HOW to MAKE CLIMATE COVERAGE PERSONAL, RELEVANT, and URGENT Contributors the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University
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REPORTS WINTER 2020 NIEMAN REPORTS NIEMAN REPORTS VOL. 74 NO. 1 The Nİeman Foundatİon for Journalİsm TO PROMOTE AND Harvard Unİversİty ELEVATE THE STANDARDS One Francİs Avenue OF JOURNALISM Cambrİdge, Massachusetts 02138 VOL. NO. 74 1 WINTER 2020 REAL COVERING THE CLIMATE CRISIS THE CLIMATE COVERING AND PRESENT THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY HARVARD AT THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION DANGER HOW TO MAKE CLIMATE COVERAGE PERSONAL, RELEVANT, AND URGENT Contributors The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University www.niemanreports.org Michael Blanding Gina McCarthy (page James Painter (page (page 8) is a journalist 16) is president and 18) is a research and author with work CEO of the Natural associate at Oxford’s that has appeared in Resources Defense Reuters Institute for The New York Times, Council. She is a the Study of Journalism Wired, The New former administrator and a senior teaching Ann Marie Lipinski Republic, Slate, and of the Environmental associate at the other publications. Protection Agency. University of Oxford. James Geary Jan Gardner Eryn M. Carlson Shannon Osaka John D. Sutter (page Tim Rogers (page 26), Dan Zedek (page 18) has an MPhil 22), a 2019 Knight a 2014 Nieman Fellow in Geography at the Visiting Nieman Fellow, and former Central One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, University of Oxford. is a climate analyst and America reporter, is a MA 02138-2098, 617-496-6308, Her journalism has contributor for CNN. producer and corresp- [email protected] appeared in Grist, the He also is an Explorer ondent for Univision’s LA Review of Books, with the National “Real America with Copyright 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. and Mother Jones. Geographic Society. Jorge Ramos.” Periodicals postage paid at Boston, Massachusetts and additional entries / 617-496-6299, [email protected] Subscription $25 a year, Jonathan Zittrain Tim Hwang (page 34) John Bowers (page $40 for two years; (page 34), director of is the former director 34) is a researcher add $10 per year for foreign airmail. the Berkman Klein of the Harvard-MIT interested in Single copies $7.50. Back copies are available from Center for Internet and Ethics and Governance disinformation and the Nieman office. Society, is a professor of AI Initiative and intermediary liability at Harvard’s schools of was the global public at the Berkman Klein Please address all subscription law, government, and policy lead on artificial Center for Internet and correspondence to: engineering/science. intelligence at Google. Society at Harvard. One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 and change of address information to: P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 ISSN Number 0028-9817 Postmaster: Send address changes to Nieman Reports P.O. Box 4951, COVER: Saeed Khan/ Manchester, NH 03108 Gabe Bullard (page Ricki Morell (page AFP via Getty Images 38), a 2015 Nieman 46) is a freelance writer Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) Fellow, is the senior who has written for Red skies and is published in March, June, editor at WAMU in publications including ravaged forests: September, and December by the Nieman Foundation Washington, D.C. and The New York Times, the aftermath of at Harvard University, was previously director The Boston Globe, The 2020 bushfires in One Francis Avenue, of digital content for Wall Street Journal, and Australia’s Snowy Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 the NPR show “1A.” The Hechinger Report. Valley Nieman_winter2020_cover-final-Feb11.indd 2 2/19/20 4:39 PM Embers fly toward a photographer shooting the 2018 Camp Fire—the deadliest wildfire in the state’s history—in Paradise, California Contents Winter 2020 / Vol. 74 / No. 1 Features Departments Reclaiming the Right to Practice 26 From the Curator 2 Journalism in Latin America Ann Marie Lipinski Real and Present Danger 8 Independent journalists in Nicaragua, El With help from innovative media such as Salvador, Bolivia, and Chile are nding new Live@Lippmann 4 infrared photography, virtual reality, and ways to hold power to account Tanzina Vega, host of “ e Takeaway” and more, journalists are telling powerful By Tim Rogers former New York Times race reporter, on stories of the climate crisis’s impact improving diversity in the newsroom By Michael Blanding What Should Newsrooms 34 Do About Deep Fakes? Niemans@Work 6 Climate Must Be Part 16 e dangers may be overblown, but A deepfake video as a teaching tool, a of Every Story journalists still need to consider how to beat that straddles divides in the U.S., an A former EPA director’s advice on how handle uncon rmed information independent news site in Turkey to make climate journalism compelling By John Bowers, Tim Hwang, By Gina McCarthy and Jonathan Zittrain Nieman Notes 54 The Everyday Impact 18 A Listening Audience is 38 Sounding 56 of the Climate Crisis A Loyal Audience Anne Godlasky Using new forms of storytelling Harvard Business Review, e Economist, to make climate coverage stick and other magazines are nding some By James Painter and Shannon Osaka success with narrated articles By Gabe Bullard Nikole Reporting the Climate Crisis 22 Hannah-Jones Through (Really) Slow Journalism How Did We Get Here? 46 recruited historians to A new time-lapse documentary will To bring more context to coverage, help develop chronicle four communities on the front journalists are increasingly looking to her “The 1619 lines of the climate crisis every ve years what happened in the past Project” idea until 2050 By Ricki Morell for The New By John D. Sutter York Times TOP: NOAH BERGER NOAH TOP: MORAN/REDUX BOTTOM:KARSTEN Magazine nieman-winter-2020-inside-final.indd 1 2/13/20 4:22 PM not our job to fix your business model.” In recent years, a new crop of journalism startups has begun changing the reporting landscape in Chicago. ProPublica, perhaps the nation’s most We Need a Strategy to Bridge the decorated nonprofit investigative news organization, opened its first regional Chasm Between the Now and the Next newsroom in Chicago, ProPublica Illinois. The perilous state of the Chicago Tribune is a story City Bureau, a collaborative covering that is happening across the country and a reminder of Chicago’s south and west sides; Borderless, a magazine reporting on immigration; the need for creativity and urgent civic investment Block Club, a neighborhood news site °± ²³ founded by former DNAinfo editors; and TRiiBE, a digital platform to “reshape the narrative of Black Chicago,” have all contributed to both diversifying and filling some gaps left in the news reports of the n October 2010, I was having dinner newsroom strip-mining than investing, city’s traditional media. La Raza, the Polish with Paul Salopek, sorting through the acquired a third of Tribune Publishing Daily News, and the Korea Times are news industry’s vanishing support for Company shares and is poised for majority among the newspapers serving Chicago’s foreign reporting, his work. “I have an control. A new round of newsroom large ethnic communities. And the Tribune idea,” he said, and on the back of our re- buyouts has already begun and there is and its tabloid competitor, the Chicago Iceipt he drew a crude map of a 21,000-mile nothing in Alden’s ownership record to Sun-Times, combine to make Chicago one reporting walk across the globe. suggest they would stray from a playbook on a single-digit list of U.S. cities with two It was preposterous and inspiring, one Nieman Lab contributor Ken Doctor has daily papers. journalist’s effort to sustain a vital form described as “unapologetically cutthroat.” But that paragraph you just read is of storytelling by slowing the breathless That formula, imposed recently at the deceptive. The small reporting staffs of news cycle to the pace of a walk. After two Denver Post, features hedge fund gluttony all of those startups combined cannot yet years of planning, he set out from Ethiopia. in three familiar acts: slash newsroom replicate even the shrunken capacities Nineteen million footsteps and hundreds staff, disinvest in digital, hike costs for of the Tribune, which in some cases has of stories later, he is in Myanmar and still dwindling subscribers. Absent initiatives amplified nonprofit newsroom stories walking. to grow the industry, Alden specializes by serving as a reporting and publishing Finding our restaurant receipt recently in milking its decline. Targeted cuts that partner. In a remarkable concession, a host was a reminder of both the fragility and eliminated sections, merged suburban for a leading Chicago radio station recently inevitability of journalism. Salopek’s bureaus, stripped copy desks, outsourced described the dependency that area radio newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, had Washington coverage, or collapsed foreign and television news programs have long shuttered its foreign bureaus, a storied bureaus have all been exacted. What comes had on the Tribune. service more than a century old, and from next is marrow. “If you lose the Tribune, electronic that sprung reinvention in the form of the Alden has been publicly silent on its media loses too,” said John Williams, Out of Eden Walk. But while Salopek is one plans, so as a twisted thought experiment, a talk show host for WGN-AM (once of the most accomplished journalists of his let a journalist try to imagine a defense. a Tribune Company property whose generation—working for the Tribune he Chicago was once home to 11 daily call letters stood for World’s Greatest won Pulitzer Prizes for both explanatory newspapers and this is but a final chapter Newspaper). “Radio and TV stations read and international reporting—he had no in managing print’s decline. The Tribune the paper every day, 24 hours a day now, illusions of replacing the journalism that itself historically benefitted from the to see what the Tribune is saying.