A New Commitment to Covering the Climate Story

A New Commitment to Covering the Climate Story

A New Commitment to Covering the Climate Story

More than 300 news outlets sign on for #CoveringClimateNow.

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Editor’s Note, 9/23/2019: More than 300 news outlets around the world with a combined audience of more than a billion people have signed on for Covering Climate Now.

Editor’s Note, 9/16/19: More than 250 news outlets around the world with a combined audience of more than a billion people have signed on for Covering Climate Now.

Editor’s Note, 8/28/19: More than 170 news outlets from around the world with a combined audience of hundreds of millions of people have signed on for Covering Climate Now, a project co-founded by Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation, aimed at strengthening the media’s focus on the climate crisis. Covering Climate Now now ranks as one of the most ambitious efforts ever to organize the world’s media around a single coverage topic. A full list of participating outlets follows; to learn more, please email: [email protected].

Can we tell the story so people get it?”

That’s the mission TV newsman Bill Moyers urged at the launch of Covering Climate Now, a project aimed at breaking the climate silence that has long prevailed within too much of the news media. Cofounded by The Nation and Columbia Journalism Review, in partnership with The Guardian, Covering Climate Now aims to convene and inform a conversation among journalists about how all news outlets—big and small, digital and print, TV and radio, US-based and abroad—can do justice to the defining story of our time.

Today, Covering Climate Now is proud to announce the first batch of news outlets participating in this effort. More than 60 outlets have signed on so far, with more added every day. There are TV networks (CBS News) and local TV stations; major newspapers in the United States (The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times) and abroad (Asahi Shimbun and La Repubblica, the biggest newspapers in Japan and Italy, respectively); eminent specialist publications (Nature, Scientific American, Inside Climate News, Harvard Business Review); distinguished digital publications (HuffPost, Vox, The Intercept, Slate); regional outlets (The Texas Observer, the Colorado Springs Gazette); public radio stations in New York City; Washington, DC; Chicago; Philadelphia; Boston; New Orleans; Louisville; and San Francisco) and public radio programs (Marketplace, Science Friday, The World); popular magazines (Maclean’s of Canada, Newsweek Japan); leading individual and institutional voices (author Bill McKibben, the radio and TV program Democracy Now!, Channel 4 UK correspondent Alex Thomson, veteran TV meteorologists Dan Satterfield, Mike Nelson, and Paul Gross); and many more.

Each of these outlets has committed to running one week of focused climate coverage to begin September 16 and culminate September 23, the day of the landmark international Climate Action Summit hosted by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in New York. We’re not here to tell people what to write or broadcast. All that’s required is for each outlet to make a good-faith effort to increase the amount and the visibility of its climate coverage—to make it clear to their audiences that climate change is not just one more story but the overriding story of our time. The point is to give the climate story the attention and prominence that scientists have long said it demands so that the public and policy-makers can make wise choices. Can we, in other words, tell the story so people get it?

We see Covering Climate Now as a fulfillment of journalism’s most sacred responsibilities, which are to inform people and foster constructive debate about common challenges and opportunities. Arguably, no problem in today’s world is more challenging, or offers brighter opportunities than climate change. In a landmark report last October, scientists with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that humanity had just 12 years to slash heat-trapping emissions in half or else face catastrophic temperature rise and the record-breaking extreme weather it unleashes. Meanwhile, spectacular advances in solar, wind, and energy efficiency illustrate how doing right by the climate can make our societies better, not worse, if we’re smart about it.

To elevate climate coverage, as the Covering Climate Now collaboration aims to do, is no more of a value judgment than it is to sideline such coverage. For many years now, most of the news media, at least in the United States, has done the latter. The major TV networks devoted more air time in a week this spring to a new royal baby in Britain than they did in the entire year to the climate crisis story. When last October’s IPCC report was released, 28 of the 50 biggest US newspapers didn’t bother to tell their readers about it.

Here are the names of the journalistic leaders that have signed on to the Covering Climate Now initiative. If you don’t see your favorite news outlets among them, ask those outlets to get in touch with us. We would welcome their participation.

We can be reached at [email protected].

LIST (updated August 28, 2019)

Columbia Journalism Review (Cofounder)

The Nation (Cofounder)

The Guardian (Lead Media Partner)

Wire Services and News & Photo Agencies

Agence France-Presse (AFP)

Bloomberg

Getty Images

Newspapers

The (Colorado Springs) Gazette

The Christian Science Monitor

The Daily Hampshire Gazette

DigBoston

The Minneapolis Star Tribune

The National Catholic Reporter

The Oklahoman

The Philadelphia Inquirer & Inquirer.com

The Portland Press Herald (Maine)

The San Francisco Chronicle

The Seattle Times

The (New Jersey) Star-Ledger  &  NJ.com

La Nacion (Argentina)

The Queen’s Journal (Queen’s University, Canada)

The Toronto Star (Canada)

The Varsity (The University of Toronto, Canada)

La Tercera (Chile)

The Hindustan Times (India)

The Times of India (India)

La Repubblica (Italy)

The Asahi Shimbun (Japan)

The Nepali Times (Nepal)

The New Zealand Herald (New Zealand)

Público (Portugal)

The Straits Times (Singapore)

The Mail & Guardian (South Africa)

El País (Spain)

Trouw (The Netherlands)

The i (United Kingdom)

Magazines, Journals, and Digital News Sites

The Alpinist

Bay Nature

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Bustle

BuzzFeed News

The Chicago Review of Books

Circle of Blue

Civil Eats

Climate Desk

CQ & Roll Call

The Daily Beast

DCist

DeSmog

EcoRI News

Ecosystem Marketplace

EcoWatch

Ensia

Green Philly

Grist

Harvard Business Review

Honolulu Civil Beat

HuffPost

IEEE Spectrum

The Intercept

In These Times

InsideClimate News

IPS Inter Press Service

Jolon Indian Media

Journal for the Planet

Lapham’s Quarterly

Literary Hub

Mongabay

Mother Jones

New Mexico In Depth

The New Republic

Newsweek

Nexus Media

The Oklahoma Observer

PassBlue

PublicSource

Quartz

The Real News Network

Renewable Energy World

Rethinking Schools

Rock and Ice

Rolling Stone

Science

Scientific American

Sentient Media

Silica Magazine

The Shoestring

Slate

Sludge

StateImpact Pennsylvania

Talking Points Memo

Teen Vogue

The Texas Observer

The Tuscon Sentinel

Truthout

Vanity Fair

Vice

Vox

VTDigger

The Weather Channel Digital

WhoWhatWhy

Yale Climate Connections

Yale Environment 360

Croakey Health Media (Australia)

Eureka Street (Australia)

Revolve (Belgium)

My News Brasil (Brazil)

The Coast (Canada)

Corporate Knights (Canada)

Kingstonist News (Canada)

Maclean’s (Canada)

The National Observer (Canada)

Planet Friendly News (Canada)

The Sprawl (Canada)

Taproot Edmonton (Canada)

TVO (Canada)

The Tyee (Canada)

Ojo al Clima (Costa Rica)

K-News.dk (Denmark)

Solidaritet (Denmark)

Clean Energy Wire & Klimafakten.de (Germany)

Correctiv (Germany)

KlimaSocial (Germany)

Spektrum der Wissenschaft (Germany)

People’s Archive of Rural India (India)

The Wire (India)

Newsweek Japan (Japan)

Morocco World News (Morocco)

Newsroom (New Zealand)

The Spinoff (New Zealand)

Stuff (New Zealand)

Denník N (Slovakia)

The Daily Maverick (South Africa)

WOZ Die Wochenzeitung (Switzerland)

De Groene Amsterdammer (The Netherlands)

The Confidential Report (Togo)

NewsLab Turkey (Turkey)

BusinessGreen (United Kingdom)

Climate News Network (United Kingdom)

The Conversation (United Kingdom)

Immediate Media (United Kingdom)

Nature (United Kingdom)

Physics World (United Kingdom)

Television & Multimedia

CBS News

Democracy Now!

PBS NewsHour

The Years Project & Years of Living Dangerously

WFAA (Dallas-Forth Worth, Texas)

WJCT (Jacksonville, FL)

WNET’s Peril and Promise (New York, NY)

News18 (India)

RTÉ’s Brainstorm Project (Ireland)

TG1/RAI (Italy)

TVNZ’s 1 News (New Zealand)

Politically Aweh, TV news show (South Africa)

TV3 & Catalunya Ràdio (Spain)

Swedish Television / SVT (Sweden)

Radio & Podcasts

Climate One (podcast)

Elemental: Covering Sustainability (regional collaborative of NPR stations in Denver, CO.; Phoenix, AZ; and Los Angeles, CA)

Global GoalsCast (podcast)

Hudson Mohawk Radio Network (WOOC, WOOS, and WOOA, in upstate NY)

KALW (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)

KPCC (Los Angeles, CA.)

KQED (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)

KUOW (Seattle, WA)

Marketplace Tech, by American Public Media

Nevada Public Radio

Science Friday, by WNYC Studios

The Allegheny Front, on WESA (Pittsburgh, PA)

WAMU (Washington, DC)

WBEZ (Chicago, IL)

WBUR (Boston, MA)

WFPL (Louisville, KY)

WHYY (Philadelphia, PA)

WNYC (New York, NY)

WRAL (Raleigh, NC)

WWNO (New Orleans, LA)

The World, by PRI and the BBC (United Kingdom)

Institutional

Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism

Boston University

Climate Matters & Climate Central (George Mason University Center for Climate Communications, and Climate Communications)

Journalist’s Resource (The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, at Harvard University)

Solutions Journalism Network

Yale Climate Change & Health Initiative

Insper (Brazil)

blogdroiteuropéen (Europe)

Netzwerk Weitblick (Germany)

Manchester University (United Kingdom)

The Lancet Countdown on Climate Change and Health (United Kingdom)

Independent Journalists (outlets & affiliations listed for identification purposes only)

David Biello (TED Talks)

Rex Dalton (Formerly of Nature)

Mike Favetta (Founding meteorologist, WeatherPrep)

Dan Gardner

Paul Gross (Chief meteorologist, WDIV in Detroit, MI)

Stephen Leahy (Freelance biosphere journalist)

Bill McKibben

Mike Nelson (Chief meteorologist, Channel 7 in Denver, CO)

Don Paul (Contributing meteorologist, The Buffalo News)

Jake Price

Yereth Rosen (Formerly of the Anchorage Daily News)

Benjamin Ryan (The New York Times)

Dan Satterfield (Chief meteorologist, WBOC in Salisbury, MD)

Peter Schwartzstein (freelance environmental & Middle East correspondent)

Alex Steffen

Isabel Seta (Brazil)

Sean Holman (Canada)

Tracy Sherlock (Freelance journalist, Canada)

Manka Behl (The Times of India, India)

Preeti Jha (India)

Marcello Rossi (Freelance environmental reporter, Italy)

Angelina Davydova (Freelance journalist, Russia)

Alex Thomson (Channel 4 News, United Kingdom)

Michael Tatarski (Vietnam)

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