The document discusses several topics related to environmental journalism and its influence on law and policy: 1) Major environmental news events in the past have led to significant legal and policy changes, such as the Clean Water Act and Superfund laws. 2) Environmental journalism faces challenges like declining resources in the news industry and the complexity of issues that are difficult to simplify into "good vs bad" stories. 3) There is a debate within environmental journalism between objective reporting and advocacy-based reporting that promotes environmental causes. The field is shifting toward greater advocacy as new media allows for more opinion-based content.