October 2020 CrainsNewsPro.com Remote Skillset Tips A SPECIAL REPORT When Traveling Isn’t an Option Pushing Past Barriers Page 8 Alternative Paths to Climate Change Scoops Environmental Injustice Tackling Racism In Stories & Newsrooms Page 14 SEJ Celebrations On Two Fronts The 30-Year Mark and This Year’s Honorees Page 18 From Pythons to Nuclear Plants Mario Alejandro Ariza’s Miami Book Journey Page 34 The unified voice of the automotive industry working to create a cleaner, safer, smarter future. www.AutosInnovate.org @AutosInnovate Facebook.com/AutosInnovate Alliance for Automotive Innovation FROM THE EDITOR CrainsNewsPro.com How to Kill a T-Shirt As journalists worked overtime covering a host of harrowing disasters in recent months, Dan Shelley was battling for them on another front. e executive director of the Radio Television Digital News Association, and CONTENTS some of that organization’s other leaders, made personal pleas to a handful GETTING AROUND TRUMP ................... 4 of ecommerce executives, including Je Bezos, asking them to take down Environmental Reporters T-shirts and other merchandize with the words: “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Share Different Tactics Some Assembly Required.” e how-to-kill-a-journalist type of merch rst gained notoriety at REMOTE TECHNIQUES ......................... 8 a Donald Trump rally late in the 2016 election cycle. And it still keeps The Best Ways to Tackle showing up on Etsy, Walmart, eBay and Amazon’s sites. “It’s like Whac-A-Mole. Every time Stories in the Home Offi ce they pop up, we’re trying to get them down,” Shelley said. Mostly, they’ve succeeded. TV SHOW EVOLUTION ........................ 12 As Shelley wrote in a letter to Etsy CEO Josh Silverman, “More than 800 journalists have Nature Programming reported being physically assaulted, threatened, harassed and otherwise impeded” this year. In the COVID-19 Era at's according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. “ e overwhelming majority of these incidents have occurred since the late-May death of George Floyd.” ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM ................ 14 e RTDNA’s e orts increases my already deep gratitude not only for that organization, but IJNR CEO Dave Spratt others as well. As Celia Wexler’s cover story makes clear, journalists covering the environment On an Insightful Workshop face increasing roadblocks as they try to uncover the truth. e Society of Environmental CONNECTED DISASTERS ................... 18 Journalists has had their backs for 30 years now. Its awards; most auspicious anniversary; and Mike Cavender on How the conference are all focuses in this issue. Virus and Climate Link Up ere’s also an excellent article from Dave Spratt, CEO of the Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources, who shares some perspective on the thorny issue of environmental racism. READYING FOR BOISE ........................ 20 SEJ Is Already Planning for And circling back to the RTDNA, Mike Cavender has contributed an insightful column about Its 2021 June Conference how COVID-19 and environmental coverage relate to each other. Also check out Debra Kaufman’s story on how to improve reporting skills while social SEJ’S 30 YEAR MILESTONE .............. 24 distancing; Marc Berman’s update on nature programming; and Mario Alejandro Ariza’s Big Challenges Still Ahead, amusing and passion- lled column about how his new book on Miami’s environmental Many Achievements Behind misfortunes came to be. CREAM OF THE CROP ......................... 25 It seems like there’s never been a more critical time to join each other’s camp res and help Winners of SEJ’s Hotly each other out. For some, it’s a matter of life and well being. Sought-After Awards — Janet Stilson, Editor MIAMI CLIMATE DILEMMA .............. 34 Mario Alejandro Ariza on the Long Road to His New Book ADVERTISING SALES Ph: (212) 210-0748 Executive Producer: EDITORIAL OFFICES NewsPro (ISSN 2151-1764), Volume 11, Issue Jeff Reisman, [email protected] (212) 210-0748 Phone: (212) 210-0748 3, is published regularly at Crain Communi- Producer: cations Inc., 685 Third Avenue, New York, NY Publisher: Fawn Lopez Danny Schreiber, [email protected] (503) 723-9688 10017. Periodical postage pending at New Editor: Janet Stilson Production Management: Robert Hedrick, Jamie Pendley York, NY, and additional mailing of ces. POST- MASTER: send address changes to NewsPro, NewsPro® is a registered trademark of Crain Communications Inc. Circulation Dept., 1155 Gratiot Ave., Detroit, MI 48207-2912. Visit us online at CrainsNewsPro.com NEED AN INFORMED FOR YOUR STORY ON PRODUCT SCIENCE, S BENEFITS & TRENDS? eaning ivÌ i£ÓÈ PHONE: ÓäÓ°ÈÈÓ°Óx£ÇEMAIL: i`>JVi>}ÃÌÌÕÌi°À} ONLINE: Vi>}ÃÌÌÕÌi°À} October 2020 | NewsPro | 3 COVER STORY Blocked, But Resolute Three Environmental Journalists Find Their Way Around Increasing Barriers as They Expose New Information By Celia Wexler PHOTO BY: ADAM SCHULTZ / BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT SCHULTZ ADAM BY: PHOTO “I DON’T KNOW THAT JOE BIDEN HAS A FIRM GRASP OF THE NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT, BUT HIS STAFFERS DO," SAID ADAM ATON OF E&E NEWS. ATON'S PRIOR WORK COVERING THE DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR COMES IN HANDY AS HE COVERS BIDEN ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL. f you are an environmental reporter, you would not be blamed for is is the story of three environmental reporters and how they calling 2020, “e Year of Living Dangerously.” e pandemic have fared this year. Each covers the news from a di erent vantage stalked your every move in the eld, and may have benched you point, and each has faced new challenges this year. Iin your bedroom o¦ce for months at a time. In 2013, Elizabeth McGowan won a Pulitzer Prize for her You might have faced in-person or online harassment from reporting on an oil spill in Michigan, “e Dilbit Disaster: Inside climate change skeptics like President Donald Trump, who has the Biggest Oil Spill You Never Heard Of.” She’s also author of the called journalists “the enemy of the people.” book “Outpedaling ‘e Big C’: My Healing Cycle Across America,” And then there was the grinding cycle of bad news as the current released in September by Bancroft Press. White House unraveled years of environmental protections, so many A reporter based in Washington, D.C., for years she covered the that e New York Times and other media outlets started to keep federal government, “running around Capitol Hill, chasing after running tallies of rules gutted or eliminated. legislators, tracking pieces of legislation.” 4 | October 2020 | NewsPro But the Trump administration’s unraveling of environmental by the threatened loss of funding, and then-EPA administrator protections was too much for her, she said. Citing New York Times Scott Pruitt, questioned about it during a meeting of the Senate reporter Lisa Friedman, who once said that her work had become Environment and Public Works Committee, said that the “writing obituaries” for the environment, McGowan said she “voted cancellation was “under reconsideration.” e Bay Journal did not with my feet.” lose its EPA support. As she explained, “At this stage in my career, I need to see some But that hasn’t solved other problems, Wheeler said. Like many solutions.” She found “the action” at the state level. Governors are journalists, Bay Journal reporters are nding it increasingly di¦cult investing in renewable energy, reducing methane emissions, turning to get access to information from federal agencies. their electric grids into “100% clean energy” and looking at the Wheeler chairs the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Freedom transportation sector, another major source of pollution. of Information Task Force and has heard many complaints from “is is where things can actually happen,” McGowan said. reporters who have been stonewalled. Agency responses to Freedom She acknowledges that of Information requests “have really slowed down” during Trump’s state policies likely are term and access hadn’t been “that great” during the Obama years, not as e ective as federal he said. reforms would be. But “COVID-19 has added an extra dimension,” Wheeler added. state e orts are “the lifeline Agencies have been using the pandemic as an excuse for responding that’s keeping the country to requests for information more slowly or not at all. progressing in these bizarre e task force has been busier this year than any previous year times.” in his memory. But he perceives that as a good sign. It means that While the Trump White reporters are not giving up when they are denied information. House has not been shy e pandemic has also meant that public meetings and conferences about criticizing the media, are taking place virtually, and that’s also presented di¦culties, Wheeler things got even more said. Often when agency personal for the nonprot public information o¦cers news organization, the Bay withhold information, Journal, where Tim Wheeler it had been possible to is senior writer and associate buttonhole agency sta at editor. meetings, or to meet the ELIZABETH MCGOWAN citizens who raise concerns at public hearings. Even getting an identication Climate change efforts at the for a citizen or the spelling of a last name is impossible state level are “the lifeline that’s when it happens remotely, keeping the country progressing he said. Despite the risks, Wheeler is going out into the eld in these bizarre times.” TIM WHEELER wherever he can. “Especially -Elizabeth McGowan, independent journalist now, we can’t forget the communities a ected by environmental injustice,” he said. “We need to be reaching out to them in a safe way, nding out how they’re doing, and whether their stories are being told.” e publication, which covers environmental issues crucial to the ere’s nothing apolitical about the work Adam Aton does. Chesapeake Bay watershed, reaches 100,000 readers a month. Since He’s covering the presidential campaign for E&E News, focused its founding in 1991, the Bay Journal has relied on the support of the on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.