In keeping with tradition, the Society of Environmental Journalists' 15th annual conference will have a strong local and regional flavor.

Scheduled to take place Sept. 28 to Oct. 2 in Austin, the meeting will largely focus on issues important in Texas and its environs, with numerous tours and sessions dealing with subjects such as the energy industry, the U.S.-Mexico border and Latin America, and the Gulf of Mexico.

The agenda is online at http://www.sej.org/confer/index1.htm.

At the same time, this Texas-centric conference will also recall prominent aspects of SEJ's last two conferences -- 2003's meeting in New Orleans and 2004's in Pittsburgh.

With Hurricane Katrina's recent devastation of New Orleans and other coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, central elements of the New Orleans meeting seem sadly prescient in retrospect.

The 2003 conference dealt prominently and memorably with topics that have dominated public attention since the Category 4 hurricane roared ashore on Aug. 29. Panels and tours addressed issues including losses of hurricane-damping wetlands, media coverage of natural disasters, development around Lake Pontchartrain, historical perspectives on floods and flood-control efforts along the Mississippi River, and hurricane impacts on areas like barrier islands.

Taking place in a neighboring state with its own long and hurricane-vulnerable shoreline, the Austin meeting had already been planned to address related issues yet again. One Friday panel, for instance, is titled "Sprawl: Tsunamis, Hurricanes and Coastal Development," with this agenda elaboration:

"As the nation's coastal population continues to grow almost exponentially, the potential effects of natural disasters also increase. We look at how coastal communities are struggling to deal with growth, and the threats posed by more frequent hurricanes and an occasional tsunami or two."

In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, however, organizers of the Austin conference began discussing ways to make last-minute adjustments and changes in the schedule to reflect the significance hurricane's staggering impact.

Last year's Pittsburgh conference may also be in some SEJ members' minds as the Austin meeting unfolds -- particularly Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s stemwinder speech in which he denounced both mainstream media managers' journalistic policies and the Bush administration's environmental policies.

Earning standing ovations from many of the journalists and other conference participants, Kennedy's address set off a round of self- examination and debate within SEJ and beyond about the propriety of journalists displaying such public favor for partisan speakers. (See Just Thinking, October 2004.)

The Austin conference may provide an opportunity to see whether the discussion over the response to Kennedy's speech had an effect on how SEJ members applaud. Two key speakers scheduled for this year's meeting are former CBS and PBS journalist Bill Moyers and author and syndicated columnist Molly Ivins.

The two are identified as "Texas journalistic giants" on SEJ's homepage. That's certainly true, but they are also both strongly identified with liberal viewpoints and incisive criticism of the Bush administration, including its environmental policies.

To check out a few examples, see a couple of Ivins' columns, The Reality-Based Environment and Under Clear Skies, and read Moyers' remarks in this interview in Grist and this speech, delivered when he received the Global Environmental Citizen Award last year from Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment.

Will Ivins' folksy denunciations of President Bush ring forth at the opening reception of the SEJ conference on Sept. 28, where Texas' Republican Gov. Rick Perry has also been invited to speak?

If she gets a standing ovation, will it be "balanced" by a standing ovation for Perry, a staunch supporter of Bush?

Will Moyers get a standing ovation at his keynote address on Oct. 1 if he criticizes Bush's environmental policies?

Or if he lambastes the secret "bias" study of PBS' "NOW With Bill Moyers" that Kenneth Tomlinson, Bush's chairman of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, spent $14,000 for?

Another question -- undoubtedly laden with more lasting significance, but perhaps related to the standing ovation issue -- is posed in the title to the Austin conference's opening plenary session on Sept. 30:

"Is Journalism -- Environmental or Otherwise -- a Dying Idea?"

The conference agenda's explanatory blurb sets the stage for what promises to be a provocative discussion:

"Commentators take secret payments to plug administration programs. Government agencies produce fake news reports. Basic information gets labeled "secret" and much of the public applauds. At the same time, readers flee newspapers and viewers shun network news, prompting newsrooms to slash budgets and staffs as well as space and time for news. Meanwhile, as momentous environmental decisions seem to hardly make a ripple in the public consciousness, bloggers are able to bring down the mightiest media icons for sins real or imagined. How can journalism, especially environmental journalism, survive in such toxic times?"

During the conference, SEJ will also pay tribute to one of its founders, the late Kevin Carmody. At the time of his death earlier this year, Carmody was the environmental reporter for the Austin American-Statesman and a chair of this year's conference.