These are the best of times. These are the worst of times. The environmental beat has never faced so many problems and opportunities as it does today. Or so it seems.

What exactly is the environmental beat? It seems less and less clear these days, but the definition is important. How you define the environmental beat makes the difference in whether you see it as going to the dogs or taking off like a tech stock on Wall Street.

Environmental news is being committed on a daily — or even hourly — basis. Major national media organizations (notice I don’t call them news organizations) seem to be cutting back on coverage of the environmental beat — or at least on commitment to specialized reporting staff and regular programming — and then every so often will erupt in volcanoes of “special” environmental coverage often by general assignment reporters.

The idea of environmental journalism as a professional specialty is still a fairly new one from a historical perspective. The Society of Environmental Journalists was formed a scant 11 years ago. It was a good idea. We need to cultivate a group of trained or experienced environmental journalists because much of the news that happens on the environmental beat is simply too complex for a general assignment reporter to make sense of it in a few hours or a few days.

So when we see AOL-Time Warner cutting back on CNN’s environmental programming, we think surely the public is being shortchanged. But things are not always what they seem.

If anything, environmental journalism as a specialty is being killed by its own success. It has sprawled beyond the boundaries once set for it and invaded other parts of the journalistic garden like a weed.

Fact is, there is so much environmental news it won’t all fit in a single category any more. It’s such a hot commodity that all the other beats have started co-opting and pre-empting it.

You can find environmental stories in the sports section, written by members of the Outdoor Writers Association of America.

You can find environmental stories on the science page, written by members of the National Association of Science Writers.

You can find environmental stories in the health section, written by members of Association of Health Care Journalists or the American Medical Writers Association.

You can find environmental stories in The Wall Street Journal, written by reporters specializing in “money and politics.”

You can find environmental stories in the “Metro” section, written by reporters who specialize in what used to be called “zoning and planning,” but is now so much more fashionable as “sprawl and growth.”

You can find them in the “Style” or “Lifestyle” section, intimate, color-soaked profiles of movie stars raising bison, refusing to wear fur, or testifying before Congress.

You can find them in the Business section, as major companies settle asbestos suits or announce hybrid vehicles.

You can find them written by White House reporters, court reporters, foreign correspondents, and even religion writers.

You can find environmental commentary on the op-ed page — or in Doonesbury or Mark Trail in the comics section.

You will find many of the most knowledgeable and serious environmental reporters in the “trade press.” — on specialized publications covering the oil, gas, and coal industries, for example. Or the chemical industry, or electric utilities, or metalworking, fishing, homebuilding, or forestry ...

So a shortage of stories or outlets isn’t exactly the problem.

If anything, we may have evolved to a point where even newer sub-specialties need to be formed. You need to know at least 30 or 40 major federal laws to do a good job covering the environment — and those are just the basics. If you are working out West and covering a lot of public lands issues, you might need to know about dozens more laws relating to that subject. You could spend a whole career just learning to cover forestry and the wood products industry well.

One measure of the vitality of the environmental beat is the frequency with which new major story-areas pop up and become semi-permanent. Climate is an example. Fifteen years ago, climate was not a story; today it is a long-running story which has spawned new outlets devoted solely to covering it. The same could be said of biotechnology, or asthma, or endocrine disruptors, or fuel cells.

The awful things that are happening to environmental journalism are in fact happening to beats across the board. Down-sizing, concentrated ownership, less coverage of government, superficiality and sensationalism. All these things deserve to be whined about. But we needn’t take them so personally.

Joseph A. Davis

Poor Richard’s Environmental News Services

So you tried to convince your editor that he should buy you a subscription to Greenwire, Inside EPA, Congressional Green Sheets, or BNA’s Daily Environment, and all he did was laugh at you and tell you your story was due in an hour? Is that what’s troubling you, Bunky?

Well, lift your head up high! (Cue music: “Stars and Stripes Forever”) There is a cornucopia of virtually free news resources available in today’s brave new media world to help environmental reporters keep up with what’s happening. Here are some of our favorites, and the list is far from complete.

• The TipSheet (http://www.nsc.org/ehc/jrn/tipindex.htm. (OK, so it’s a total conflict of interest, since EHC co-publishes it, but it’s free, darn it!) Published weekly via e-mail and Web, this independent newsletter for journalists offers 4-5 newsy story ideas that peddle nobody’s agenda — stories that can often be localized — along with names and numbers of some of the best available sources.
• Environmental News Network (ENN) (http://www.enn.com/news/index.asp). This free, Web-based daily specializes in environmental material. It typically has 6-8 stories per day, plus another track carrying press releases. It has numerous other bells and whistles, but especially helpful is a daily e-mail notification of headlines and a searchable archive that works.
• Environment New Service (http://www.ens-news.com/). Once free-standing, this Web-based daily is now under the content-hungry wing of the Lycos Network. Tends to focus on international stories, but the “AmeriScan” department usually has 10 or so U.S. stories. Usually up-to-the-minute and sometimes contains good original reporting. Some content is reliant on press releases or heavily tinged with advocacy, but the package is informative overall. E-mail headline notification.
• AScribe (http://AScribe-News.com/index.html), “The Public Interest Newswire.” An e-mail and Web-based daily service that conveys news that is mostly generated by universities, research centers, foundations, public-policy groups, and other nonprofit organizations. Useful because you can choose to see only news in certain categories — including environment, health, medicine, and science.
• Newswise (SciNews and MedNews) (http://www.newswise.com/). A fine specialty-subject news service whose science and medicine categories often have hot stories of environmental relevance. Carries releases from universities, research institutions, professional associations, and major science mags and journals, some of them embargoed. Hardly a week goes by without a Newswise story showing up the next day on page one of a national daily. Web and e-mail versions, with hot links to original sources. Searchable database. Directory of human sources. List of journalism awards and grants.
• EurekaAlert (http://www.eurekalert.org/). Web-based. Science, medicine, and technology news from universities, journals, research institutions. Well digested with hotlinks, human contacts, and research funders prominent. Posts about 22 high-value releases per day. Published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Advisory committee includes journalists. Calendar of meetings. Nice sets of links to science media, references, resources.
• Editors Web (http://www.editorsweb.org/index.htm). A daily Web-based service that does a specific job: it compiles major press releases from federal agencies and members of Congress. It definitely saves you clicks and time spent cruising agency press-release pages. Organized by agency, so you only read what you need (EPA, DOE, Interior, FDA, etc.). E-mail notification.
• Grist (http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/). Really a webzine, not a news service, but fresh daily and fun to read, with news others often miss. Has an environmentalist edge (sponsored by Earth Day Network). E-mail edition also.
• Greenlines (http://www.defenders.org/gntoday.html). Endangered species news published daily by Defenders of Wildlife via Web and e-mail. Conservationist bias. Good source of critter stories, though — about five of them five days a week.
• Planet Ark (Reuters) (http://www.planetark.org/dailynewshome.cfm). Reuters-written stories on environmental matters, updated daily. Focus is on international stories, although it carries some U.S. stories also. Site is run by an Australian environmental group, with Reuters content and sponsorship. A bit leafier than you would expect of a hard-boiled wire service like Reuters. E-mail headline version and searchable database.
• Environmental Media Services (http://www.ems.org/news.html). EMS is essentially a PR agency whose clients are environmental groups. Attractive bait indeed is their Web-based “News Center,” which posts a dozen fresh stories a day, mostly from credible media — along with links to many news sources and services. Also available by e-mail.

Yes, we know that’s not all of them. Some more good ones are listed at http://www.cnie.org/news/. Send your favorites to the editor at davisja@nsc.org and we may run another batch soon.

PETA Writes McVeigh, Wins Ink

N.Y. Times Stuffs Advertorial Supplement on Energy

Is “Bashed” the Opposite of “Unabashed?”

FAIR Rips Coverage of “Fake Energy Crisis”

Anyone interested in environmental right-to-know issues may want to read “A Citizen’s Platform for Our Environmental Right-To-Know.” It was published by OMB Watch, a liberal watchdog group, with input from a wide range of groups supporting more public access to environmental information. It is online at http://www.ombwatch.org/rtk/platform/. While much of the report outlines general principals, several recommendations are especially interesting. One is that EPA should establish a “Public Access Advisory Council.” Another is that EPA should construct an “Information Access Plan.” The group also urges EPA to publish online a list of the agency’s “information holdings,” including those not now available to the public and the reasons for withholding the information. The group also wants a “key identifiers” system that will allow consistent identification of industrial facilities and their corporate ownership structures across all databases. Another is to “require, not simply allow, industry to submit information to EPA in electronic formats.” Industry has often fought such requirements, because the Freedom of Information Act strongly pushes agencies to make widely available online any information they have in electronic format. Perhaps the most radical suggestion is auditing and penalties for errors in the information industry submits to EPA. Industry has argued that the poor quality of industry-submitted EPA information is a reason for not making it public.

A recent survey of its members paid for by the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) points to a high level of general satisfaction with the organization and its programs.

The February-March 2001 mail survey shows the organization having 651 active members, 204 associate members, and 177 academic members, and response rates among those membership categories were 26, 24, and 19 percent respectively. Nearly three-fourths of SEJ members primarily represent print media, with 17 percent primarily representing radio and television, and 6 percent representing Internet media.

Among SEJ programs and services, active members considered the organization’s annual national conference its single most important and most effective activity. They considered the weekly TipSheet, published jointly with the National Safety Council’s Environmental Health Center, publisher of Environment Writer, and with the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation (RTNDF), the second most important and effective SEJ service.* SEJ’s quarterly SEJournal, its listserves, and its Web activities also garnered support for their importance and effectiveness, and active members’ opinions to some extent were echoed throughout the other two membership categories.

Among “emerging issues” identified by members as most likely to command column inches and air time in the next three years: sprawl/population control; climate change and global warming; policies of the Bush Administration; biotechnology and genetic engineering; water pollution; alternative fuels; and sustainable development.

SEJ members pointed to professional development, camaraderie and a “sense of community,” networking, the national conference, shared goals, and “the uniqueness of the organization” as primary factors attracting them to SEJ. Limited time and resources, traveling distance, and changes in job demands were the reasons most often cited as barriers to their being more involved with SEJ activities.

Only 16 percent of active SEJ members reported having considered canceling their memberships. For associate and academic members, 18 and 27 percent of respondents said they have considered bowing-out. Nearly 90 percent of all respondents said they are satisfied or highly satisfied with SEJ membership eligibility criteria. Not surprisingly, active members reported being most satisfied with the group’s generally rigid “press only” criteria for active membership; but even associate and academic members by and large appear content with the requirements.

SEJ Board members come across as being far more supportive than active members generally on accepting individual gifts for a proposed endowment. More than three-quarters of the Board members responding to the survey support accepting such gifts, compared with just 41 percent of active members responding.

“I’m not sure you could convince the public that there are no strings,” one respondent replied. “Impression is as powerful as reality,” replied another arguing against acceptance of individual gifts. “There’s no such thing as ‘no strings,’” still another insisted.

On the other side of the issue, one respondent replied with a “Yes.”

“SEJ will not be judged by the source of its money, but rather by the strengths of its programs and credibility of its board, staff and members,” this respondent is reported as saying. “As long as the firewall is maintained,” yet another replied.

More than one-third of active members say they think their individual “work environment” is making it more difficult to cover environmental issues. Nearly half of those responding said that is not the case, and others did not respond to that question.

Among issues they said are tying their hands, active members pointed to limited resources, “information overload,” and news organizations’ pressures to make a profit.

“My paper’s commitment to environmental issues has dropped dramatically,” one respondent wrote in returning the survey. “I have two beats, the other is more dominant,” another replied. Deadline pressures and “the vastness of the beat” also were mentioned, along with “pressure to produce quantity, leading to burnout.”

Commenting on the survey results, SEJ President James Bruggers, of the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., said he and other Board members are “really gratified” with the high level of satisfaction expressed by members and that he thinks the survey points to “no major shifts” in SEJ directions beyond perhaps improving ongoing communications with membership.

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* The writer of this report is a member of SEJ and participated in the SEJ membership survey by returning a completed survey questionnaire.

Note: Formerly published by the National Safety Council. Reprinted with permission.