This post was originally published on this site
EDITOR’S NOTE: In early February, we told you about an exciting opportunity to report more deeply and effectively on climate change: an invitation to news organizations to team up with scientists, other journalists, and a range of experts as part of a new Covering Climate Collaborative led by the Local Media Association. The LMA has now announced the first set of nearly two dozen newsrooms that have signed on to the project. You’ll see some familiar names here, including colleagues from the local TV news world. The association’s chief innovation officer, our former Knight-Cronkite News Lab colleague Frank Mungeam, has the details in a guest post that’s also a passionate argument for local journalists — including the journalists in your newsroom — to lead the way in covering the climate crisis. It’s not too late to join this effort. What better time than Earth Day to think about it?
–Andrew Heyward, Senior Research Professor, TV News
Breaking news: We face a climate “emergency” according to everyone from the heads of the European Union to the Pope. That realization can be overwhelming. After all, climate change is a planet-sized problem. But we see and experience the effects of climate change locally.
That’s why local reporting is the most direct way to connect people in our communities to the real-world impacts of climate change. It’s also the most direct path to empower communities with reporting on solutions, and meaningful actions we can take individually and collectively.
Local media outlets looking to