Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon sank and oil began erupting into the Gulf of Mexico in late April, the 105-year-old Audubon magazine did something that it had never done before—it sent a blogger to cover a breaking news event in real time.
Not that the historic first was the publications’s primary objective or even on its editors’ minds. “It never even occurred to me,” said editor-in-chief David Seideman when asked about setting the new precedent. “We were just so swept up in the moment.”
Indeed, Seideman continued, “This oil spill is our Iraq War. It’s a very big story because we’ve done a lot of work along the Mississippi Gulf. It’s one of the most important bird areas in the country and one of the most environmentally rich areas on Earth. So, we have deep roots in that part of the country.”
Those roots are apparent in Audubon’s special report on “The BP Gulf Oil Disaster” (“‘Spill’ seems much too dainty,” Seideman wrote in his editor’s note), which appears in the September-October issue. The report contains a selection of dispatches from the magazine’s Gulf Coast blogger, Justin Nobel (who was an intern at Audubon’s New York offices before being sent to cover the spill), in addition to three longer features.
Audubon doesn’t usually cover breaking news, Seideman said. “On the other hand, we had access that others didn’t through the Audubon Society’s programs there—to boats, to island, to sanctuaries. We have really good relationships with the Fish & Wildlife Service and the federal government. So that was another reason we did this—we could probably get to places that other reporters couldn’t.”
Nobel’s blog dispatches for the magazine (a full collection of his posts can be found here), as well as one of the features in the special report, relied heavily on experts from the society.
“Being under the wing of Audubon really helped, as there were numerous situations, especially early on, where access was difficult if not entirely off limits,” Nobel wrote in an e-mail, replying to questions about the experience. “Most people knew the Audubon name and respected it, they knew the organization deals with birds, and so it made sense for us to be there. The National Audubon Society had two staff members in the Gulf from early on, Melanie Driscoll and David Ringer. They served as fixers, providing me with a rich background on Louisiana politics and environmental issues and connecting me to a variety of contacts.”
Still, with so many reporters converging on the Gulf, finding fresh information seemed to be on the mind of Ted Williams, Audubon’s longtime “Incite” columnist, as he traveled to the region. The feature he ended up writing for the magazine’s special report, “Black Bayou,” led with a provocative synopsis of the challenge, and how he overcame it:
Until I got to coastal Louisiana in mid-June, covering BP’s oil gusher was an assignment I’d have loved to pass up. Like all fish and wildlife advocates, I’d been sickened by what I’d read in print and seen on television. I wasn’t looking forward to subjecting myself to the mess in person. And how was I supposed to come up with material the American public hadn’t been fed ad nauseam?
What I found is another toxic gusher, one of misinformation spewing from politicians puffing and preening for voters, alleged experts with questionable credentials vying for the limelight, and talking heads reporting or concocting news depending on availability. Much of my research involved unlearning things I thought I knew…
As depressed as I was when I left Louisiana, I was less so than when I arrived.
Williams’ view that the direst predictions of government, academia, and the media have not come to pass jibes with previous work by Time’s Michael Grunwald, as well as a front-page article in The New York Times’s Science Times section on Tuesday (although, ironically, the Times carried a piece the day before about a lack of financial support for scientists studying how the spilled oil is impacting the Gulf).
The worst contamination left by the BP disaster may well have been to the press, rather than the Gulf itself. The failure of the press follows the pattern of Columbine, from which readers were left with the residue of judgmental attitudes and falsehoods, not verified information.
Journalism in America started as a literary pursuit which tired to filter and refine facts, not conduct furious competition to find ways to titillate an audience conditioned to get its emotional jollies through the creation of false rage.
There was a time when a young journalist would receive a dressing down for not establishing the authority and credibility of any person being quoted. Now the basis is to find the most outrageous and accusatory sound bites and rush them into publication.
As some of the more astute critics have predicted, the age of information would become the age of misinformation by servicing the pleasures of personal bigotry and prurience.
The legacy media that has retained its legacy, such as .Audubon, do not rush into publication and are the only sources that can inspire any trust.
#1 Posted by David Newquist, CJR on Fri 17 Sep 2010 at 01:07 PM
In the 1960s a proposal to dam the Hudson River at Storm King Mountain in the Hudson Highlands was fought and stopped. Unfortunately the Cold War had brought the nickel-cadmium contamination to the village just down the river, Cold Spring, NY, in the production of batteries for the NIKE missile defense system. It's been cleaned up twice since, the former "last use" "school book repository" broken up and with the former West Point Foundry Cove marsh, hauled up and out on the rail-bed that formerly carried bridge works a\nd building parts, in the early 20th c., the Chicago Bridge Co. In the 19th c. 2 or 3 thousand cannons and other ironwork came out on the rails of the iron industry centered in the historic West Point Foundry. The marsh there was once a part of Audubon, I read working there for the EPA, part of the Academy's only Hudson River east-side holding, Constitution Island, where a Great Chain once stretched to block the British Navy from a "divide and conquer" of the colonies and a number of, later fallen, forts built. Today the West Point Foundry Historic Site belongs to Scenic Hudson, Inc., who fought the dam, and the marsh, administered by the State of New York. Perhaps a similar course might be taken to benefit Louisiana.
#2 Posted by George Myers, CJR on Tue 28 Sep 2010 at 03:55 PM
I like the idea of pursuing unusual paths and sources. Given the size of the event, it would only make sense. Audubon's local connections certainly helped, but I think the main point here is how to build them as a non-local media professional.
While working for UNC-Chapel Hill's Powering a Nation (www.poweringanation.org), my reporter colleagues spent almost two months in Plaquemines, Louisiana, immersing themselves on the lives of local fishermen and residents at large.
As a result, they managed to outscoop major news organizations in breaking BP's worker contract containing a gag order (http://bit.ly/bPDAtb). Aside from receiving honorable mentions in the Huffington Post and Poynter, this effort shows the potential of genuine, almost ethnographic approaches to journalism.
#3 Posted by Luca Semprini, CJR on Tue 26 Oct 2010 at 03:04 PM