Environmental Journalism Center

Ask most any news manager, and he or she will tell you that the environment is no longer a hot story. But ask the public and you will hear a very different response.

One reason for this discrepancy may be that the public has very different views about what constitutes an "environmental story." In newsrooms, we still view coverage of the environment in traditional ways: the birds and bunnies pieces, the recycling stories, the "jobs versus the environment" stand-offs. But out there, the times have changed.

The stories that the public cares about today are health, consumer and investigative stories. Today's environmental stories are about our quality of life: our children's health, the traffic we endure, the places we live, work and shop, the air we breathe, the water we drink -- the points at which the environment touches our daily lives.

Stories about why our children have learning disabilities, why there is so much traffic, why our downtowns are dete-riorating, why cases of asthma are on the rise, why the weather is changing -- these are today's environmental stories. They are about people, about families, about communities.

Public demand for these stories is high. Yet, localizing a big environmental story, finding local contacts and translating conflicting science and statistics can be a very tough assignment. Helping your community understand how the changing environment has a local impact is an important and challenging task.

To help reporters, producers and news directors meet this challenge, RTNDF created the Environmental Journalism Center in 1991. The goal of the Center is to accurately inform reporters about environmental, science and health issues and to help you cover them in informed and compelling ways.

The Environmental Journalism Center serves as a clearinghouse of information for reporters covering the environment on television news and for general assignment reporters, producers, editors and writers assigned to cover environmental stories. The Center seeks to link journalists to sources of credible information and support materials for their stories. Most important, the Center acts as a facilitator of dialogue on key issues. Its goal is to put the tools needed to understand environmental issues into the hands of as many radio and television news professionals as possible so that they may make their own informed journalistic decisions.

The Radio and Television News Directors Foundation is a 501(c)(3) which promotes excellence in electronic journalism through research, education and training for news professionals and journalism students. RTNDF's programs are supported entirely by charitable contributions from individuals, corporations and foundations.

For more information, call 800.80.RTNDA.