by Dale Willman

"With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good!"

That's probably my favorite advertising slogan. As a kid, I trimmed the shrubs around the J.M. Smucker Company headquarters in Orrville, Ohio, but that's not the only reason the slogan sticks with me so many years later. It stuck with me because of repetition.

Advertisers learned long ago that recognition comes with repetition. Yet it's a lesson many journalists still don't seem to understand. We do countless Michael Jackson and Laci Peterson stories and then wonder why that's all the public seems to talk about.

We forget about agenda setting. This theory says the news media may not be able to tell the public what to think, but we are successful in telling the public what to think about. And we do that in large part through repetition.

Making the public aware of any issue, whether it's a Smuckers Jelly slogan or a major environmental story, is a numbers game. In order for recognition and awareness to set in, people need repetition -- hearing or reading about different angles of the issue a number of times during a relatively short period.

Unless the sheer magnitude of a story is so great as to command attention by its very presence, just one reference every now and then doesn't seem to penetrate the national consciousness. Smuckers would not be remembered with just a periodic commercial.

Given all this, I often wonder why so many environmental journalists write so rarely on the most significant topics facing the world today; namely, environmental issues. When asked about a particular story, we'll often say, "I've done that." We've written on climate change. We've covered mercury pollution or acid rain. We've already reported on the collapse of the world's fisheries.

After all, environmental stories don't break, they ooze, so there's no need for steady coverage. They generally occur with incremental shifts, rather than major changes. So many, if not most, environmental reporters seem to think these issues don't need steady coverage.

At a fundamental level, too many news outlets treat long-term issues differently from episodic issues -- yet we shouldnt. After all, it is biodiversity loss that will have long-term consequences for the world, not Terry Schiavo's death. So why aren't we giving those stories that affect us the most more play?

In other words, perhaps we need to be covering the environment as if it were being altered by Michael Jackson.

I say this only partially in jest. Reality, of course, dictates that we must find ways to meet the expectations of editors, who think the public wants more on Laci Peterson, and less on melting glaciers. And I have no magic bullet that will convince recalcitrant editors otherwise.

So perhaps we remind them of what journalism is all about. We are not simply stenographers or even voyeurs. Our job is to learn the facts as best we can, and then add context for a greater understanding of the issue.

When we remind editors of this, perhaps they will remember that our goal as journalists is to provide that understanding and to bring about greater public awareness of those issues important to us as a society. And perhaps they'll then realize that we're in denial if we truly think sporadic coverage of major issues greatly furthers individual understanding of significant issues.