Cover the Planet

By David Poulson

Even if you’re suffering Michael Jackson overload, you’ve just got to love this tribute to the pop star that was recently performed at Toolik Lake, Alaska.

It features scientists at an arctic research station dancing in what some claim to be the northernmost production of Thriller. I’m not sure who would contest such a claim. But make sure to check out the costumes topped with netted headgear. They’re well-suited to tundra research on the north slope of the Brooks Range.

And if you doubt the need for the nets, watch for the mosquitoes flicking by the camera lens.

I spent two weeks at Toolik eight or nine years ago on a science writing fellowship. I can easily believe that these researchers welcomed the chance to get down. Miles and months from civilization along with 24 hours of sunlight make for a recipe for spontaneous zaniness.

The year I visited, the crew staged a Fourth of July parade featuring some floats that could be described as R-rated. (Sorry. What happens in Toolik does not necessarily stay in Toolik.)

This year’s production was no hastily put together event.

George Kling, a University of Michigan scientist and longtime Toolik researcher, reports by e-mail: “They practiced for several nights, all together, small groups in the lab (but not while they were filtering, I saw to that…), and it was good fun for them all.”

Journalists in camp this year shot the video and reported the event.

What’s this got to do with the environment? I’ll argue that this is a significant environmental story. But the angle isn’t the science. It’s the fact that scientists, just like the rest of us, like to have fun.

A story about scientists going a little nuts in the midst of an intense research effort can go a long way toward making them more accessible to the public. There is nothing in the journalism rule book requiring that they be portrayed as uptight, white-coated eggheads devoid of humor - unless they are.

A good example is this story about a scientist who was the first to discover a harmful fish invading the Great Lakes. I remember it not because of the discovery, but because the discoverer is also a blues guitarist.

In honor of his discovery, he composed - and often performed - a piece called The Galloping Goby Blues.

My advice: You catch a scientist busting a move, you’ve got a prime hook for capturing attention for a story that might otherwise go unread.

By David Poulson

You’ve got to love a Web site that advances journalism not so much with dazzling technology but by emphasizing basic journalistic values.

That’s pretty much what they do over at Politifact.com. Journalists there truth-test political statements. And in a nod toward the shades of gray that make such a pursuit so challenging, they use a truth-o-meter with a bottom setting wonderfully titled “pants on fire.”

I’m hardly the only fan of this St. Petersburg Times site. It won the 2009 Pulitzer for national reporting for coverage of the 2008 election.

That’s nice. But checking veracity hardly need be limited to national election coverage. That’s a good function for a journalist covering anything, especially the environment. There are certainly enough extreme claims by a variety of people on a raft of environmental issues.

Maybe too often we get caught up in stitching together complex stories. Perhaps we should focus more on parsing issues for the truth, even dribbling bits of it out over time as we learn more.

Reporting what people say about the environment is easy. Checking out what they say requires time. But it certainly isn’t brain surgery. And it’s the kind of thing sure to drive readership, and emphasize the value that professional reporters bring to information-gathering’s wild west.

Now the folks at Politifact give you a headstart. Check out this YouTube primer on how they do it:

By David Poulson

That whole writer/reader/source interaction thing in Internet journalism gets a lot of hype. Some of it’s overblown.

But a writer who can orchestrate that kind of relationship on a complex beat like the environment clearly has a leg up on the competition.

Bay City (Mich.) Times environment reporter Jeff Kart looks like he’s got it figured out. Check out his recently launched Mudpuppy blog. In particular, check out how he has set the tone early with a post about reporting on Combined Sewer Overflows.

Like most environment journalists, Jeff’s written a lot about CSOs in terms of the bacterial load they bring to surface water. In this post, he notes how a state environmental official criticizes his reporting, saying that there is no bacteria in CSOs.

That’s a startling statement. And Jeff invites his readers to accompany him as he investigates the claim. He explains the official’s reasoning and even posts the power point presentation he was shown to explain the point.

The gist is that a local sewage treatment plant had less than one CSO a month over three years. And few of those reached the level of bacterial load that prompts beach closings or contamination advisories.

The official, according to Jeff, amended his assertion to indicate that while these CSOs do contain bacteria, the vast majority don’t contain high levels.

Rather than dismissing the criticism, Jeff investigates it publicly in a way that provides additional context - even prompting the official to amend his assertion for accuracy.

Jeff not only publicizes criticism of his own writing, he researches it and analyzes it in a way that’s transparent to his readers. Then he does a very cool thing. He asks for their input:

What do you think? Are CSOs something to worry about?

Or, based on this new analysis, should we be focusing our attention on other sources of contamination to the river, which don’t get reported when they occur, like illegal connections to drains and storm sewers, failed septic systems, agriculture and wildlife?

This is an excellent exercise in transparency. Readers can see how journalistic decisions are made. They see a journalist who is truly interested in getting the story right. And they are invited to participate in figuring out the best way of providing context and reporting pollution.

Regardless of how you feel about how CSOs are described and reported, the effort here has to build credibility. That’s true even if no one takes Jeff up on his invitation.

It’s a great demonstration of opening the reporting process up for inspection, and inviting a true wisdom of the crowds to participate in journalism.

And for a complex and controversial beat like the environment, that’s a pretty cool thing.

By David Poulson

I still haven’t seen the full Earth 2100 that ABC News broadcast this week. That’s the global climate change story told in the year 2100 through the eyes of a fictional woman born in 2009.

But I did view the online clips. What’s more I brought it up in my journalism ethics class. I asked two questions: Is it journalism when you quote a fictional source? And if it is, is it responsible journalism?

Students struggled with this. Some wondered if this was a creative way to push people to think of future consequences of present actions. Journalists are pretty good at covering disasters after they happen. Is this a way to cover them before they happen? Is that a good role for a journalist? Or is it mere informed speculation?

There was concern for whether this technique was pioneering an exciting new field of journalism or if it is a disastrous turn down the wrong path.

“Do you want to save journalism by completely blurring the line between what is real and what is entertainment?” asked one student.

Another thought the feature was creative, informative and worthwhile: “I just don’t think it’s journalism,” she said. “It reminds me of the Magic School Bus.”

Yet another said that the creative approach undermined credibility. This student thought charts and graphs like in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth represented a more effective journalism. Countered another: The use of the comic book character is “an awesome tool to reach an audience that has not grasped it yet.”

Some were uncomfortable with straying so far from the traditional technique of using sources to move the story. In traditional journalism, “you don’t say anything yourself. It’s always from the source. This story is about a girl who is a source, but she’s not real.”

Getting at greater truths has always been a hallmark of fine fiction. But is it journalism?

And should that matter?

By David Poulson

So I missed ABC’s “Good Morning America” feature on global climate change last night. But after reading a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on the reporting technique, I’ll make sure to check it out.

It appears to pioneer a journalism technique by telling a story through the eyes of a fictional character living in a world that does not yet exist. I’m not qualified to comment on this until I watch it. It’s online.

But I am interested in this comment in the WSJ piece:

Bob Woodruff, host of the special, called making up what will happen in the future “a different kind of journalism.” The segment quoted him saying, “not a prediction of what will happen, but what might happen.”

That certainly is “a different kind of journalism.”  If anyone has seen it, please weigh in with a comment.

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

Today on the GreatLakesEcho.org we posted a link to a story about a new test to determine if water is safe for swimming.

This story noted that traditional E. coli tests are a crude instrument that sometimes cause beaches to be needlessly closed. The new test, and others that may yet to be developed, gives a more precise indicator of a particular problem, according to the story.

The story prompted some pointed criticism from a faculty member someone who works in the faculty of forestry at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. You can read it at the bottom of the page.

That’s a great thing about social media. Readers with varied expertise can vet a story quickly. I would argue that this criticism added significant context, information, correction to this story.

But I’m wondering what our proper response should be. You could say that we are better informing the public. We’re furthering the distribution - remember, we didn’t write this, we’re just pointing to it - of a story while adding valuable reader-provided expert context.

You could also argue that we’re furthering the distribution of a story that - if this criticism is accurate - fails to measure up to our own standards of accuracy. Perhaps it is impinging on our own credibility - particularly among readers who fail to understand that we both write stories and point to the stories of others.

Perhaps the best response is to pull the story.

Our response is further complicated by scant resources. We can hardly vet every comment or story.

Is it enough to leave that to the readers?

By David Poulson

Perhaps in my quest for reader eyeballs and Web clicks I went a little overboard today.

As I mentioned, we’ve launched an experimental environmental news service. The Great Lakes Echo aggregates environmental news stories from our region and supplements them with original stories.

That content is provided largely by Knight Center students and another journalism project at MSU called Capital News Service. CNS covers the news coming out of Michigan’s state capital.

Perhaps someday we’ll raise enough money or partner with enough other journalism schools that we can feed the beast daily with quality original copy. Meanwhile, to extend our offerings we’re also souping up some glorified links to stories produced elsewhere.

Today we did that with a story that ran first in The Windsor (Ontario) Star. The story was about the growth of invasive species in the Great Lakes. It mentioned that the bloody red shrimp is the latest of these critters that cause all kinds of ecological havoc. The story has a nice image and a villain with a colorful name. Maybe our treatment drove some traffic toward the Windsor Star, giving that reporter greater justification for environmental stories.

I do a bit of social media marketing in hopes of driving some traffic our way. Today, my Facebook status read: Bloody Red Shrimp attack the Great Lakes. See Great Lakes Echo: http://tr.im/i2G

Carol Swinehart, who works at Michigan Sea Grant and does a lot of communication work regarding invasives, noted on my post: “You do know that we’ve been dealing with them for three years, right?”

I did. But making the attack sound imminent certainly sold the story better. And technically, it’s true. They attacked the Great Lakes three years ago and they still do. And how can you resist hyping something called the bloody red shrimp?

So I had my salesman’s hat on in this case. But was I misleading? Did I sow distrust of the media? Was I ethical?

What do you think?

Carol didn’t seem to mind. To my suggestion that Attack of the GIANT Bloody Red Shrimp would make a great movie title, she responded with “Co-starring Helga the Hydrilla, of course!”

Hydrilla is another Great Lakes invasive. Helga is a character Carol sometimes plays - in costume - as a creative way of communicating their threat.

I suggested that we had the beginnings of a great new monster partnership like Godzilla and Rodan and with a cliched tagline: They came from the deep!!!

Carol put a wet blanket on that one. “Well, hydrilla doesn’t go super deep…so far,” she said.

I hate it when the facts get in the way of a good headline.

By David Poulson

Dan Egan at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel just won a National Headliner Award with his series Great Lakes, Great Peril.

That’s just the latest national accolade in a career that has produced some remarkable environmental reporting from a guy who modestly characterizes himself as a feature writer with curiosity.

Not that we’re claiming there is a direct correlation, but I will note that Dan is a graduate of the Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute. You might want to check out how to apply for this year’s upcoming institute which is taught by the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.

Again, we don’t promise that attending the institute will result in receiving national recognition for environmental reporting. But maybe we can push you in the right direction.

Perhaps most impressive is that Dan isn’t the only one churning out environmental stories with impact over at the Sentinel. Reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissenger have received a boatload of national recognition this year - Meeman, Oakes, Polk - for their aggressive reporting on the health effects and poor regulation of a plastic additive.

This list is not inclusive of all the recognition these fine journalists have received. But wow. There must be more than invasive species and Bisphenol A in the water over in Milwaukee. Whatever it is we need to bottle it and distribute it to news organizations nationwide.

Alas, you cannot bottle institutional commitment. Here’s to the Journal Sentinel for recognizing the importance of environmental issues.

By David Poulson

If you missed the Writing Green Environmental Journalism Conference in Knoxville Friday you still have plenty of opportunity to participate.

The conference sponsored by the East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists is blanketed by social media. University of Tennessee students are all over a Ning site with conference-related forums, blogs and photos.

Ning not your thing? Then mosey on over to Facebook where the students will give you even more of the same. In both venues you can continue to bat around environmental issues and how to cover them.

And to coordinate all that coverage check out the conference Twitter hashtag of #WritingGreen.

And contribute to all three. You don’t have to be there to play. And your participation will extend the value of a worthy endeavor.