Falling Short

Journalists increasingly consider climate change to be important, but newsrooms are still figuring out how to navigate the beat. What counts as success? The number of stories published, the size of a team, the extent to which climate reporting is integrated throughout a newsroom?

CJR conducted a survey of twenty newsrooms and reviewed data from George Mason University to measure the gaps in consistent climate coverage and to understand why they persist.

 

“This is still a subject that remains a far-off thing for many people. It’s hard to make it immediate.”

—Curtis Morgan, The Miami Herald

about the numbers In 2018, the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication conducted a survey of more than a thousand journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Radio Television Digital News Association, and the Society of Environmental Journalists. For the purposes of CJR’s analysis, we excluded SEJ in our discussion of the survey.

 

 

Akintunde Ahmad, Lauren Harris, and Savannah Jacobson are CJR Delacorte Fellows.