Environment Reporters in the 21st Century / Edition 1

by JoAnn Myer Valenti

Overview

Environment Reporters in the 21st Century is the story of a relatively new journalistic beat, environmental reporting. This book explores the development of the environmental beat as a specialty during the last thirty years. It also discusses broader trends within American journalism resulting from technological changes that challenge traditional mediums, especially newspapers and magazines.

The book is divided into three parts. The first reviews the literature and explains the methodology. The second describes the results of the authors' research. The third provides in-depth accounts of environment reporters at work. A final chapter puts the research in historical perspective, viewing it in terms of the economic decline of the newspaper business and of local television news.

Journalists mediate a constant struggle among thousands of environmental activists, corporate public relations people, government officials, and scientists to shape environmental reporting. This volume tells the story of environmental reporting imaginatively and innovatively.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781412814157
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	05/15/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

James Simon is chair and professor of English at Fairfield University and directs his school’s journalism program.

JoAnn Myer Valenti is professor emerita of communications and a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

David B. Sachsman holds the George R. West, Jr. Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he also serves as director of the annual Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Bud Ward

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I: Environment Reporting

1. The Environment Beat
2. Studying Specialized Environment Reporters

Part II: The Environment Reporters of the 21st Century

3. The Environment Reporters
4. The Work Environment
5. Covering the Environment
6. Wrestling with Objectivity and Fairness

Part III: The Craft: Telling the Environment Story

7. On the Beat: Environment Reporters at Work
8. Environment Reporters in a Time of Change

Appendix A: The Survey
Appendix B: Sources Used by Environment Reporters
Appendix C: Three Factors in Environmental Reporter Analysis: Objective/Fair Reporters, Workplace Critics, and Advocates/Civic Journalists

Index

Editorial Reviews

". . .a broad, insightful history of environmental reporting and a case study of two environmental stories from conception to publication. The hard truth that shapes the book is that though it is becoming more important for citizens to understand environmental issues, the decline of newspapers and of television news limits the resources available for covering those issues. How the environment will be covered in the Internet age is a question for the next study." —C. A. Bily, Choice “More than sixty years after Kreighbaum, the research team of David Sachsman, James Simon, and JoAnn Valenti performed a similar valuable service for journalism. . . . Their answers will become an important part of the historical record in our understanding of American journalism. As the country attempts to inform itself about huge environmental stories, such as the BP oil spill, their results are informative. . . . This is perhaps one of their most significant findings: modern journalists share many characteristics except additional education in the sciences. . . . As the media industry in general, and environmental journalism in particular, undergoes perhaps its most significant moment of convulsive change since the era of the printing press, these two books offer an important snapshot in time that will prove valuable to those who attempt to understand what happened and why.” —Mark Neuzil, Journalism History “The time is well overdue for a data-based cataloging of who ‘out there’ in the core of professional journalists is covering science-related topics, what their qualifications are, what motivates them, how they go about their jobs, an dhow they deal with everyday conflicts in their work. Environment Reporters in the 21st Century takes an admirable first step in that direction. . . . The authors are to be particularly commended for their research.” —Garrett J. O’Keefe, Science Communication

From the Publisher