A national public radio* network known best for Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac,” the classical music program “Performance Today,” and in-depth coverage of the market is making a concerted move to provide outstanding and ongoing in-depth coverage of climate change and its impacts.
If you think this is talk radio bloviating designed to pan the widely accepted climate science, minimize the impacts, or blithely kiss-off legislative or policy strategies, think again.
American Public Media, perhaps best known for its widely distributed “Marketplace” program on public radio stations, is making a frontal attack on climate change and climate change impacts with in-depth broadcasts over coming months. Unlike most news organizations in the current economic climate, the network is even advertising for a full-time multi-media journalist, with the caveat that its grant funding is secure only through June 2010.
Reporting to the Sustainability and Global Climate Change Initiative’s Editorial Director Ben Adair, and with a preferred location in Los Angeles, the new position calls for a reporter who can create daily and weekly features for online, radio, video, and photography outlets; produce special programming; edit and mix stories for air and/or online; and serve as a resource or expert on climate change and sustainability issues.
The program editors say they are committed to “innovative, agenda-setting journalism around issues of sustainability and global climate change” and to doing so through multi-media programming. They expect the successful applicant will have proven news gathering, editing, and writing experience and “a keen interest in climate change and sustainability.”
How did American Public Media go from its principal focus on the market, with a laser-like focus on the economic situation that has plagued the U.S. and the world over the past year, to a riveting attention to climate change?
The answer may be best provided, says Adair, in the early minutes of a video presentation featuring Marketplace Executive Producer J.J. Yore, in a speech in September before the Public Radio Program Directors conference in September.
“We are now decades, perhaps years, away from the greatest economic transformation human beings have ever seen,” Yore says on a website describing the project. “Society’s response to climate change – whether active now or reactive later – will affect every aspect of life on Earth. But whether this is a terrific opportunity or a tragedy in the making depends a lot on who you ask.
“The science is clear,” he continues. “The Earth’s climate is changing because of the massive amounts of pollution that come from many human activities – such as the burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal, and the destruction of forests for agriculture. We’re already starting to feel the effects of those changes and the situation could get very bad for life on the planet.”
The program’s multi-media website, with details on stories aired and airing, slideshows, information resources, and local air times can be accessed here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Notice that the “n,” “p,” and “r” are intentionally lower case. That’s important.
