Cover the Planet

By David Poulson

You’ve got to get customers through the door before you can sell them any merchandise.

That’s even true with online sales - it’s just that the door is virtual rather than real. That’s why I hit on ledes in the previous post and likely will return to them. You want me to read one of those messy complicated environmental stories? You better be a good salesperson right off the bat.

But let’s take a look at the other end of the story. Too often we let our stories simply peter out. That’s a consequence of inverted pyramid writing - a style with which I have no particular quarrel. It’s a style that often serves the fast reads required in the Web world.

And yet, what a great place to reward the reader who has stuck with you. A stinger of an ending reverberates backwards through the story, driving home key points. It is a significant place for emphasis.

Check this ending out: “The plural of anecdote is not data.”

It’s on the end of a story appearing Wednesday in Slate that picks apart a Washington Post story on ecomigration. It’s a great piece of environmental journalism criticism. I recommend it both for the content and for the story structure.

Once you get the context for that ending, you can appreciate how sweet it is.

If the lede is where you get the customers in the door, the end is where you close the deal. The transaction has been successful because they’ve stuck with you.

But when you strive for this effect, don’t forget that part about getting them into the front door.

By the way, Jack Shafer, who wrote this piece, did a nice job on that end of things as well: “When hunting bogus trend stories, the experienced tracker rarely needs to look beyond Page One to bag his prey.”

By David Poulson

What has six legs and can hold up thousands of tons of concrete?

That’s what I wrote to a colleague this week. She was seeking examples of good ledes used in day-to-day beat reporting. And even though I wrote that one maybe 15 years ago, it still sort of makes me chuckle because of the sentence that followed. It went roughly like this:

It’s the Mitchell’s Satyr Butterfly, an endangered insect that’s delaying construction of a freeway motorists had hoped would ease their daily commute.

I like this lede because it breaks all of my rules. Normally I hate question ledes. They usually just sort of flop there in an irritatingly chatty kind of way:

Have you had your flu shot yet? No? Well, then trot down to the county clinic Tuesday where you can get one for free.

Yeccchh.

I also hate bad jokes. Well, actually I like bad jokes. I just hate them in news stories - especially the lede.

And yet, this one somehow works. How do I know? To start, I still remember it. Also, at the time I worked for a news service. A bunch of papers far from this entomological confrontation played the story big on their front pages. I’m pretty sure their readers could care less about the insect or about faraway commuters.

It was the lede that got me onto that prime real estate.

Journalism = Content + Engagement. Too often we give scant attention to the engagement part of that equation. But if you’ve created content that no one consumes, you haven’t committed journalism. With a messy beat like the environment, you’ve got to strive to engage readers.

And you have to carefully craft the attempt. An early version of that lede: What has six legs, can fly and can hold up thousands of tons of concrete? Read it aloud. The rhythm is all wrong. “Can fly” just throws it off.

But don’t let the crafting let you forget the content side of things. Britney Spears coverage aside, you really have to have something worth reporting to commit good journalism.

In fact, I also recall thinking that after the lede, I sort of blew the butterfly story. I set it up as a classic bug vs bulldozer piece. It could have been better framed as a broader issue of how habitat preservation policies could help avoid such spotted-owl type showdowns. Focusing on the destruction of a single species trivializes larger issues.

But even if I did successfully tackle the big picture, I still would have used that lede. In fact, I like it so much that I used it again in hopes of luring you to the end of this post.

By David Poulson

Two students here at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism got a resume-builder of sorts this week when their work appeared in Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth blog.

Revkin, a reporter for the New York Times, reported that former Vice President Al Gore removed a misleading slide from his climate change road show. He linked his post to a video of Gore’s presentation – complete with the offending slide.

That video was taken by MSU EJ students Andy Balaskovitz and Andy McGlashen last week at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. They posted it, helpfully divided into several small clips, to YouTube in preparation for publication in an MSU blog they created to cover the conference.
So how did Revkin end up with it?
“I went to YouTube because I couldn’t get my Macbook to play the video files at the aaas.org site,” Revkin wrote in an e-mail. “And, better yet, the short clip made it easier for viewers to home in on the suspect comment!”
For driving traffic, you can’t beat the New York Times. Revkin’s mention boosted the circulation of the students’ efforts significantly. Within 24 hours the video received more than 2,200 views.
The take-home message here isn’t that journalists should post to YouTube on the off-chance they’ll show up in a New York Times blog.  Instead, think of all that stuff on YouTube that might help illustrate your own story.
Do a quick search of the site before you hit the send button.  Or check it out before you start writing – what you find may just prompt a great story angle.

By David Poulson

You’ve got to hand it to the University of Montana’s schools of journalism and of law. They’ve joined in a project that pushes the bounds of traditional courtroom coverage and of new media.

The subject is the hottest environmental trial going. Five W.R. Grace officials face charges that they hid studies indicating the hazards faced by workers mining vermiculite in Libby, Mont. The company denies any wrongdoing.

It’s a typical messy environmental court action. After four years of legal maneuvering the case has finally come to trial. It will be interesting to see how the law students and the journalism students explain the legal issues to the public. Is it a clash of cultures or a collaboration from which we’ll all benefit?

But frankly, I’m much more interested in the new media elements they’re bringing to the coverage, particularly the use of Twitter as a means to cover courtroom action in real time. I’ll write more about that later; I want to see how that coverage progresses. But already they’ve helped set the #GraceCase Twtter hash tag, a role that I’ve argued is something where news organizations can take the lead.

And of course the students aren’t alone.

The Missoulian has a tremendous trove of backgrounders, links to news stories, videos, timelines and other elements. If you’re a nut for environmental litigation, here’s a place for not only ongoing coverage but instant background. It’s almost as if they’ve created the resources from which some novelist will someday write a bestseller.

And the journalists are not alone.

Grace itself has built an online presence to state its case. It even has its own timeline. For all I know, the plaintiffs have something similar. If you’re aware of it, send me a link. And if they don’t, they should.

But that is precisely why journalists need to so aggressively insert themselves into stories like these. There’s a lot of value in that “wisdom of the crowd” thing. But a blog battle here won’t serve the community.

A thorough, engaging and journalistically valid report will. Let’s hope we see one.

By David Poulson

Did your favorite movie get snubbed by Oscar on Sunday? Cheer up, at least it didn’t win a Crappie.

A few months ago Jeff Alexander at the Muskegon (Mich.) Chronicle wrote this story about his state’s combined sewer overflows. It’s a pretty straight up traditional news piece.

But the neat thing about it is that Alexander loosened up a bit with a version of the story on his EcoLogic blog. With tongue firmly in cheek, he suggested a new award called the Crappies be given to cities in his state with the most overflows.

The item has a bit of an attitude, one that may attract a different kind of reader.

Is it stretching the limits for a print reporter to go in this direction? How can you argue against directing more attention to environmental issues?
State regulators might well claim that this information is online and available to the public. And yet…it’s hard to find and few readers regularly (if ever) read a state agency Web page.

Put Crappie in a headline and chances are you’ll grab some eyeballs.

Alexander took publicly available state data and repackaged it in two dramatically different ways to reach two different publics. A reporter would never propose the Crappies in a traditional newspaper. But it’s the kind of thing that you can get away with on a blog.

That’s exactly the kind of experimentation we need to be doing to keep environmental reporting relevant.

By David Poulson

Jeff Kart has this nice piece in the Bay City (Mich.) Times today on the future of a proposed coal-fired power plant in the heart of his readership.

Consumers Power Co. makes the case that this plant is unusually well-suited for carbon capture and sequestration technology. The region already has underground cavities that might be used to store captured carbon.

Kart does a good job of explaining the issue. But he helps the reader by embedding into the online version of the story this U.S. Department of Energy YouTube video that describes the technology and the challenges:

Should you rely on government video to help you explain your story?

Of course. You wouldn’t hesitate to interview a government official for a similar explanation. Take advantage of all the resources you can - and as efficiently as you can.

A commitment to multi-media reporting doesn’t mean you have to do it all yourself. Government, non-profit agencies and other organizations have resources that can engage readers. They may not be perfect - in this case I’d argue the carbon video is much too long.

But seek out those sources. Nowadays that really is part of your job as a journalist. Besides, you save yourself a pile of production work if you can find something to illustrate your story that someone else has done.

Just be transparent about where you got the video - like you’d do with any information. And if the presentation is biased, point that out. Or at least report alternative valid viewpoints. It’s still journalism.