Four years ago, with Al Gore running for president and smart growth initiatives on ballots in a number of locations, it may have seemed to environmental reporters at some newspapers that coverage of sprawl and land-use issues might overtake, even supplant, their beats.

While that hasn't happened to any noticeable extent, at least by some measures journalistic attention to growth-related subjects has continued to, well, grow.

As that happens, environmental reporters in many places are facing new challenges as well as enjoying new opportunities. Growth, after all, is not so much a single issue as it is a shifting intersection point for various issues – land use, traffic, pollution and green-space preservation, to name a few. These are subjects that may fall into several formal beats, or no beat at all, depending on the newspaper.

One example of strong journalistic interest in growth issues – and the wide variety of newspaper approaches to these subjects - was the decision by the University of Maryland's Knight Center for Specialized Journalism to offer a seminar on "Cities, Suburbs & Beyond" two times during the past year.

The first time was in October 2003, and the second was April 2004. Normally, the same seminar topic wouldn't be repeated so soon, "but we received so many applications last year we decided to re-run it," said Peggy DeBona, the center's assistant director.

Of the 65 journalists from around the country who signed up, 51 identified themselves as reporters. Only two of them mentioned the environment, per se, as part of their duties – one who combined environmental with city hall and social services coverage, and another who listed "environment, transportation, land use and other growth issues" as his beat.

Many participants identified themselves as local government or regional bureau reporters. A number of others described hybrid beats, with a diverse range of ingredients.

Some examples included "Growth, water use, open land preservation, mass transit, housing, immigration and demographic shifts." "Growth and planning." "Transportation and land use." "Growth, commuting and related issues." "Economic development, real estate, architecture, construction and land use issues." "Planning and development including urban redevelopment, planning, transit, historic preservation, impact on agricultural lands and related issues." "Housing, demographics, growth, land use and urban affairs."

The wide assortment of combinations shows that such reporters are "geared to the hottest and most creative issues where they are," said David Goldberg, who pioneered growth and sprawl reporting at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the 1990s and is now communications director for the advocacy group Smart Growth America.

A number of newspapers are adopting hybrid-beat approaches, with growth identified as one of the issues in the mix, Goldberg said. Tracking newspaper coverage using Nexus and other news search engines, he said he has found that references to "sprawl" and smart growth have increased each year for the past few years.

Michigan is one state where newspaper coverage of growth issues has been increasing, said Dave Poulson, assistant director of Michigan State University's Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.

The reason, he said, "is because it has become such a hot local story. It is a rare Michigan township or city without a significant conflict over land use. And of course conflict breeds news."

Just as important, he added, is the fact that "these stories are getting covered by reporters with diverse beats. There may be a dearth of full-time environmental reporters, but I'll argue that the land-use debate has every reporter covering the environment directly or indirectly. And of course it is a hot business-economics story."

MSU's Knight Center has identified growth as one of the issues its undergraduate journalism majors should learn to cover, Poulson said. Toward that end, the center recently secured a grant to include lessons using Geographic Information Systems software in its computer-assisted reporting class.

"The decision," he said, "was driven by the perception that journalists need to be equipped to manipulate data and 'see' land-use stories without waiting for a township planner to hand them to them."

Growth may be a big deal in states such as Michigan, but it hasn't taken off everywhere. At the Houston Chronicle, for instance, urban affairs reporter Mike Snyder said he produced most of the stories he has written on the topic several years ago, when a new local group emerged as a vocal advocate of smart growth principles.

"That hasn't all gone away," Snyder said, but the smart growth concept has not assumed greater prominence "In the last (city) election, I didn't hear anyone talking about sprawl and smart growth," he said.

Another factor, he said, is that Houston, the only major city in the country without a comprehensive zoning ordinance, has no governmental infrastructure to carry forward the regulatory proposals urged by smart growth proponents.

Growth has become a distinct beat at other newspapers. At the Baltimore Sun, for example, the former environment reporter, Tim Wheeler, returned this year as the newspaper's first growth-beat reporter following a leave of absence.

Although Maryland was a center of smart growth discussion and action – particularly during the administration of former Gov. Parris Glendening from 1995-2003 – the Sun had not previously designated a beat for growth-related issues, per se.

Reporting to the suburban editor in his new job, Wheeler quickly was confronted this past summer with the ways that the growth beat can overlap with environmental issues – he found himself covering a situation in a suburban area in which the gasoline additive MTBE was contaminating groundwater.

Environmental reporters, meanwhile, are teaming up with growth reporters at other newspapers, producing one-time special projects in some cases, and working together on permanent coverage teams in others.

At the Tampa Tribune, for instance, a reporting team includes this novel combination of beats – environment, growth, transportation, water/weather, history and heritage, and Old Florida. (See Florida: Rx for Thriving E-beat from June 2003 issue.)

At the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., environmental reporter Wade Rawlins, who works on a team with health, religion, science and immigration reporters said there is some overlap between his beat and the newspaper's separate growth team. In 2003, Rawlins teamed with a growth-team reporter, Richard Stradling, for a series titled "Sand Dollars," which examined the impacts of the state's coastal building boom.

The growth team at the News & Observer is one of the oldest among U.S. newspapers. Begun in 1997 with an editor-reporter and a second reporter, the team has evolved into a five-reporter desk today, including a lead growth reporter, a transportation writer, and three reporters assigned to a high-growth suburban county.

A small organizational change this year saw the immigration reporter shift from the growth team to the team with the environment and other specialty beats. At the same time, another reporter was added to the growth team to join the two on it who were already covering the suburban county.

"At the News & Observer, the growth issue, if anything, has just become bigger," said Jane Ruffin, editor of the growth team. "It affects every beat pretty much. Every reporter at one time or another has done a growth story."

Although the environmental reporter is assigned to another team, the growth team finds itself attending to numerous environmental angles in the stories it covers, Ruffin said. One such story involved plans by a developer to re-use waste water in lieu of traditional treatment technologies.

John Frece, a former state capitol bureau chief for the Baltimore Sun and former UPI reporter, observes trends in reporting on growth issues as associate director of the University of Maryland's National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education. He advocates reporting teams and in-depth coverage to address these issues adequately.

"The simplest way I think about this is that smart growth and land use is an issue that can be construed so broadly that it touches on issues that, from a newspaper's standpoint, are traditionally broken down by beats," he said. "It's not that different from the way government is structured."

Too often, Frece believes, reporters write about one subject, such as traffic congestion, with no reference to related issues such as land use, the geographic division between people's homes and workplaces, and planning considerations in general.

"I don't think this job can be done by a single reporter," he said. "I think you need a team approach, with a land-use or sprawl beat reporter as a lead, but working with local government, transportation and other reporters."

Stuart Leavenworth founded the growth team at the News & Observer, moved to the Sacramento Bee as a growth reporter, and now covers water issues there. He still writes about land-use topics on the water beat sometimes. He said the Bee is committed to covering growth issues with one full-time reporter on that beat joined by others on occasion.

Still, he believes certain institutional constraints can hamper newspapers' coverage of growth issues.

"A lot of nonprofits are pushing the principle of smart growth, but it's troublesome for newspapers," he said. "They don't see an immediate response. It's hard to see the impact that newspapers like. In most areas, there's no regulatory government or body that can do anything."

Beyond that, he said, newspapers in general seem to find it hard to "challenge people on the way they lead their lives. It's easier, or less risky, to go after a big industry."