In these downside-up days of contagion, climate disasters and social convulsions, being a journalism educator presents some seriously serious challenges. But in this EJ Academy back-to-school guide, pedagogical pilot Bernardo Motta offers seven tips to manage the mess. Among the advice: You are not an island. And everything will fail … and that’s a good thing.
It took teams of journalists to produce an award-winning series of reports digging into environment and climate health effects of massive oil and natural gas production in the Southwestern United States. Our latest Inside Story talks with Jamie Smith Hopkins of the Center for Public Integrity about the benefits of reporting a big story jointly and the project’s sometimes surprising findings.
"An endangered killer whale named “Tahlequah,” which famously carried her dead calf on her head in mourning for 17 days through the Salish Sea off British Columbia in 2018, is a new mother."
"Yersinia pestis killed millions of people across Europe in the middle ages. Today it remains a deadly threat to one of the US’s most endangered species"
"U.S. nuclear regulators have hosted their final public hearing on a proposal to build a multibillion-dollar complex in southern New Mexico to store spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants around the country, and there’s still disagreement about whether granting a license to Holtec International would be a good thing."
"Police arrested more than 70 environmental activists who blockaded two British printing plants, disrupting the distribution of several national newspapers on Saturday."
"U.S. Gulf Coast communities got no assurance from the EPA that the agency’s second round of chemical risk evaluations will examine whether the groups’ particularly high exposures put them at high risk for asthma, cancer, or other diseases."
"The federal government may not deem an area with imperiled plants and animals to be a “critical habitat” if doing so would cause economic harm or national security problems, under proposed rules announced Friday."
"A federal judge took a no-nonsense approach Friday to a hearing on the White House’s rewrite of federal environmental review standards, grilling conservation groups on how they’ll be harmed and chiding the Justice Department for glossing over the political motivations behind the rules."
"Americans support far more aggressive government regulation to fight the effects of climate change than elected officials have been willing to pursue so far, new research shows, including outright bans on building in flood- or fire-prone areas — a level of restrictiveness almost unheard-of in the United States."
