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One need turn only to the American Dialect Society to take the pulse of journalism trends at this time.

The "word of the year" for 2005, the group advises us, is "truthiness," which it defines as "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true."

The group credits cable TV channel Comedy Central's "Colbert Report" – "a satirical mock new show" – as popularizing the term, which it says dates back as far as 1824. Electing a word of the year "is serious," the group emphasizes, "based on members' expertise in the study of words, but it is far from solemn."

Go a step further.

The "most useful" word of 2005, it turns out, is "podcast." Need a definition? – "a digital feed containing audio or video files for downloading to a portable MP3 player."

Put them together. And what have you got? A barometer. A pulse. A sense of trends not so much in environmental journalism perhaps, but rather in journalism generally, in which environmental reporting is but one component.

There is, for sure, no shortage of signs, of harbingers, of journalism's future.

ITEM: A recent "Candorville" cartoon strip shows a homeless/jobless curbside sign holder advertising: "Will draw editorial cartoons for food." A passerby muses, "Things ain't lookin' up for the newspapers." Funny, huh? If only it weren't so true. Do environmental reporters KNOW that editorial cartoonists, like environmental reporters, are an endangered species? Maybe not, but they should.

ITEM: The Washington Post's David Ignatius writes in a January op-ed that "we could be ignoring the biggest story in our history" in under-reporting on climate change. "Because they're not 'news,' the environmental changes don't prompt action, at least not in the United States," he laments. But within weeks, that same newspaper buries as one subhead in a "Findings" feature the following: "About 1,500 seal pups were swept out to sea and drowned by a tidal surge off Canada's east coast this week after a lack of ice cover meant their mothers were forced to give birth on a small island" rather than on park ice which normally forms in winter." One suspects we'll be seeing a lot more of that kind of story in coming years.

ITEM: It turns out that at a recent major international meeting on climate change in Montreal, Chris Horner was accredited as a "reporter," representing The Washington Times. In his day job, of course, Horner is a high-visibility attorney representing the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cooler Heads Coalition in their campaigns against widely accepted climate science. A search shows a few letters to the editor to the paper and, years back, an op-ed. But a reporter? No journalist he. Read on.

ITEM: Talking of not-a-journalist, try this one on. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists has given its annual journalism award to science fiction and mystery writer Michael Crichton for his State of Fear. "It is fiction," The New York Times' Cornelia Dean quoted the association's communications director as saying. "But it has the absolute ring of truth." Could have fooled Stanford University climatologist Shephen H. Schneider, never at a loss for a soundbite. "Demonstrably garbage" is how the always-quotable Schneider summarized the Crichton novel. For their part, many real environmental journalists went critical over the news.

ITEM: Journalism educators, adapting to the changing realities in print and broadcast newsrooms nationwide – and more importantly, adapting to the digital information revolution, increasingly are preparing tomorrow's reporters to be "multi-media." Writing for the paper, for the air, for the web, for the blogs – tomorrow is here today, and both students and working reporters need to be there now.

ITEM: An interesting piece in The Wall Street Journal's "Notes from the Ivory Tower" department February 21. The tradition of publishing in law reviews and law journals as a ticket to tenure may be giving way to, you guessed it, blogs.

Here’s how the piece describes law review articles: "Extraordinarily long (sometimes 100 pages or more), dense, and endlessly – even sadistically – footnoted”... and also seldom read beyond tenure committees and the author's mom ("and I have my doubts about my mom.")

Law profs, we read, increasingly are "moving relevant and timely commentary to the internet and the blogosphere," shunning law reviews. Question here: Is it conceivable we'll be seeing a similar shift from the scientifically peer-reviewed journals? Answer: Only a fool would now underestimate the potential impact of the internet, blogs, etc., on how we communicate and share information and knowledge. Environmental journalists shouldn't be among those doing the underestimating.

AND ALAS: There's no sign, at this point, that recent years' generally downward trends for the so-called "mainstream news media," or, for that matter, for traditional journalism generally will slow down or be substantially redirected in coming years. Just the contrary.

Today's forward-looking environmental reporters and editors need to be preparing not only to responsibly address the increasingly complex social, economic, and environmental challenges society will confront down the road…but also the swiftly moving target of the communications media and vehicles by which they will be addressing them.

No easy chore. No time to delay. As Yogi Berra is said to have feared when anticipating trailing in the early innings at the old Candlestick Park, "It gets late early out here."