Top News Executives, Scientists Meet
At Stanford on Covering Climate Change

September 5, 2007, marked an unusual and interesting time for some of the nation's leading climate scientists and foremost news executives from across the country.

They found themselves in the same conference room for a full day, and with a single focus: effective coverage of climate change. No small order that: effective coverage would enbrace science, impacts, and potential "solutions" through the pages, airwaves, and bits and bytes of leading U.S. news organizations.

The vision of having top-tier editors and world class scientists and researchers focusing at such depth on the climate change issue for many had too long seemed a fantasy. The 18-year-old Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), at whose 17th annual convention the forum was held, long had been frustrated in seemingly being unable to get on top editors' busy agendas. And a series of six nationwide climate scientist\journalist workshops – funded by the National Science Foundation's Paleoclimate Program and administered by the nonprofit Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting – had adopted the notion as practically a standing recommendation from the start.

Neither SEJ nor Metcalf, the two organizations that in fact jointly oversaw the September 5 workshop, anticipated just how quickly it might actually occur. World-class scientists and top editors - the latter "gatekeepers" to the nation's font pages and air waves - were recruited to take part in the day-long dialogs.

The idea quickly grew and, over time, morphed. Almost immediately, it was determined to focus the September 5 roundtable discussion as a "by invitation" event open exclusively to high-ranking news executives, and not to the environmental and science beat reporters involved in the NSF-funded workshops. The question was how to get them there.

This effort basically arose from the positive experiences of Sacramento Bee environmental reporter Chris Bowman at two of those workshops, one held at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in June 2005, and the other at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley, in November, 2005. As co-chair of the overall SEJ 17th conference, Bowman had in mind a full-day session on covering climate science.

Almost as quickly, but not quite, the concept began shifting from the initial "science only" focus to "science ... and 'solutions,' and energy, and economics, and impacts." That was part and parcel of what is widely seen as a rapid increase in the American media's and their audience's 1) growing awareness and acceptance of climate change as an important environmental issue; 2) increased level of comfort that scientific uncertainties had been largely resolved in so far as the earth's warming and the contribution of human activities are concerned; and 3) growing interest in what steps might be taken to confront such a seemingly overwhelming set of global environmental challenges.

With planning and organizational support from SEJ and Metcalf and with partnerships involving the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford and, a bit later, the Yale Project on Climate Change, the table was being set. Financial support from The Energy Foundation and the Heinz Family Philanthropies, coupled with financial support also from Woods Institute and the Yale Project, gave the roundtable an important bi-coastal flavor and a respected set of partnerships not only within but also beyond the journalism community.

Following recruitment of what some SEJ officials called a "rock star" list of climate lecturers and presenters, confirmations came in from leading newspaper executive editors. (Not everything worked as planned: conference planners tried multiple approaches, none of them successful, to recruiting participation from The Wall Street Journal editorial or news pages. Also, increased representation from broadcast and cable interests should be a focus of any such future effort.)

So when nine leading climate scientists, researchers, and economists sat down with twice as many news executives on September 5, 2007, in a Stanford University conference room, their focus was singular: What kind of information do top news executives need to help improve their news organizations' coverage of climate change and its potential implications?

Part 1 of this Special Report focuses on the scientific briefing for the editors, the a.m. part of September 5. Part 2 of this report, to follow, will report on the economics/energy elements of the September 5 roundtable.

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