Most environmental reporters are as likely to be found down in a cave,
out in the ocean or up in a tree as at a desk in the office.
That
doesn't mean, however, that they aren't technologically inclined. Some
of the best environmental reporters are the ones who depend most
heavily on technology. They take their laptops with them everywhere.
They navigate complex electronic databases. And nowadays, lots of them
maintain blogs.
Andy Revkin is one of them. As a science and environmental reporter for
The New York Times,
he's been deployed three times to the Arctic, where he
filed stories from his laptop via a satellite phone. While he was there,
Revkin kept a blog.
"It's
an important way to convey how I do my journalism as I'm doing it,
helping create more transparency and credibility, in my mind," he told
Poynter Online in response to e-mailed questions.
Blogs are central to Revkin's work. He writes them and reads them. Maybe you should think about doing likewise.
The blogosphere is expanding quickly. The founder of
Technorati, a search engine for blogs, recently said that
175,000 new blogs are created everyday. That's two new blogs every second, he said. And the population of environmental bloggers is growing in stride.
A Technorati search for postings that included the word "environment"
yielded 2.2 million results. When I searched for blogs with that word in their title,
I found roughly 1,700. I'll admit my methods are imperfect. Some of my results -- including
a blog called Abandoned Stuff -- bore no resemblance to anything most of us might consider an environmental blog.
But
the evidence serves my simple point: that there is a growing crowd of
people putting their thoughts about the environment into words. On the
one hand, the torrent of information broadcast by bloggers supplies an
inexaustible flow of editorial inspiration. On the other, the sheer
volume makes finding unique and compelling tips, trends and story ideas
extremely difficult.
Before you start poking around the blogoscape like a
blind mole rat -- yes, that is a real creature --
take a look at the Society for Environmental Journalists' list of environmental blogs. This impressive compilation is just one of the many resources that the
SEJ -- which is holding
its annual conference in Vermont this weekend -- maintains on its Web site. It's a great list, and it's worth checking out.
But
it's a little long. In the interest of saving you some time, I asked
Revkin to point me toward some of his favorite blogs. And I added a few
that I found interesting.
"I mainly use blogs to feel out the
boundaries of debate on issues where environmental science intersects
with policy," Revkin wrote. Here are some of the places he likes to
visit.
- RealClimate -- A climate science blog maintained by real climate scientists.
- The Gristmill -- A "source of scintillating environmental news and commentary" maintained by Grist, an online environmental magazine.
- ShopFloor.org -- A business blog maintained by the National Association of Manufacturers that focuses on "issues affecting manufacturing, small businesses, free markets,
outsourcing, energy prices, taxes and staying competitive in the
business world."
I
spent an evening sifting through the blogs in the SEJ list. Here are a
few I found interesting. All of them appear to post updates regularly.
- commonground -- A frequently updated sustainability blog kept by a Southern California freelance writer.
- OneAtlantic -- An environmental news blog that focuses specifcally on the Atlantic Coast.
Those ten should be enough to get you started. If you're craving more online environmental edification, stop by
Poynter's NewsU and enroll in
Covering Water Quality: All You Need to Know. And, you know, I can't help but post these last three blogs.
The names cracked me up.
When you have a chance, check out
Idealbite,
Sustainablog and
Gooznews.
