Cover the Planet

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

In my early reporting days Ralph - a good friend and photographer with whom I often worked - often hassled me whenever I made out a photo assignment for him.

“How would you like it if I took a picture and assigned you to write a story to go with it,” he’d sneer. It irked me mostly because I knew he was right. Ralph had tons more journalism experience - heck he had at least 30 years on me at the time - and certainly knew news. What was I doing telling him what to shoot?

As a consequence I quickly learned to use the wisdom of photographers who possess it. Not only could they tip me to great stories I was otherwise oblivious to, their art often launched even my most pedestrian prose onto the front page.

That’s no great insight. Savvy reporters quickly learn this.

But how do you apply this lesson in the digital age? A good example is this story written by Jeff Gillies for GreatLakesEcho.org. It’s about the annual spring runoff that shifts tons of soil into the Great Lakes, an event exacerbated by intensive farming and loss of vegetative cover.

It happens every year. What makes it news now?

In this case, it’s the accompanying satellite images Jeff used to illustrate the story. The image of muddied water visible from space had been posted on an environmental listserv. Its existence is precisely what triggered the story.

What’s more, Jeff used another satellite image to drive the story home. It shows the algae blooms triggered later in the summer by the presence of the excessive nutrient load delivered in the spring.

I’ve written before about using satellite images to enhance stories.

This is an example of how they can produce story ideas.

By David Poulson

I confess to a particularly strong fascination with satellite imagery. I think it stems from that most forgotten of journalism Ws - the where that I wrote about earlier.

There’s nothing like getting up high to get a sense of a story. A photographer I once worked with insisted on renting an airplane to cover just about any assignment we teamed up on. But nowadays you can get much higher and without ever leaving the office.

One of my favorite sources of satellite images is NASA’s Earth Observatory. You can spend a lot of time looking in there. Heck, I subscribe to their e-mail digests just to get surprised with whatever pictures they select as the week’s highlights. They even put them together in some interesting features. One called Cities at Night: The View from Space contains images that almost demand to have a story written about them.

So when Matt Cimitile said he wanted to write a story about the health effects of light pollution and efforts to preserve the night sky, I knew exactly where to find the images to illustrate it. Matt is a graduate assistant at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism who is producing copy for our just-launched Great Lakes Echo news service.

And talk about serendipity.  The upcoming Earth Hour where people are encouraged to turn off lights for an hour gave us a great news peg. Take a look at Matt’s effort.

And hey, that peg’s still out there. Earth Hour is on Saturday.

And if you’re lucky, NASA may even have a night time satellite image of your city somewhere in its archives.

Meanwhile, check out this astronaut-guided tour of cities at night from around the world.