After experimenting with a variety of quick-hit approaches to environmental coverage, a four-year-old online news startup focused on climate change wants to strike out in a slower, more involved reportorial direction.
SolveClimate News announced Tuesday that it had hired an executive editor, Susan White, and changed its name to InsideClimate News “to better reflect the investigative mission it will pursue under her leadership.” The addition of White, formerly a senior editor at ProPublica, is yet another milestone for the outlet whose evolution has exemplified the winding road of Internet publishing.
In 2003, the site’s publisher, David Sassoon, was working with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as a grantee, doing research about how saving energy and reducing emissions could help businesses boost their bottom lines. In its infancy, SolveClimate News was an outgrowth of this research and an attempt to elevate the media conversation. Sassoon felt businesses that were saving a lot of money through smarter energy practices were not getting enough attention.
“It was a product of its time,” he said in a recent interview, referring to 2007, when he and managing editor Stacy Feldman launched the site. “You had every sector weighing in on how to reduce emissions and solve the climate issue: industry, business, unions, farmers, investors.”
Nonetheless, global warming coverage was at a high following the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, and SolveClimate was doing “derivative journalism,” as Sassoon called it. “We were commenting and amplifying, aggregating the reporting of other people,” he said.
The rapid-reaction strategy was an effort to draw people to the outlet’s more substantial reporting: a section about different voting constituencies’ points of view about climate, but “that part of the site was completely dead,” according to Sassoon, who has since taken this section down. “We were finding that the only way to get people to read us is by writing something every day,” he said. “We got swept into something we weren’t ready for.”
For six months, he and Feldman poured most of their energy into building traffic, trying their best to get onto Digg, a website that ranks web stories by popularity and can boost traffic. They wrote opinion pieces and commentary, even venturing into snark, “the currency of the realm,” as Sassoon put it, though he was never totally comfortable with opining.
“After six months, we were exhausted and a little bit confused,” he said, adding that he began to feel like the work wasn’t making a difference. “We soon realized there are lots of news organizations that cover the first cycle news really well, but what’s missing is the depth.”
A year in, Sassoon and Feldman changed tack. They began to produce only original reporting, and hired a third, full time employee. In 2009, SolveClimate began sharing content with Reuters, which Sassoon described as a “watershed moment” for the site. “It validated our decision to move in this direction,” he said.
The partnership, formalized a year later, not only increased SolveClimate’s visibility, but also served as a great conversation starter. To expand the site, Sassoon had to expand the funding, and he was looking for support beyond the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which was, and still is, one of SolveClimate’s principal benefactors. The site attracted support from the Marisla Foundation. In 2010, it received a grant from The Energy Foundation, which allowed reporter Elizabeth McGowan to write forty-six articles about environmental issues role in the midterm election.
Still, Sassoon wanted the site’s reporting to go even deeper. For the past year, he searched for an editor that could make that happen. In February, he called White, whom an internship applicant had listed as a reference. They started comparing experiences in online publishing and realized they had similar opinions about the industry. White mentioned she was moving and therefore leaving ProPublica, and Sassoon saw the editor he had been looking for.
Yet another site wresting the news to support a particular political view and pre-determined solutions to as yet controversial science surrounding the question of the causes of perceived climate changes and the proposed solutions to or mitigation of those changes will not add much to the greater knowledge of its readers.
The artificial fight staged over the Keystone pipeline by so-called environmental groups, reminds one of the fictional organizations and lawyers in Michael Crichton's book, State of Fear.
Canada is going to develop the tar sands--period. The oil extracted is going to be sold and turned into the fuels that the world presently needs. A pipeline is going to be built to transport that oil to market. Nothing, short of an act of God, is going to change any of that. That is the story you should be covering, then maybe all that energy going into fighting the pipeline might be put to use doing something that will make a difference.
What to protest is a lesson I learned in my youth, fighting against the war in SE Asia. We, my friends and fellow travelers, wasted untold effort fighting the wrong fights with the wrong tactics. Today's 'greens' are making the same mistakes -- fighting the Keystone pipeline is one (of many).
#1 Posted by Kip Hansen, CJR on Fri 9 Sep 2011 at 04:18 PM
Kip
It is exactly because of the point of view on climate science that you and many other citizens hold that we have a long list of climate science links on our home page. The space is valuable real estate but we find it a good investment. It saves us from distraction, and allows you to educate yourself further, or to take up your objections with the National Science Foundation, the US Navy, the Department of Energy, the US Department of Agriculture, Oxford University and many other institutions. They have come to a clear understanding of man-made climate change and the need to respond to it. They are not espousing a political position, any more than we are, or any more than a cardiologist who thinks high cholesterol leads to heart disease, or an oncologist who understands smoking causes cancer.
The battle over the development of oil sands/tar sands and the permitting of the Keystone XL pipeline is one of the most important debates the nation is currently facing. We are bearing witness to the search for solutions that wisely balance both energy and environmental security. I think you may be misunderstanding not only science but democracy, too, if you think this important struggle is nothing more than third-rate fiction.
#2 Posted by David Sassoon, CJR on Sat 10 Sep 2011 at 04:06 PM
Right on, Kip. It's hard to believe more people don't realize the truth like you do. Fossil fuels are there for taking, and we need to just man up and take it all. Just like we should've pursued our war against Vietnam all the way, which is exactly what Nixon wanted. But Nixon made the mistake of listening to that pinko pansie scardie-pants Kissinger, and I'll be darned if we're not making the same mistake now, listening to those eco groups who'd rather sit around in tents with their green thumbs in their mouths instead of blowing up mountains for coal or punching holes in the ground, pouring down a little diesel and sucking back up some nice black oil. Who's scared of a little heat anyway? With enough coal & oil, we can run our air conditioners all we want. So again, Kip, more power to ya. Drill baby drill. Yeaaah.
#3 Posted by Steve, CJR on Tue 1 Nov 2011 at 03:13 AM