Cover the Planet

By David Poulson

National Geographic recently asked all 100 U.S. senators to sketch their states from memory and identify at least three important places on their maps.

Some of the pols produced impressive work. Sen. Al Franken has a nicely drawn map of Minnesota with detailed annotations. In fact, Franken is a bit of a cartographic showoff. Check out this video of Franken drawing an entire map of the United States at the Minnesota State Fair.

Of course, if this was a contest it would be unfair. Some senators had much easier assignments. It doesn’t seem like Sen. Michael Enzi would have much trouble drawing the boxlike outline of Wyoming.

And I don’t mean to come across as the mapping police, but some senators not blessed with a state with regular borders appeared to have a little help. I’m suspicious that Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins may have a carefully traced submission.  But perhaps I’m overly cynical. You be the judge: Go to the National Geographic site and click on the states of the senators who participated.

And perhaps that’s the map that is the most interesting aspect of this story. It appears that senators representing only 11 states contributed. I suppose that might be chalked up to busy schedules rather than geographic ignorance.

Still, if I was an environmental reporter, I’d give a quick call to my own senators and ask why they couldn’t have sketched Michigan’s mitten and its Upper Peninsula. Connect the two with the world famous Mackinac Bridge and identify any two of the four lakes - they’re all among the world’s largest - that border it and you’ve completed an assignment that I would hope that most of the state’s schoolchildren could do.

Geography is critical to the environmental reporter. You need to know what makes your region special. You need at least a baseline of understanding of what goes where so that you can write about what’s at stake when the environment changes, if not degrades.

The National Geographic story would be a fun one to do locally. Ask officials to sketch the outlines of their domains – say a county or a city. Have them locate important geographic features and natural resources. Publish the result. Regardless of what they produce, you should be able to write about it. It’s a talker, and you may even challenge your readers to do likewise.

But before you do, maybe you should try it yourself. If you’re covering the environment, you need to know your region’s geography. The “where” of a story is an important yet often neglected part of environmental reporting.

You need to know what’s special about the region you cover. Do you?