The year 2020 has been humbling in the face of nature. The coronavirus pandemic rattled the earth and revealed just how unstable the ground beneath us was. For journalists, the avalanche of life-or-death news crashed into an industry already beset by acute financial strain, the warping effects of disinformation, and long-standing inequity. In the print pages of the Columbia Journalism Review, we’ve looked at a media ecosystem confronting the realities of our distressed planet and the people who inhabit it. First, in the spring, was the climate issue. E. Tammy Kim turned her attention to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, keeper of the Doomsday Clock and the only outlet whose approach to the climate crisis is explicitly existential. “Nuclear can do us in in an afternoon; climate change will take much longer,” Kennette Benedict—the Bulletin’s former director and publisher, who oversaw the inclusion of climate change in the clock-setting—told Kim. “The two crises,” Kim observed, “are now an inseparable apocalyptic pair.” Emily Atkin, the author of a daily climate newsletter called Heated, shares that sense of alarm: “I knew the truth about climate change. And the truth was we were running out of time.” In a column, Atkin explained why she had tossed aside the rules of dispassionate reporting in favor of more assertive language: “My climate grief regenerated as rage, and my writing became better, more honest, and more fulfilling.” Michael Specter, who has been covering... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-12-18 13:00:43 UTC ]