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 S M A T T E R I N G S

June 2006

Journalism schools are doing just fine, thank you

Not all is going down the tubes when it comes to journalism after all! It turns out that journalism schools are doing just fine, thank you. More than 2,000 jobs cut last year, reports of "ethical breaches" undermining the media, a Wall Street thumbs-down, and much, much more. Got you down? Don't fret. Katharine Qu. Seelye reports in the May 15 New York Times that journalism schools are "one corner of the profession still enjoying a boom."

Under the headline "Times are tough for News Media, but Journalism Schools are Still Booming," she reports that demand for journalism school educations "remains robust" and j-school programs are growing. (Respected journalism educator Phil Meyer of the University of North Carolina jests that that's because so many college-age kids will do whatever it takes to avoid taking math and science classes.)

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When do we hear from the journalists?

Knight Professor of Journalism Ethics (no oxymoron) Edward Wasserman of Washington and Lee University takes on the big new news room buzz word – "convergence" – in a May column posted on the Miami Herald's site. "Unless you happen to care about quality photojournalism, you won't see much harm in having a reporter record and upload video or photos via cellphone from the site of the train derailment directly to the website so that the audience can feast on images of the wreckage a half-hour, even an hour, sooner," he writes. Wasserman frets that too much of applying "the marvels of the Internet" to daily news operations will end up "degrading the working conditions of journalists and diverting energies away from the kind of richly detailed, thoughtful reporting that exemplifies the best in journalism." Converged newsrooms open up "huge, perplexing questions," he writes. So far, the answers are coming mostly from "the techies, the brand managers, the publishers, the marketers."

He wonders: "When do we hear from the professional journalists?" When do they weigh in on issues related "not to plant the flag in cyberspace, not to reclaim market share, but to provide great, meaningful journalism."

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Reporters doing their jobs

How often in one's lifetime can you expect to open The Wall Street Journal editorial page and find a byline from a New York Times reporter. And not just any Times reporter, but indeed the Executive Editor?

OK, we digress. It wasn't actually a byline. Instead, it was a Letter to the WSJ Editor, an unusually long one by letter-to-the-editor standards.

Headlined "The New York Times on Leaks, Partisanship," Executive Editor Bill Keller's letter on May 2 blasted the Journal for an April 26 editorial headlined "Our Rotten IntelligenCIA." Keller apparently just couldn't take it sitting down or shutting-up.

With all the tact and diplomacy for which its editorials are so widely revered or deplored, the Journal editorial dumped on Times and Washington Post Pulitzer Prize winners for, in the Journal's view, having simply gone too far in disclosing state secrets ... and then being feted by the Pulitzers for their accomplishments.

A few zingers from the Journal editorial:

There's got to be a lesson here. Perhaps it is that if you use "cabal" and "the likes of ...," expect rapid return-fire.

Keller returned it full-bore. "The editorial is animated" by assumptions that journalists are acting politically when they report things politicians don't like, and when reporters should accept at "face value" presidents' declarations that secrecy is in the public interest. "I don't believe either of those things is true, and I find it hard to believe that you do, either," Keller wrote.

Keller rejects as poppy-cock the Journal's concluding paragraph that it doesn't support harassment of reporters just doing their jobs. "That's nice to hear," he writes, "it's just hard to square with the rest of your editorial."

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So the global warming debate's over?

The Pew Charitable Trusts, a foundation key to both journalism and environmental interests, on its Spring 2006 cover of "Trust" shows a polar bear emerging onto a palm-lined beach from an iceberg-strewn ocean. "Resistance Melts about Climate Change," the foundation's magazine trumpets on the cover, along with the made-up image.

"The Global Warming Debate Reaches a Turning Point in the U.S.," the story headlines ... "Changes in the Air."

Pew President and CEO Rebecca W. Rimel in her opening "Notes from the President" recalls a USA Today headline of some months back: "The Debate's Over: Globe is Warming." She says that headline "seems to echo the sentiment of many leading scientists, businesses, and an increasing number of American elected officials at all levels."

Writer Colin Woodward reports on "increasing numbers of policy makers, journalists, corporate executives, religious leaders and ordinary citizens recognizing that global warming is real and demanding action to address its causes."

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Skeptics get their share of ink

Clearly NOT among those considered in the Pew Trusts's Spring 2006 issue of "Trust" are those scientists featured in a Washington Post Magazine May 28 cover story: "Inside the Minds of Climate Change Skeptics: WHAT GLOBAL WARMING?"

The "skeptics" special focused in large part on Colorado State University Professor Bill Gray, but fellow "skeptics" Richard Lindzen of MIT, S. Fred Singer, and Pat Michaels also get their share of ink, as do the skeptic-friendly folks from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

For those with a long enough memory, the piece is somewhat reminiscent of former New York Times science reporter William Stevens's effort to specifically address the concerns of climate skeptics by focusing solely on their perspectives in a single Science Times entry. For his effort, Stevens garnered only very mixed reviews. Time will tell if the Post's piece by Joel Achenbach fares differently.

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"Comeback Kid vs. 'Ozone Woman'?"

AHHH ... Celebrity journalism comes to the environment story!

Well, at least New York Times big-name columnists Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman did so, with their usual take of political liberalism and sharp language.

Dowd's "Enter Ozone Woman" column on May 24 had fun with the notion of Senator Hillary Clinton and "Comback Kid" Al Gore, fresh from the favorable reviews of "An Inconvenient Truth," facing off for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President.

Krugman's column just five days later warned Gore on the issue of "Swift Boating the Planet." Krugman's take: Gore is "going to have to get tougher, because the other side doesn't play by any known rules." His evidentiary evidence number one: NASA's James Hansen and a long-lasting "smear campaign" against him led, in part, by that same Patrick Michaels.

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Science and Society: Closing the Gap

It's a free "Science + Society: Closing the Gap" conference January 19-21, 2007, at the Westin Copley Place in Boston. "A unique forum on science and communications, designed to foster engagement, conversation, and lively debate across the traditional professional/public divide."

Sponsored by Ortho-McNeil Neurologics, Inc., and the "Partners HealthCare project," the workshop promo materials lament that "people have become alienated" from the science on which the planet's well being depends. "TV, movies, internet, journalism: How can science be better integrated into the content of mass media?," it asks.

For information, go to http://www.scienceandsocietyconference.com or call 617-725-7299.

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Grist: Connect environmentalism back to communities

The May/June 2006 Columbia Journalism Review gives a strong pat-on-the-back for Grist, the online environmental magazine, for its ambitious seven-week series on environment and poverty, "expanding the very definition of green journalism."

CJR quotes Grist founder and president as saying media reports too often fail to tease out the environmental angle when reporting on poverty. "We hope that when people think of environmental reporting, what comes to mind wouldn't simply be salmon protection or fights about national parks," Giller said. "We're asking that journalism begin to connect environmentalism back to communities in which people live."

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Ending of the climate debate? For real?

Ending of the climate debate? For real? One of the postings that is helping give rise to that perspective dates from February 21, 2006. CBS News's "Public Eye" blog reported on correspondent Scott Pelley's "60 Minutes" piece portraying global warming as a given.

"There is virtually no disagreement in the scientific community any longer about global warming," Pelley says on the blog. "The science that has been done in the last three to five years has been conclusive .... It would be irresponsible for us to go find some scientist somewhere who is not thought of as being eminent in the field and put him on television with these other guys to cast doubt on what they're saying. It would be difficult to find a scientists worth his salt in this subject who would suggest this wasn't happening. It would probably be someone whose grant has been funded by someone who finds reducing fossil fuel emissions detrimental to their own interests."

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Why is the public doing so little?

Google "Ankelohe Conversations" and see what comes up.

You'll find yourself reading about a May 2006 northern Germany "country retreat" involving journalists and editors trying to figure out why "despite all the coverage they are now giving these issues [climate change], the public is doing so little to take action."

The site points to data suggesting that many people believe climate change is "a serious problem. But any change in attitudes is having little impact on behavior."

The site cautions against attempts to "frame" the climate change issue as involving "scary weather." That just "sets up a highly pernicious set of reactions, as weather is something we react to and is outside human control. We do not prevent or change it, we prepare for it, adjust to it or move away from it."

Forget too about long timeframes. That approach "further encourages people to adapt, encouraging people to think 'it won't happen in my lifetime' and 'there's nothing an individual can do.'"

Something called the Frame Works Institute is working on a climate message project (again, try Googling). They're recommending framing the climate change issue as one of "responsibility, stewardship, competence, vision and integrity." Themes would involve "new thinking, new technologies, planning ahead, smartness, forward-thinking" and more.

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All the eco-news that's fit to sell ads

"All the eco-news that's fit to sell ads." So says Salon blogster Andrew Leonard of a New York Times May 18 special section on "the business of green."

The paper "isn't just reporting on how businesses are cashing in on environmental concerns, the paper is engaged in the vary same practice," he writes. He decries a feature on "Eco-Ads" opposite a full-page Wal-Mart add "boasting how 'By lessening our environmental footprint, we'll lower costs – for our current customers, and for future generations.'"

Leonard pans the paper for not questioning Wal-Mart, Shell, and G.M. efforts in a "greenwashing" piece. "But maybe that would have crossed a suicidal line: Directly attacking the advertisers of your special section might make this offering from the Times a one-shot deal."

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June 2006
Environment Writer
Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting
University of Rhode Island
Graduate School of Oceanography
Office of Marine Programs
Narragansett, RI 02882

Tel: 401-874-6211; Fax: 401-874-6485

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