EnviralBlog

Blogger evolves, I stay

2010-03-26T12:24:00.000-07:00

As Blogger improves its templates and design options, I gave up trying to get all my files transferred to another system. Therefore, I am back to Enviralblog.blogspot.com without ever actually leaving.

So, from now on, I will be updating the blog constantly as I start teaching a new course directly related to the subject area of this blog: Communicating Science, Environment and Health.

My new course, offered both during this summer and in January at Bridgewater College, will follow the truncated path of scientific information from its birth through research until its final destinations: the general public and policymakers. We will study how scientists generate information and how they communicate scientific information to different publics. Then, we will see how these publics (journalists, communicators in different organizations, other scientists and academics, administrators and executives, policymakers and regulators, etc.) find, capture and transform the information and communicate scientific information to their publics.

We will see which ways cause most distortion to the core idea of the scientific finding and which ones are more useful in educating and informing the public about environmental and health issues. We will also analyze the role played by each group of communicators (broadly defined) of scientific findings to make a specific piece of information more or less useful and accessible to the diverse publics of their communicative efforts.

Before, during and after the course, I will be using this space to report on the different issues pertaining to the topic.

I hope you join me on this journey of the communication of scientific discovery!

Are you an environmentalist?

2010-02-09T05:28:00.000-08:00

Charlie Gee, now assistant professor at Duquesne University, put this story together during the first Writing Green conference in Knoxville, TN. He interviewed some of the hosts and speakers of the event, including myself.
The original story was published on the Knox News Sentinel website. All rights belong to Gee and the Knoxville Sentinel. (For some reason, the video is not uploading every time. If that happens to you, just watch it directly at the Knox News website.)

A Mission for Environmental Communication Ethics

2009-11-23T17:50:00.000-08:00

While I struggle with Dreamweaver, Wordpress, Blogger and a bunch of other platforms you can check my posts at Indications. My first one talks about the underlying ethics of environmental communication.

Still working on moving...

2009-10-19T08:40:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the long delay, but GreenPress is not helpful at all. Next, I will try WordPress. If that doesn't work, I will just create everything from scratch in Dreamweaver.
Stay put, many surprises and new features under way.
I will announce on Twitter, Facebook and Publish2 as soon as I got things working!
Thank you for your patience!

After a long break

2009-09-19T05:16:00.000-07:00

After a long time working on my dissertation, moving to a new job and going through some health problems, I am back to Enviralblog.

The first step will be a complete overhaul of the blog. I will add more features, discussions and, especially, news. The blog will be divided in different sections, looking more like a web page. I'll add videos, slide shows,audio files and even some graphics.

The general appearance and the system will change, too. I am checking out both GreenPress and WordPress as they allow more flexibility and control. That will probably mean a change in the URL, eliminating the .blogspot from the name.

I will announce all changes though Twitter, Publish2 and Facebook soon.

COCE, 10th Edition

2009-05-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

Travis Wagner, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Southern Maine, announces that the 10th Biennial Conference on Communication and the Environment (COCE) will be held June 27-30, 2009, at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.

In this edition, COCE will showcase approximately 80 presentations on public participation, media criticism, social construction, risk assessment, and policy applications.

Phoenix Sun Posts List of Environmental News Sites

2009-05-11T18:25:00.000-07:00

Journalist Osha Gray Davidson published a list of environment-related news sites on the Phoenix Sun. The list, provides a variety of sites and blogs that are specialized on specific topics from global climate crisis and energy issues to animals rights and community development.

Solving news matters on their own

2009-03-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

A group of citizens of Carbondale, Col. decided to run their own newspaper when Swift Communications stopped printing the weekly Valley Journal, as reported by the Rural Blog and the L. A. Times.
Rebecca Young and 6 other residents founded, then, the Sopris Sun to attend the town's need for news.

Global Warming in 15 minutes

2009-03-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

The National Geographic series "Six Degrees Could Change the World" (2008) explains what happens if we add one to six degrees Celsius to the Earth's average in 7 short chapters (about 15 minutes total).
The series is based on Mark Lynas's book with the same name, which provides specific scenarios of how life on Earth would be affected by global warming.

Another version was produced for the Green.tv web site:
"Six Degrees Could Change the World" (2008)
Green.TV
Author: Mark Lynas and Steven Holland
Copyright: Mark Lynas and Steven Holland

New blog on environmental journalism

2009-02-26T11:42:00.000-08:00

"What has six legs and can hold up thousands of tons of concrete?" It's a lead example that David Poulson, professor at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University, gives in his new blog on environmental journalism called "Cover the Planet."
The blog is a welcome addition to help the relatively small group of people who tries to take on the whole world in as few words as possible: environmental journalists.
"It’s daunting enough to understand environmental issues. Throw in the additional task of explaining them to the public and you’ve bought yourself a lot more trouble," Poulson wrote in the about section of Cover the Planet. "Now do it on deadline," he challenged.

"Schneider believes that coverage lacking scientifically-trained reporters and producers lose credibility and insightfulness"

2009-02-17T11:26:00.000-08:00

Stanford climate specialist Steve Schneider explains the effects of science and environmental reporters lay off on Mongabay.com. I addressed this issue on my February 6 post.

Does saying bye to newspapers improve news reporting?

2009-02-10T14:40:00.000-08:00

The demise of newspapers means better journalism is what Jim Stovall, journalism professor at the University of Tennessee, said in his journalism education website.

Great discussion about Spot.Us.com

2009-02-10T11:36:00.000-08:00

Spot.us of the websites I cited here as a new business model for news appeared on James Rainey's column for the L.A. Time.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-onthemedia8-2009feb08,0,5497178.column

This is the response by David Cohn, founder of Spot.us, to Rainey's critique:

http://www.digidave.org/adventures_in_freelancing/2009/02/spotus-gets-first-great-critique-we-are-listening-learning-and-plotting.html

Engaged Environmental Reporting and Advocacy: Two Different Animals

2009-02-06T15:17:00.000-08:00

With the whole economic avalanche hitting newspapers and other media outlets, environmental and science reporters seem to be getting the hardest part of the deal.

Personally, I would expect that news media outlets would like to keep journalists that are better prepared to cover possible solutions. However, the crisis also opens a chance for real change to set in: new news media business formats.

In my previous posts I added some examples of what I mean by that. From co-ops to non-profits, some news media entrepreneurs are realizing that you cannot compete against free information on the web with the same old idea of "maximizing profit margins at all costs" kind of mentality.

This brings me back to my topic: engaged journalism. Actually, if you think about it, many media ethicists like Clifford Christians, for an example, have been pushing it with another name: communitarian ethics. Engaged journalism, differently from advocacy, means to understand journalism as a public service.

Understanding journalism as public service also means to understand the work of a journalist as the performance of a social role. Open societies with democratic governments depend on the continuous flow of accurate, relevant, meaningful and useful information to keep governmental institutions and large corporations in consonance with the public interest.

In this way, an engaged journalist is the one who look for information to help the civil society keep control of the state. That can be performed in different levels, but the basic premise is to help communities to improve their quality of life and empower them to participate in the public life. Thus, both the topic and the format of a journalistic story should be oriented to achieve such goal.

More importantly though is the way the reporter write the story. It should provide information that allows the public to take action. The objective is not only to bring awareness, but enlightenment about the readers' options. Differently from advocacy, journalists should not tell the public what to do, but how the readers can act if they choose to do so. The idea is not apart from what most ethical journalists already do, but it should help some overworked and overstressed journalists to pause and think why they are doing what they do; to engage in the very core of the journalistic purpose.

In the case of engaged journalism, we do what we do because people need the information we provide to live better lives. When we fail to do our jobs thoroughly and with competence, we know who we are hurting. It's not an abstract idea of an audience, but a very present and concrete person standing right next to us in our neighborhood.

Writing Green Registration

2009-01-31T06:30:00.000-08:00

The registration form for the Writing Green - Environmental Journalism Conference is now up and running at http://etspj.org/environmental-conference/registration/.

Writing Green Poster

2009-01-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

The poster for the Writing Green - Environmental Journalism Conference is ready. Check it out!

Writing Green - Environmental Journalism Conference

2009-01-23T10:09:00.000-08:00

The East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists (ETSPJ) is sponsoring Writing Green, a cutting-edge environmental journalism conference on Friday, March 27, 2009, in Knoxville, Tenn.

The day-long conference organized by Amanda Womac (Hellbender Press) will address not only the general difficulties journalists face when covering the environmental beat, but also the new challenges and opportunities brought by the development of new media tools.

Together with TNJN.com and the students of my JEM 200 class at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, I will conduct a real-time, multiplatform coverage experiment using social media tools (Facebook, Publish2, Twitter etc.), Enviralblog and TNJN.com.

For new updates, comments and more information about Writing Green, please got to the conference website, our Facebook page or look for our updates (#WritingGreen) on Twitter.

New Media Models

2008-12-18T13:06:00.000-08:00

This is a new posting from Mark Glaser at Media Shift about new business models for online news.

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/12/your-guide-to-alternative-business-models-for-newspapers353.html

Another news site following a different model

2008-11-18T13:50:00.000-08:00

This one is from British Columbia, Canada. They are also stepping away from the old business model and trying to offer something new.
http://thetyee.ca/

New Website

2008-11-15T13:38:00.000-08:00

My new website is up and running, check it out!

B.H. Motta's Environment

New Business Models For Environmental Jounalism

2008-11-11T06:33:00.000-08:00

With the economic crisis forcing journalists out of the newsroom, these entrepreneurs found new ways to practice serious journalism in a somewhat economically sustainable way. Check it out:

Spot.us:
http://spot.us/

http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/recycling-design-technology/spotus-environmental-journalism-461108

Voice of San Diego:

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/

I believe that both co-ops and non-profits that embrace the mission of providing serious, accurate and non-partisan reporting may become the future of investigative journalism. Especially when we talk about specialized coverage, like environmental journalism. These approaches become even more appealing for they provide the kind of information that is absolutely needed in different communities at the same time that they are more flexible-as business structure-and less dependent on profit margins. It’s easier to sustain a newsroom when you need only to cover costs and build a reserve for expansion or for difficult times, but not forcing profit margins beyond sustainable limits.

Other possible business model is on-demand community news, keeping a very small staff; however, it's much more difficult to maintain a specialty in this model. Usually, the reporter will cover anything that the community thinks it’s appropriate. Also, because it depends heavily on local business support, it may not allow for complete independent reporting.

Enviromental Communication From a Systemic Perspective

2008-11-10T12:38:00.000-08:00

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Welcome to EnviralBlog!

To start the conversation, I would like to propose a perspective on environmental communication that may be a little different from what people see around. I am talking about the systemic view of the environment. In the same way we approach our understanding of the world from specific perspectives (political, economic, social, cultural etc.), we can see them through an inclusive and holistic environmental lens.

Instead of talking about environmental problems as one beat (journalism) or one dimension of an issue, we can also refer to environmental dimensions of different topics we cover as communicators. For example, if research shows that more and more diseases related to toxic exposure are affecting children, what angles can we work in this story? We could follow the obvious health angle and analyze how toxic exposure is damaging children's health. We could follow an economic angle showing that we could save more applying preventive measures than trying to deal with the issue case by case. We could also approach it from a socio-political issue, trying to find out if the exposure is affecting determined children more than others based on political influence or economic affluence. We could even apply a narrow environmental angle, trying to understand the damages to children’s health as a consequence of environmental degradation.

It seems to me that all angles-and you can add a lot more to the list-are useful and sound. However, they are also limited. A systemic environmental approach looks into any given problem from a relational perspective. The objective is to expose the relation between each of those instances to each other. Very rarely-and I would dare to say almost never-an issue is a clear-cut case of one single problem. As communicators, our job is to make sure people get the information they need. For engaged communicators, like journalists-more about engaged communicators will be discussed in my next post-, we also have to make sure the information is relevant, accurate, meaningful and useful. When we choose to approach a story from any given angle, we are also choosing to omit the other possible angles. Consequently, usually due to limited space or time, we follow one lead and go with it.

Nevertheless, when we choose to focus on the relationships that link causes and consequences from different points of view, we are able to provide more information to our audiences in a very efficient way. We can “follow the money,” but what matters is the trail that the money leaves linking different stops in the way.

Next: engaged communication and advocacy; two different animals
Coming soon: B.H. Motta's Environment (www.bhmotta.com). In this website you can find more about me, my work and many different issues related to this blog. Keep your browsers open!