Environment Reporters in the 21st Century
". . .a broad, insightful history of environmental reporting and a case study of two environmental stories from conception to publication. The hard truth that shapes the book is that though it is becoming more important for citizens to understand environmental issues, the decline of newspapers and of television news limits the resources available for covering those issues. How the environment will be covered in the Internet age is a question for the next study."—C. A. Bily,Choice“More than sixty years after Kreighbaum, the research team of David Sachsman, James Simon, and JoAnn Valenti performed a similar valuable service for journalism. . . . Their answers will become an important part of the historical record in our understanding of American journalism. As the country attempts to inform itself about huge environmental stories, such as the BP oil spill, their results are informative. . . . This is perhaps one of their most significant findings: modern journalists share many characteristics except additional education in the sciences. . . . As the media industry in general, and environmental journalism in particular, undergoes perhaps its most significant moment of convulsive change since the era of the printing press, these two books offer an important snapshot in time that will prove valuable to those who attempt to understand what happened and why.”—Mark Neuzil,Journalism History“The time is well overdue for a data-based cataloging of who ‘out there’ in the core of professional journalists is covering science-related topics, what their qualifications are, what motivates them, how they go about their jobs, an dhow they deal with everyday conflicts in their work.Environment Reporters in the 21st Centurytakes an admirable first step in that direction. . . . The authors are to be particularly commended for their research.”—Garrett J. O’Keefe,Science Communication