ton of money.

For about five years now the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism has aggregated environmental news stories generated within the Great Lakes basin.

The service initially focused on Michigan, but demand, a slight increase of financial support and some new tools prompted an expansion into the other Great Lakes states and Canadian provinces. Users can select the categories of environmental news via RSS feed, although we’ve found most people are uninterested in the selection and take it all. Many users subscribe by e-mail

At the same time we’ve run some experiments producing our own content, mostly using student-produced stories or uncompensated contributions from members of the Great Lakes community. These were run on a wiki platform - an experiment that won a national Knight-Batten award for innovations in journalism.
For some detail, below are a couple videos explaining those efforts. But jump past them to get to the point of this post.
Unleashing the Unconventional - Great Lakes Wiki Pt. 1

Part II
Unleashing the Unconventional - Greakt Lakes Wiki Pt. 2

The point: Can we make any money at this?

I’m not necessarily talking about “making money” in the traditional commercial sense, although that would be nice. Right now these efforts are supported by a pastiche of small grants from within MSU, funders such as J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism and the uncompensated efforts of people interested in furthering environmental journalism.

A key role for a land grant university is to combine research with service. While we explore new concepts of information delivery we want to provide credible, interesting, important news. Can we find the support for non-profit do-gooderism?

I hope so.

And perhaps this MCT announcement indicates that there is some green in green. But if you look closely, you’ll note that these reports will be very consumer-oriented with product reviews, shopping advice, green living tips: “ From eco-chic clothing to organic vegetables, eco-tourism to sustainability, green living is all around us and a growing part of our everyday lives.”

I have no quarrel with that. But I’m interested in the fate of environmental news that perhaps is not as commercially attractive. Can we find support for independent investigative reporting? How about those reports on ugly brownfields, tedious pollution regulations, restoration projects? Is there interest - nonprofit or otherwise - in supporting news about the invasive species wreaking havoc in the region?

Notice that I’m not talking about interest in the news itself. I’m talking about supporting such an interest.

Those are the kind of tough questions that lots of us involved in journalism are wrestling with on a variety of fronts.

Soon we’ll be announcing a new project that melds some of these ideas. Stay tuned. We need your feedback.