In a month when all journalism takes a severe blow delivered by Jayson Blair and management oversight shortfalls at The New York Times, environmental journalism scores a major success with this in-depth, three-day, page-one, above-the-fold series on what some might have considered an environmental sacred cow. Non-environmental journalists David B. Ottaway's and Joe Stephens's months of shoe leather reporting pays off in an absolute "must read" for any serious reporter wanting to affix the adjective "environmental" before that noun. Depending on one's perspective, the series doesn't lead to a clear conclusion that what The Nature Conservancy does and did is good or bad, wrong or right, "green" or "brown." What it does do is show once again that things are not always as they may appear to be, at least not as many Conservancy backers and members perceived them to be. Cozy relationships with Fortune 100 corporations and perhaps even cozier and more questionable relationships and tax breaks with favored backers top the matters brought to light. It's the kind of series that evokes promises or threats of congressional hearings and editorial cartoons -- such as the Post's own Toles cartoon showing a Nature Conservancy board room meeting heavily populated by cigar-chomping corporate fat cats, with a TNC official asking, "So, why this perception that our mission has been compromised? Ideas?" Even some veteran environmental reporters early missed the significance and value of this 9,824-word series: don't you be among them, at least not until you have read and digested the entire series for yourself. Chances are you'll agree it's the kind of serious environmental journalism you'll wish you had done yourself.