Covering global warming in dubious times: Environmental reporters in the new media ecosystem

Abstract

With every Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the predicted consequences of global warming become increasingly dire. Yet public engagement on the issue, particularly in the United States, lags far behind what is required for collective action. There is therefore an urgent need for vigorous and engaging journalism on climate science and policy-making. Unfortunately, the profession of journalism is currently experiencing an unprecedented period of ferment, as media firms experiment with new ways to expand profits in a rapidly changing media ecosystem. Drawing on in-depth interviews, this article examines how environmental journalists have coped with the challenge of covering climate change in the context of a restructuring news industry. The interviews reveal that, despite the challenges they face – particularly regarding the complexity of the issue and their own economic insecurity – environmental journalists have developed a number of creative strategies for getting climate change stories past editors and in front of audiences. A concluding section draws on a cultural industries approach to studying media institutions in order to evaluate both the promise and limits of these individual acts of creativity.