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New EW Series to Explore Web Environmental Journalism
Three years after the lavishly-funded Verde.com abruptly died at the tender age of just two months, what are the prospects for web-based journalistic ventures devoted to the environment? What forms are they taking? How do they fit into the broader journalistic picture?
In coming months, Environment Writer will be examining these and related questions with profiles of several website publications that are pursuing online environmental journalism in the aftermath of Verde Media's flame-out.
The judges in the Society of Environmental Journalists' first environmental reporting competition found much to praise last fall in the winning entry and the two finalist entries that were honored in the Outstanding Online Coverage category.
The winner, Francesca Lyman, was cited for the "well-written, thorough reporting" of her columns for MSNBC's website on the World Trade Center attacks, dental fillings, dairy products and gardens. The judges said Lyman had helped make environmental issues "accessible and compelling for readers."
One finalist entry -- Grist Magazine's collection of essays by scholars and policy experts casting a skeptical eye on the book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" -- was called "an engaging read."
And the other finalist, OneWorldJourneys.com's look at a tropical cloud forest in Costa Rica, was praised for its "good use of web features" to augment writer Bill Dietrich's reporting.
Of course, MSNBC-website and cable channel, is the joint venture of two giant corporations, General Electric and Microsoft, not best known for any association with environmental causes.
But the web sites that published the two finalist entries, Grist and OneWorldJourneys, illustrate the environmentalist leanings and affiliations of many of the ventures offering online environmental journalism in the post-Verde era. (Before laying off its reportedly 50-person staff in June 2000, Verde itself had formed what Wired News called "partnerships" with several major environmental advocacy groups.)
Grist (see accompanying article) started as part of the Earth Day Network and recently became an independent organization. Its founder, Chip Giller, told Environment Writer that while the magazine's editorial philosophy eschews taking stands on particular issues, it is generally on the side of environmental improvement.
OneWorldJourneys' web site, meanwhile, promises to "introduce you to non-profit groups in need of attention, and eager for help." It expresses the hope that by presenting stories and photographs by both journalists and readers, "we can foster within a new generation changes in behavior that impact the health of the world around us."
Even web sites that present articles generated by news services that operate within journalistic traditions like "fairness" and "balance," often do so within an advocacy-tinged framework.
PlanetSave.com, for instance, presents news from the Associated Press. But beyond its very name, PlanetSave describes itself as "a green living portal helping to save the environment."
Care2.com, which presents environmental articles from the Environmental News Service and other news from United Press International, calls itself "the #1 environmental network for healthy living and a healthy planet."
None of this is any surprise to Amy Gahran, a content consultant for, and close observer of, online media who has served on SEJ's board.
"Most of the independently published environmental news that's not coming from corporate- or industry-funded interests is advocacy," Gahran said.
"There's a bigger picture that most journalists miss," she said. "When it comes to getting news online, journalists are sometimes the last to know. Journalists, understandably, pretty much have tunnel vision, saying the official way we learned in journalism school is the only acceptable way to do news."
The "online audience," Gahran said, no longer subscribes to the idea that traditional news organizations have "a monopoly on news" and that "nothing else is real news."
She cites formats such as weblogs and news aggregators, which collect content from many other places, as examples of new approaches that appeal to many people who look for news online, in part because they want "a diversity of sources" they don't find with more traditional news organizaations.
"The media landscape is richer" because of these innovations, Gahran said. "There are more human perspectives and first-person points of view."
A decidedly less positive appraisal was expressed in February by Antonia Zerbisias, media columnist for The Toronto Star, who wrote:
"For all the blather and blah-blah about how the Internet was the last great frontier of alternative, original journalism, it's now merely a distant outpost, inhabited by the hardy and the hell-bent on maxing out their plastic."
Zerbisias acknowledged the proliferation of bloggers sounding off on weblogs spanning the political spectrum, but added, "They link to other sites, refer to other media, even attack the mainstream press but they rarely, if ever, set out to do an investigative report, an original interview or actually step out into the daylight to cover an event."
The headline on Zerbisias' piece put the matter bluntly: "Original Journalism Lacking on the Internet."
That judgment may apply more to online environmental journalism than it does to web sites devoted to other specialized or niche-audience subjects. Gahran, for instance, said she sees a potential online niche for effective environmental journalism on local issues.
Over the next few issues, Environment Writer will report on some of the online environmental journalism already going on -- whether it's with journalism that's resolutely local or with a much wider focus.
April 2, 2004
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