SEJ 2007

Video and Audio for Journalists/Scientists Session

Now posted! Feast on your choice of recording of Friday breakfast session Can This Relationship Be Saved? Why Journalists and Scientists Just Don't Communicate.

Saturday Concurrent Session Audios (2)

Audios are now available for Saturday sessions THE POLICY: Californians on the Front Lines: The Shifting Politics of the Environment and THE OCEAN: A Rising Tide of Ocean Plagues.

Why Environmental Journalists Should Care About Targeted Online Ad Networks

lime.com

Could a targeted online ad network like Lime's help support environmental journalism?

(Note: This is an edited version of a post I just made to Poynter's E-Media Tidbits.)

This past Saturday at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference I was part of a plenary panel discussing how the evolution of media (especially online) could or should affect the future of journalism. 

There, I voiced my opinion about how it burns me up that news organizations continue to cut qualified journalists from their payrolls, ostensibly to control costs, while routinely leaving significant money on the table in the form of poorly sold and grossly underutilized online and mobile advertising opportunities. Then, in a Kafkaesque twist, management and journalists alike often whine about how their sites don't make much money.

Considering the key role robust journalism plays in keeping society free, I think that's practically criminal.

(OK, several SEJers complimented me after the plenary for being "forceful." Actually, all the caffeine I sucked down that morning after a too-late Friday night yakking with SEJ friends finally kicked in just as the plenary started. I'm not sure whether that's really a good thing, but so be it.)

Here's the bottom line about what advertisers want, and how that actually can mesh with sound journalistic ethics and independence, thanks to current media technology. And how that might especially benefit the environment and other specialty beats...

Friday's Craft I Sessions Audios (2)

Here are audios for both of Friday's Craft I sessions: The Freelance Pitch-Slam, in which magazine editors took 60-second pitches from attendees, and Toxicological Curve Balls, on topsy-turvy, counterintuitive new findings on doses of poisons.

Environmentally Honest Accounting

OK, now I get to play catchup and report on some of the cool stuff I did at SEJ2007.

On Friday afternoon, after the network lunch, I attended a pretty compelling session on "environmentally honest accounting." Basically, this is about how we figure out the financial impact of environmental resources and issues. This is pretty important because most human-caused environmental problems boil down to money one way or another -- from international trade, to energy policy, to which car, house, or paper towels you buy.

The panelists were:

• Randy Hayes, International Forum on Globalization (and founder, Rainforest Action Network)
• Buzz Thompson, Woods Inst. for the Environment and Stanford professor of natural resources law
• Mike Wallace, analyst for TruCost (no, not THAT Mike Wallace...)
• Moderator: Mark Schapiro, Center for Investigative Reporting

Here's an abridged and hurridly cleaned-up version of my notes from that session...

Two More Session Audios Available

Two additional audios have been posted to SEJ's conference coverage page. One is for Saturday's Concurrent Sessions 3: THE CLIMATE: Feverish Temperatures: Human Health on a Warmer Planet, where panelists discussed changing ecosystems and their life forms, evolving diseases and the potential impacts on human health. The second is for Sunday's Environmental Myths of the West: Will Your Next Story Be a Lie? with NPR environment correspondent John Nielsen interviewing Patricia Limerick, myth-buster, historian, professor and faculty director of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Ditch the journalistic xenophobia

I'm sitting here in the lobby of Stanford's Arrillaga Center, desperately trying to wake my brain up with caffeine before I get up in front of a lot of people at the SEJ2007 lunchtime plenary and open my mouth. I'm on a plenary panel at 1:30, "Toward a New Journalism."

My fellow panelists will be:

• David Ledford, executive editor, The News Journal (Wilmington, DE)
• Tom Murphy, founder and editor in chief, Redwood Age
• Vikki Porter, director, Knight New Media Center, pictured below (she just stopped by)
   
• Paul Rogers, environment writer, San Jose Mercury News
• Moderator: Judy Muller, j-prof from USC

Judy e-mailed all of us earlier this month to give us an idea of what she'd like us to discuss. For me, she said:

"Amy, as a self-employed media consultant who is involved  in online citizen journalism, I'd like you to address the role of bloggers and nontraditional reporters in widening (or bringing bias to) our understanding of environmental issues."

Ok, she only wants me to talk for 2-3 minutes about that, which is good. The format is brief introductory remarks from each panelist and then open it right up for discussion. That works for me, since I could go in so many different directions with the territory Judy laid out that if I had to speak any longer than that I'd probably reveal how incoherent my thinking still is today even with 3 cups of tea coursing through my veins.

Here are a few random thoughts that might prove to be interesting fodder for conversation...

Climate Session Audios Ready for a Listen

Audios are now available for two of Friday's concurrent sessions, "THE CLIMATE: Changing with Climate Change: Can Industries, Investors and Insurers Adapt?" and "THE CLIMATE: Nature out of Sync: Trees Flowering in January?"

Progressive teaching is in

One of the Sept. 7 concurrent sessions 1, Craft II, focused on new ways of teaching and practicing Environmental Journalism.

“We are about working with citizens to solve environmental issues,” said Donica Mensing, associate professor and director of graduate studies at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University Nevada, Reno.

Speakers agreed that the best way to integrate new media is by creating new teaching programs focused on non-linear media, like the Internet, which is a future of journalism. All panelists agreed that we are in a process of change in journalism and we are entering a new era in which traditional journalism is going away.

“Newspaper companies keep laying people off,” said Jane Stevens, multimedia instructor in Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. “Journalism is going in different places and it’s looking differently.”

Experts presented their innovative ideas on how this new journalism is addressed to communities. Stevens made an observation that the old way of interacting with community in which journalism was based on an already existing group of residents is going away. Now journalists have to learn how to engage the audience by offering new projects like the www.GreatTurtleRace.com

“This new kind of journalism is building community,” Stevens said...

SEJ's Official Conference Coverage

You're invited to visit SEJ's own conference coverage page, where we'll be posting stories, audio and video as they become available. You'll find the agenda, speaker bios and more here.