"Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples"
By BILL DAWSON
The Beat usually examines recent coverage of environmental issues. This time around, though, The Beat looks at the environmental beat itself — specifically, at a couple of recent developments related to the training of journalists to cover environmental issues.
The first event was the October announcement that Columbia University was suspending for review its two-year, dual-degree graduate program leading to one master's degree in journalism and another in environmental science.
The digital age of environmental journalism has brought with it an ugly underbelly characterized by increasingly bitter personal exchanges and accusations and a sucking-up of countless hours of productive reporting time and effort. How reporters handle these distractions may shape how well the American public understands, or doesn't understand, the climate challenge they and future generations will face.
This comprehensive article on the state of the environmental journalism world by SEJ member John Daley, a television reporter in Salt Lake City, was published on The Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media. Daley interviewed several journalists, including former CNN producer Camille Feanny (pictured at left).
The current cold snap in some parts of the globe is making news -- but not generating many science stories about what is going on.