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Are Environmental Journalists Becoming an Endangered Species?

Peter Dykstra, the senior executive producer of CNN's Science, Tech, and Weather Unit, and his science team recently got laid off. Dykstra, currently a Wilson Center public policy scholar, is concerned about the future of science and environmental reporting.

Wilson Center Public Policy Scholar Peter Dykstra spent 17 years working at CNN, most recently as senior executive producer of CNN's Science, Tech, and Weather Unit. He supervised a staff responsible for covering the traditional sciences, technology, the environment, space, and weather for the news outlet's television, internet, and radio formats.

In December, he and the rest of his unit received pink slips. CNN's move reflects a growing trend: In these tough economic times for traditional media, news outlets are reducing their staff, particularly those reporting on subjects that appear to generate less revenue. As Dykstra prepares to participate in a February 12 seminar at the Wilson Center on emerging trends in science and environmental journalism, he said that many of his fellow journalists fear losing their jobs.

Dykstra is now spending two months at the Wilson Center looking at how environmental reporting is adapting to the rapidly changing media landscape. "There is a huge gap in the way climate change is portrayed and perceived in the media in America," Dykstra said. "Strong linkages are played out in policy so whether the media takes the consequences of climate change seriously is important."

The implications come at a time when the U.S. president's policy on climate change may change dramatically, he said. A changing climate could exacerbate many problems: loss of habitat, pollution, and conflict over resources, among them. It begs the question: Why is traditional media so quick to dismiss environmental reporting? Dykstra added, "If the media is not a player, the politics will never be there."

Since the 1970s, said Dykstra, environmental news has had about five peaks lasting a year or two. Reporting on environmental issues increased two years ago following Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but then waned. "Interest in the environment is cyclical." said Dykstra. "No one has hit on a way to sustain interest in it."

Climate change, for example, is a gradual process that evolves over decades, which makes framing the issue quite challenging for environmental reporters. "I told my staff, ‘if you tell environmental stories right and fairly, we'll look smart 20 years from now,'" said Dykstra. "But television [and the news in general] is an instant gratification business."

Despite increased political activity on, and public curiosity about, environmental issues, media coverage of such issues has diminished. In the revenue game of television ratings and instantly trackable website hits, many news outlets find they are left with few alternatives.

At CNN, Dykstra was executive producer of two recent investigative documentaries, The Truth about Global Warming and Broken Government: Scorched Earth. His work has won many awards, including a 1993 Emmy Award, a 2004 Dupont-Columbia Award, and a 2005 Peabody Award. He currently writes three weekly columns for Mother Nature Network.

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