The Conference on Journalism and the Environment

Fast-paced, deadline-driven journalism has difficulty covering complicated environmental issues that are slow to develop but likely to have serious long-term public consequences. The Conference on Journalism and the Environment is a forum for executives, editors, news directors, and reporters from leading news organizations to examine journalistic coverage of the environment and, by extension, other important issues that are slow to develop but likely to have serious long-term consequences.

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This year, the conference

1. Examined the impact of newsroom practices and journalistic values on the quality of reporting on the environment, particularly with regard to issues such as the communication of uncertainty and the weight of scientific evidence,

2. Developed concrete strategies and realistic policies to strengthen the information value and impact of news coverage of the environment and similarly complex issues, and

3. Identified innovative approaches and best practices for improved news coverage of the environment and other slow-to-develop stories that also recognize the important economic, social and technologic transformations occurring in American journalism.

Participants ultimately offered a set of recommendations aimed at encouraging newsroom leaders and managers to rethink their coverage of the environment and build newsroom structures that sustain informative, engaging and locally relevant coverage of the environment for their readers, viewers and listeners.

The conference was sponsored by the Catto Charitable Foundation and the Nicholas Institute and organized in collaboration with the Aspen Institute Program on Energy and the Environment and the Communications and Society Program.