Cover the Planet

By David Poulson

It seems to me that two contrary attitudes sabotage the use of video on the web.

One comes from print reporters reluctant to stretch themselves. They may be spooked by the technology or baffled by a foreign story-telling technique. Either way they’re paralyzed. They don’t try, or they don’t try very hard.

Their opposites are the documentary filmmaker wannabees. Video is a tremendously complicated endeavor for them.  Breaking news? Forget it. These folks need days to edit something that meets high expectations.

It may look nice. But the effort often fails to justify the benefit.

There is a happy medium that cures paralysis while putting this storytelling tool to work fast. Check out the video toward the end of this story.

It’s a scant 26-seconds long. There’s no sound. It was taken with a point and shoot camera. A few sentences in text provide context. It doesn’t divert the reader - it augments the story.

This is a good cure for video paralysis. And while hardly a documentary, the effort to benefit ratio is extremely favorable.

It’s effective. You know how I know?

I itch every time I watch it.

By David Poulson

Last week at Great Lakes Echo we launched a minor experiment.

The Echo Chamber is a standard Q & A interview you might see in a print publication, but with the answers given as short video clips. It gives us a chance to venture more into video while imposing some length limits that I hope overcome the long-windedness that’s a drawback of a lot of the journalism videos.

The idea is to pose no more than five questions and to severely limit the time of response.

The first effort went fine, but limits are tough. We couldn’t resist throwing in a bonus feature of invasive species expert Jeff Alexander reading an excerpt from his book. My reasoning was that readers could always choose to ignore it. But  I think some of the answers went a bit longer than needed.

We’ll see how things shake out. This is hardly a new advance in journalism. But my colleague at Michigan State University, Eric Freedman who runs the Capital News Service, had an interesting thought of how such a feature could be a 24/7 source of quotes for other journalists. I hadn’t thought of it in that way. My hope is to build a “library” of such features that our readers and writers could tap. But there’s no reason that other writers could not use it in the same manner.

This experiment also prompted a balance of aesthetics and function. Our initial interest was to adopt a “frame” for the video that we use in some Knight Center online education modules. It looks like this. The advantage is that it creates a compact and neat package. But as Echo reporter Jeff Gillies noted, this feature seemed like something “out on an island” and not integrated into the look and feel of our site.

What’s more, integrating the video into the flash components and posting it into WordPress was a hassle. We opted instead to stack embedded YouTube videos into a typical Echo post. It looks like this.

It’s nowhere as neat or as elegant as the other option. But you know what? Neither is Echo. The feel of this feature is more consistent with our site. And the trade off in functionality - being able to post quickly - over aesthetics is one I think is worth making. Others may disagree.

There may be some middle ground here. MSU graduate assistant Mike Reed found a nifty WordPress plug-in that may be the best solution. It’s called Apture and it’s used for embedding multimedia into posts in a way that keeps readers on your site. Here is an example of how New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin uses it on his Dot Earth blog.

By David Poulson

NASA has a nice piece here on communicating climate change.

It embodies the principals of KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. That’s a nice acronym as a reminder of the need for clean writing that communicates clearly.

But it has always troubled me as some writers seem to think the need for simplicity implies that readers are, well, stupid.

Understanding an issue is not necessarily a measure of intelligence. It may be a measure of background, experience, time. Readers may be incredibly smart - they just haven’t had the opportunity, time or interest that you and your sources have had to dig into the issue you’re writing about.

It’s unfair to call them - well, most of them - stupid. If they don’t understand, perhaps it is the writer that is, er, less than intelligent. Or at least less than skilled. Or patient.

I do like the call for a 30-second elevator speech for communicating climate change. The advice in the NASA piece is to be concise, clear, jargon-free. Include a scientific point or two, perhaps all wrapped up in a metaphor.

That’s pretty good advice for a nut graph. It could be the kind of graph you keep in the “word depot” ready to get you out of a tight explanatory corner. If you find one that works for you, there’s no reason you can’t trot it out for more than one story. Some tools improve with use.

Bear in mind that this NASA piece cites a study indicating that only 7 percent of the population is completely dismissive of global warming. You’ll have a tough time reaching them regardless of rhetorical device.

That still leaves a healthy chunk of readers for you to serve.

By Dave Poulson

Six years ago the Society of Environmental Journalists gave the Washington Post an investigative reporting award for examining how public funds were spent on restoring the Everglades.

The Swamp showed how millions of tax dollars backed by good environmental intentions could be hijacked by special interests in ways harmful to the environment.

It’s a great story.

Yet I always wondered if that story would have been written if journalists dogged it earlier as it unfolded.

A nice plaque for unearthing a fiasco may be a sign of quality journalism. But where’s the plaque for doing the reporting that kept a disaster from happening? Is that not also watchdog journalism in the public interest?

SEJ held its 19th annual conference in Madison, Wisc., this past week. And because of the conference location, a federal initiative to restore the Great Lakes received some attention.

The Obama Administration has proposed nearly a half billion dollars this year as a downpayment on what could be a multi-year, multi-billion dollar restoration effort.

This bonanza has cash-starved agencies and interest groups scrambling with a new problem: How do you responsibly spend such a huge environmental investment?

It should also have Great Lakes journalists scrambling with a big question: How do you responsibly report the spending of such an investment as it unfolds?

It’s a question that I asked a panel which examined the new effort at the SEJ conference. Here’s what they said:

• Jeff Alexander, a longtime Great Lakes newspaper reporter and author, gave the answer you might expect from a journalist: “Follow the money.”  If a disproportionate amount is going for one purpose or to one recipient, find out why, he said. Where did it go? Did political pressure divert it?  If a cleanup in a reporter’s backyard is supposed to cost $10 million but ends up costing $15 million then ask, how come?
• Jane Elder, a longtime Great Lakes policy and communications expert and activist, said to “follow the benchmarks.”  When the plan defines environmental restoration, hold officials accountable for that definition, she said. And when it doesn’t, press officials hard to set the benchmarks that define success.
• Cam Davis, the Environmental Protection Agency’s point person on this effort, said federal officials understood the need for accountability.  As much as 14 percent of the funding is earmarked for monitoring progress, he said.  But he also said that this multi-prong, ecosystem-wide effort is unprecedented. While federal officials can monitor the progress of individual projects, there is no way to know how quickly the ecosystem will react, Davis warned.  “We’re going to have to have patience with the patient.”

That may make it tough to know when to declare success or failure.

Regardless, it’s clear that this kind of public works investment in the environment is more than a challenge to government officials, private contractors, scientists, environmental groups and politicians.

It is also a challenge to journalists.

And perhaps their success is not best measured by the satisfying presence of a plaque on the wall.

Sometimes a journalist’s success might be measured by early and aggressive reporting that prevents the need for the kind of stories that win those plaques

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.