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Notes for Andrew Revkin’s lecture at the 2013 Asahi World Environmental Forum, Tokyo, Japan.
"The Daily Planet" - An exploration of issues and opportunities arising in conveying environmental
news as both the media and the environment enter a period of unprecedented and unpredictable
change. In his 30th year as a science writer, Andrew Revkin of The New York Times and Pace
University discusses how journalists and journalism can remain a vital and valued guide in a world in
which information is free and overabundant.
The Daily Planet I’m speaking about today is not the newspaper where Superman
worked.
(DC Comics)
It’s the world as we perceive it through media. And it’s hard to say which is changing
more quickly – the global environment or the technologies and techniques that are
used to convey the state of the world to the public.
Way back in the 20th century, things seemed so simple. News happened, reporters
reported, and the front page of the New York Times or a trusted television
anchorman said, “That’s the way it is.”
That’s not the way it is now. I’ll focus on science and related policy issues because
that’s been my arena for 30 years now. For nearly all of that time, I’ve focused on the
human relationship to the climate system. It was a one-way relationship through
nearly all of our history. Now it’s a two-way relationship. I started in the 1980’s with
nuclear winter, the theory that fires after a nuclear war would chill the Earth -- then
quickly began focusing on global warming.

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Just a decade ago, for a given issue, research was undertaken, papers written, press
releases prepared, and a related story composed by a reasonably trained science
reporter. When news broke, whether it was the wreck of the Exxon Valdez or the
release of a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there
was a decent chance someone who knew about oil toxicity or the heat-trapping
properties of CO2 would report the story.
Newspapers had the resources to send reporters to the far ends of the Earth, as The
Times did in 2003 when I got to camp on drifting, cracking North Pole sea ice with a
research team.
1985 1988

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That still happens, but less and less. Specialized professional journalists now occupy
a shrinking wedge of a fast-growing pie of light-speed media. This reality threatens
to erode the already limited public appreciation of science and the state of the
planet.
There are still models that can succeed, but they are very different. My Dot Earth
blog illustrates some possibilities. In 2009, this climate scientist, Andy Bunn from
Western Washington University, invited me to join him and students on a research
trip to Siberia to study warming permafrost. I couldn’t go because of the cost, but I
encouraged his team to send photos and audio recordings of their description of the
work.
The result wasn’t journalism, and it wasn’t a press release. It was a partnership in
which I curated content and presented the story of their work to the public.
On a complicated, fast-forward planet enveloped in information, journalists who
thrive will be those who offer news consumers the same sense of trust that a skilled
mountain guide provides to climbers after an avalanche. A sure trail cannot be
guaranteed, but an honest effort can.
Walter Cronkite’s signoff, “That’s the way it is,” no longer applies. The relevance and
authority of a news outlet will be based less on an established media brand and
more on the reputation it develops through the scrutiny of the crowd.

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A case in point in America is Inside Climate News, a young Web site employing
enterprising journalists that won a Pulitzer Prize, the top honor in American
journalism, for its investigation of oil pipeline problems. The site is supported by
grants and donations.
As in this case, journalistic effectiveness and impact can still come through hard
digging and a “scoop,” but also through collaborative networks in which insights
flow in many directions.
Dot Earth doesn’t exist in a vacuum but benefits from, and offers benefits to, a
network of other bloggers. This is what some call “collective intelligence.”
debategraph.org
The Harvard Internet analyst and writer David Weinberger distilled this in the
subtitle of his fascinating new book “Too Big to Know”:
Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are
Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

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The ultimate expression of this networking comes on the terribly named tool called
Twitter. Sure, much of what’s there is noise about Justin Bieber or Kim Kardashian.
But there are ways to cut through the clutter and build communities and clarity.
One key is the hashtag:
The simple norm of putting a # (pound sign) in front of a phrase or abbreviation
creates a beacon in the darkness for people focused on a particular question. The
hashtag was invented by Chris Messina, then working for the software company
Mozilla.

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Now hashtags are building global discussions on a wide array of important issues,
from the frontiers of online journalism to next steps for agriculture.
And they’re becoming a tool in education, with a good example being #birdclass, the
tag used by students in a bird biology course taught by University of Connecticut
biology professor Margaret Rubega to mark their “homework” – the tweets they
post when they witness interesting bird behavior.
My students use #PaceBlog and #pacedoc for our courses on blogging and
documentary film. Our class that created a documentary on innovations in shrimp
farming could be followed through #paceshrimp.
It’s also important to note that online video and blogs have allowed students to
directly contribute to fostering environmental understanding, as we did with this

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film and others. Next year’s will be on Brazil’s efforts to “green” the World Cup and
Olympics.
None of this is easy, of course. The Web is a fire hose of information.
Readers have to learn to discriminate between reliable sources of information and
those offering more spin than substance. Here’s what that mix looks like when the
issue is global warming. There’s something for everybody.
Also, everything that I and others write on climate change is just a tiny subset of the
overall flow of news, most of which has nothing to do with improving the planet.

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That previous slide – all that debate about global warming – is almost invisible amid
the other news that dominates our field of view. The Newsmap.jp Web site is an
excellent, if depressing, tool for tracking what’s in the headlines.
But the shifting, shrinking role of conventional media also presents a great
opportunity – and responsibility – for scientists, their universities, agencies or
funders. More and more are realizing that the old model of putting out a press
release and waiting for a reporter to call has less and less value when they can
communicate directly with the public about science that matters.
Here are some innovations.
One of the main ways the U.S. Ambassador to Nepal, Scott DeLisi, reaches out to
people there is on Facebook:
Climate change is only one of many planet-scale risks that societies face. You
probably remember the meteor explosion over Russia last February.
NASA has harnessed a network of amateur astronomers to help track and report on
asteroids that might someday strike Earth – and debunk hype when it pops up on
Twitter. @Asteroidwatch has more than 1 million followers.

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Many environmental fields have similar social networks – composed of bird
watchers, hunters and fishermen, farmers, weather forecasters, students and
teachers – who can help convey and clarify information.
The explosion of tools for creating graphics and video also allows anyone to select
the ideal medium for a message. Have a look at this Facebook conversation. What’s
different about it?
It was created by an art student in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Its mix of humor and visuals
helped the World Wildlife Fund build concern for endangered species.
Adam Nieman, a British illustrator with a doctorate in science communication, is
adept at turning data into images that force the mind to consider familiar ideas in
new ways – for instance, by viewing the volume of the atmosphere and the world's
liquid water as spheres adjacent to the planet.

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The most powerful capacity of the Web comes from a networked approach to
communication. I write a lot about earthquake risks and how to limit losses if the
worst happens.
In my reporting I learned of the innovative building designs developed by Santiago
Pujol, an engineer at Purdue University. He’s demonstrated that just rearranging
common building materials and layouts can make a structure far safer than
traditional approaches using the same materials.
I enlisted my older son, Daniel, when he was a sophomore at Pace University to
create an animation to show how this works. So an engineer, a student using special
effects software and a blogger did something together that none of us could do
alone.
Because he demonstrated his abilities early on, Daniel is now working on the next
“Planet of the Apes” movie.
One of the freshest approaches I’ve seen to conveying a vital scientific and statistical
idea came from Norwegian TV, in a simple animation showing, through an overhead
view of a man walking a dog, the difference between trend and variation.
Quake risk + Purdue engineer +
Pace University sophomore =

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I’d like to close with one more example of how government agencies and media can
team up help us all recall that, amid the rush of daily life, we are on a living planet
that is very small and truly awesome when seen from afar.
Here’s a video clip taking you from one such view, the famous Earthrise photograph
taken by NASA astronauts orbiting the moon in 1968, to an astonishing video
version of the same scene shot from the Kaguya Lunar Explorer satellite in 2007.
Working from the classroom to the newsroom and beyond, we have an unparalleled
opportunity to foster a culture of collaborative communication that can help sustain
a thriving, human-populated planet for many, many generations to come.