Resources

Ask an environmental journalist which beat is, or should be, the most important in their newsroom, and the answer is pretty near unanimous.

Nor surprising perhaps that environmental journalists put their own beat at the top of the heap in terms of importance. It is all about saving the world, after all. But so too, would other beat reporters put their own at the top.

Environmental reporters point to the health aspects of environmental issues. They point to the economic impacts of a healthy environment and of vibrant ecosystems. They point to environmental issues as framing the foundation on which much of the rest of the economy – and the health of our civilizations – depend.

But in the grand scheme, environmental journalism in fact occupies just one small room – perhaps just a closet – in the grand mansion of daily journalism, comprising just small single-digit percentages of the total news reported over a period of time.

Environmental journalism takes place in one room in the grand - or rather, is it crumbling? - mansion of traditional news journalism overall. You could do plenty to restore that one room. But would the overall mansion itself be left to continue to crumble?

The state of journalism in modern society has become a popular focus of commentary and criticism in recent years. Some - most, even - of the resources in this section have little to do directly with how environmental issues are or are not reported by today's media. But to fully understand the nature of environmental journalism, it's essential to also understand the context in which it operates.

That's what these references are intended to help you do. They paint an overall and evolving image of the emerging trends driving journalism. Some of these references stand more or less on their own, while others are best digested in the context of all the others. Some pose controversial tenets, both within and beyond the journalism community. Each, we think, is provocative.

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