{"id":3698,"date":"2019-05-30T16:42:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-30T16:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/?p=3698"},"modified":"2019-05-30T16:42:23","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T16:42:23","slug":"war-all-the-time-climate-reporters-weigh-coverage-quantity-against-quality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/2019\/05\/30\/war-all-the-time-climate-reporters-weigh-coverage-quantity-against-quality\/","title":{"rendered":"War all the time? Climate reporters weigh coverage quantity against quality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Columbia Journalism Review<\/a><\/em>
by Abby Rabinowitz<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019VE LATELY BEEN LOSING MYSELF<\/strong> in The New York Times <\/em>archives, scrolling through front-page coverage of World War II. Days with no landmark battles, such as January 23, 1943\u2014when, as the paper reported top-right, Allies made progress in Kharkov and Tripoli, but the Nazis built two U-boats for every one the Allies sank. Center bottom, as always: \u201cWar News Summarized.\u201d Below the fold, a Netherlands crown princess gave birth on \u201cDutch soil\u201d in safe Ottawa. The pages portray a United States facing down an existential threat. On such days, even gossip stories were stories about the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the climate crisis is\u00a0no less an existential threat<\/a>. To limit the worst effects of the climate crisis, we have\u00a0under eleven years<\/a>\u00a0to decarbonize our economy, mobilizing, as\u00a0Bill McKibben<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0others<\/a>\u00a0have urged, on the speed and scale of WWII. One might expect to see that mobilization effort in the US media more often; climate change, after all,\u00a0frames every beat<\/a>. A threat of such breadth, teen climate activist Greta Thunberg once said, should preclude us from talking, writing, or reporting about anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet my news feed tells a different story. Scrolling through my Apple news feed on a Sunday in April, climate coverage was hard to come by. I saw stories about a rabbi shot at the Poway synagogue, who had delivered an inspiring sermon<\/a>; <\/em>Trumprallying supporters<\/a> with calls of \u201cfake news\u201d; and a teen whose hepatitis may have been induced by green tea<\/a>. Other top stories included a piano prodigy turned viral sensation<\/a> and an American tourist charged with killing a Dominican national<\/a> in Anguilla. The \u201cScience Section\u201d led with UFOs from The Atlantic, <\/em>followed by the oldest tree, dark matter, the FCC\u2019s SpaceX plans, wondrous volcanos, someone eating a live rattlesnake, and research indicating the world is sadder and angrier than ever before. At last, I hit a climate piece, from Wired: <\/em>a story on plants genetically modified to absorb more carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I repeated the exercise with the Times<\/em>\u2019s news app: three articles on Biden\u2019s run, Barr\u2019s Congressional testimony, the Sri Lanka Easter attacks, the California synagogue shooting, and, finally, a three-day-old story,  \u201cCan Humans Help Trees Outrun Climate Change?<\/a>\u201d To be fair, the Times<\/em> had that week run an ambitious slate of climate stories around Earth Day, as well as a climate-themed issue of its magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/em>leads US popular newspapers in climate coverage, at arguably our best climate-coverage moment ever. A\u00a0recent study<\/a>\u00a0of five major US newspapers counted more climate stories in March 2019 than almost any month since 2000. Of those stories, more than half\u2014a grand total of 423\u2014came from the\u00a0Times<\/em>. Read more …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Columbia Journalism Reviewby Abby Rabinowitz I\u2019VE LATELY BEEN LOSING MYSELF in The New York Times archives, scrolling through front-page coverage of World War II. Days with no landmark battles, such as January 23, 1943\u2014when, as the paper reported top-right, Allies made progress in Kharkov … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-11-09 03:14:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3700,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3698\/revisions\/3700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}