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SEJournalSpring 2008, Vol. 18 No. 1
In this issue:
Tarbell: first to take on big oil
Environment books of the year
Oil on the Brain tracks crude to gas
Conference agenda sneak peek
FOIA successes
A quarterly publication of the
Society of Environmental Journalists
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SEJournalSpring 2008, Vol. 18 No. 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS featuresNation’s First Investigative Reporter
Drilled Deep on Big Oilby Steve Weinberg page 4
Publishing Paradoxby Bill Kovarik page 7
Market Warms to Climate Change Books in 2007by Bill Kovarik page
11
SEJ Gains Ground for Press Freedoms, Informationby Joseph A.
Davis page 12
Inside Story: Lisa Margonelli Interview page 18by Bill
Dawson
columnsScience Survey: New Government Effort to ProduceMore Data
on Toxic Chemicalsby Cheryl Hogue page 9
The Beat: Long-form Stories— Enterprise &
Investigative—Still Making Markby Bill Dawson page 13
SEJ News: Annual Conference page 14
President’s Report: Don’t Leave Climate Change, Environmentto
“Boys on the Bus”by Tim Wheeler page 21
E-Reporting Biz: OK, It’s Time to Play the Climate Change Cardin
the Campaignby Bud Ward page 22
Media on the Moveby Mike Mansur page 23
Bits and Bytes: Web Tools Help Negotiate the Information
Explosionby David Poulson page 25
Research News Roundup: Studies Look at News Bias &
Internet’sImpact on Coverageby Jan Knight page 27
Reporter’s Toolbox: Slideshows Can Highlight Big Projects,Offer
Readers Moreby Casey McNerthney page 29
Bookshelf Book Reviews begin page 31
SPRING 2008 SEJournal 3
COVER PHOTOThe Trans-Alaska Pipeline inwinter near Fairbanks,
Alaska.Photograph by Lance Hankins © 2007,www.lancehankins.com via
www.flickr.com
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The mission of the organization is to advance public
understanding of environmental issues byimproving the quality,
accuracy and visibility of environmental reporting.
Editor: Mike Mansur
Assistant Editor: Bill Dawson
Design Editor: Linda Knouse
Photo Editor: Roger Archibald
Section Editors
BookShelf: Elizabeth Bluemink
Research Roundup: Jan Knight
E-Reporting Biz: Bud Ward
On-line Bits & Bytes: Russ Clemings
Reporter’s Toolbox: Robert McClure
Science Survey: Cheryl Hogue
SEJ News: Chris Rigel
The Beat: Bill Dawson
Editorial Board
Robert McClure (chair), Elizabeth Bluemink, A. Adam Glenn, Bill
Kovarik,
Mike Mansur, David Sachsman, JoAnn M. Valenti, Denny Wilkins
SEJ Board of DirectorsPresident, Timothy Wheeler
Baltimore SunFirst Vice President/Program Chair, Christy
George
Oregon Public BroadcastingSecond Vice President/Membership
Chair, Cheryl Hogue
Chemical and Engineering NewsSecretary, Peter P.
ThomsonIndependent Journalist
Treasurer/Finance Chair, Carolyn WhetzelBNA
Future Conference Sites Chair, Don HopeyThe Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
James BruggersThe Courier-Journal
Chris BowmanThe Sacramento Bee
Jeff BurnsideWTVJ-TV
Dina CappielloClimateWirePeter Fairley
Independent JournalistRobert McClure
Seattle Post-IntelligencerMark SchleifsteinTimes-Picayune
Representative for Academic Members, Bill KovarikRadford
University
Representative for Associate Members, Rebecca
DaughertyIndependent Journalist
Founding President, Jim DetjenKnight Center for Environmental
Journalism, Michigan State University
Executive Director, Beth ParkeAssociate Director, Chris
Rigel
Visit www.sej.orgSEJournal (ISSN: 1053-7082) is published
quarterly by the Society of Environmental Journalists, P.O.Box
2492, Jenkintown, PA 19046. SEJournal accepts unsolicited
manuscripts. Send story ideas, articles, newsbriefs, tips and
letters to Editor Mike Mansur, Kansas City Star, [email protected].
The Society of Environ-mental Journalists (SEJ) is a non-profit,
tax exempt, 501(c)3 organization funded by grants from
foundations,universities and media companies, member dues and fees
for services. SEJ does not accept gifts or grants fromnon-media
corporations, government agencies or advocacy groups. Its
membership is limited to journalists, ed-ucators and students who
do not lobby or do public relations work on environmental issues.
For non-membersubscription information see www.sej.org under
publications.
SEJournal© 2008 by the Society of Environmental Journalists.
When Ida Minerva Tarbell beganher invention of investigative
report-ing slightly more than 100 years ago,that two-word
journalistic term so fa-miliar today did not exist. Neither didthe
term “environmental reporting.”
The book that locked in Tarbell’s contribution to contempo-rary
journalism does not look especially impressive today. It restson an
out-of-the-way shelf, one of millions of volumes in acavernous
university research library. Its green cover is faded now,after
decades of steady wear, occasional abuse, and, ultimately,lack of
use. It is still mentioned in early-20th-century-Americahistory
courses on campuses. But few have read it from beginningto end, all
815 pages of dense type.
This is a shame. The book is arguably the greatest work
ofinvestigative journalism ever written. The History of the
StandardOil Company, published in 1904, is its unprepossessing
title.
The book created a social maelstrom that built and
destroyedreputations, altered public policy, and changed the face
of thenation. This was the era of the great robber barons. Powerful
mencolluded to create even more powerful monopolies. By the dawnof
Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, however, there arose a cadreof
devoted journalists and publishers intent on uncovering the
perfidy of the economic juggernauts, including
corporateenvironmental degradation.
Tarbell worked as a staff writer for McClure’s Magazine,founded
by an energetic, determined Irish immigrant namedSamuel Sidney
McClure. The magazine succeeded during the1890s and into the new
century against huge odds. For readers ofmagazines circa 2008,
think of McClure’s as a combination of TheAtlantic, Harper’s and
Mother Jones.
A woman of formidable intelligence and character, Tarbelllabored
at a time when men dominated the realm of journalism.The tycoon
John Davison Rockefeller, born into a broken family,had built an
empire on black gold and had become the wealthiestindividual of the
Gilded Age. With impressive business savvy andupright character,
Rockefeller served as the guiding force withinStandard Oil Company,
the nation’s most sprawling corporate“trust,” a term out of fashion
today except as part of the word“antitrust.”
In many ways, it seems like Tarbell was destined to write
theStandard Oil exposé. She was born in northwestern
Pennsylvaniajust two years before the first major strike of
underground oiloccurred almost in her family’s backyard. The Drake
Well wassuch an extraordinary discovery for its time that Ida
Tarbellconsidered it a “sacred spot” from the moment she learned of
it asa child. Indeed, she tended to romanticize the Drake Well
4 SEJournal SPRING 2008
Nation’s
Feature
By STEVE WEINBERG
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discovery and what followedfrom it. She would write,“Here we
have demonstra-tions of the enterprise andresourcefulness of
Americanmen in adapting what theyknew to unheard-of
industrialproblems, of their patienceand imagination in adding
byinvention, by trial and error,a body of entirely newmechanical
and commercialadvices and processes.”
Tarbell’s emotionalattachment to the oil regionof her childhood
did notcompromise her accuracywhen writing about it. Schol-ars who
came after her haveverified over and over theaccuracy of her
accounts. Inthe year 2000, for example,Brian Black, a member of
thePennsylvania State Univer-sity history faculty, acknowl-edged
his debt to Tarbell’sresearch in his book Petrolia:The Landscape of
America’sFirst Oil Boom. “The writingand spirit of Ida Tarbell
roselike a beacon guiding mebeyond the romance andriches to the
human andnatural story available in theoil country of
Pennsylvania,”Black said.
(Not so incidentally, Black’s own book contains graphicaccounts
of how the exploration leading to oil boom towns harmedthe local
environment, sometimes beyond redemption. “Certainly,
residents of company orindustrial communities arebeneficiaries
of a living madefrom harvesting resources,”Black reflects, “but
they are alsosubject to the inevitable declineof their social and
naturalenvironment. Indeed, tradition-ally, these earliest
industrialcommunities have almostalways been abandoned by
theindustries that created them. Toooften a mode of production
orland use moves on, and thehuman communities are leftwith nothing
in a place that hasbecome desolate or evendangerously
contaminated.”)
Paul H. Giddens, a historyprofessor who became a Tarbellacolyte
after meeting her atAllegheny College, her almamater in Meadville,
Pa.,documented with precision hernever-ending fascination withthe
culture of oil in books suchas The Birth of the Oil
Industry.Giddens grasped that Tarbellcould never escape the
influenceof oil, a “strong thread weavingitself into the patterns
of her lifeever since childhood.” Heremotional and
intellectualinvestments in the oil culture ofher youth made it
impossible forher to ignore the colossus who
would soon dominate the oil industry, and all of American
life.Tarbell’s experiences growing up in the oil region of
Pennsylvaniawould make her confrontation with Rockefeller all the
more shot
SPRING 2008 SEJournal 5
First Investigative ReporterDrilled Deep on Big Oil
“A woman of formidable intelligence and character, Tarbell
laboredat a time whenmen dominated the realm of journalism.”
Finding a satisfying niche at McClure’s Magazine in New York
City, Tarbell workedlong hours as a reporter and an editor. Her
portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte andAbraham Lincoln made her a
household name and set the stage for the biggestinvestigation of
her career.
IIDAM.TARBELLCOLLECTION,PELLETIERLIBRARY,ALLEGHENY
COLLEGE
-
indeed with a capital “T.”BeforeherexposéofRock-efeller, she
researchedthe lives ofN a p o l e o nBonaparte andA b r a h a
mLincoln. Thebooks that arosefrom this researchconvinced her
thatTruth about the actions andmotivations of powerfulhuman beings
could bediscovered. That Truth, shebecame convinced, could
beconveyed in such a way asto precipitate meaningfulsocial
change.
Tarbell’s research into the life of Rockefeller convinced
herthat good and evil could be embodied simultaneously in
oneindi-vidual. Reducing Rockefeller to a symbol of good or evil
would
be a biographical sin in itself.Although Tarbell was at
timesruthless when chronicling Rock-efeller’s life, she did not
makethat mistake; she did not distorthis accomplishments into a
sen-sationalistic paradigm of goodor evil. In fact, she titled
thefinal chapter of her exposé “The
Legitimate Greatness of the Standard Oil Company.”Rockefeller
presented a substantial challenge to Tarbell.
Unlike Bonaparte and Lincoln, he was alive and at the zenith
ofhis power. He had no intention of letting a journalist—and a
merewoman at that—question the way he had amassed and used
hisfortune. Tarbell’s biggest obstacle, however, was neither
hergender nor Rockefeller’s opposition, but rather the craft of
jour-nalism as practiced at the turn of the twentieth century.
Sheinvestigated Standard Oil and Rockefeller by using
documents—hundreds of thousands of pages scattered throughout the
nation—and then amplified her findings through interviews with
thecorporation’s executives and competitors, governmentregulators
and academic experts past and present. In other words,she proposed
to practice what today is considered investigativereporting.
Indeed, she invented a new form of journalism.
The History of the Standard Oil Company influenced the
U.S.Supreme Court—where the justices mandated the breakup
ofmultinational trusts—as well as in the court of public
opinion,where Rockefeller’s reputation disintegrated. So far during
thetwenty-first century, no journalist’s exposé has led to the
breakupof Wal-Mart or Microsoft or led to Sam Walton or Bill
Gateslosing his sterling reputation as a private-sector demigod.
Plentyof journalists, however, have delved into these modern-day
trustsandtheir controlling founders, thinking that perhaps the
publishedresults will serve as the successor to The History of the
StandardOil Company.
SteveWeinberg’s narrative about the collision course between
IdaTarbelland John D. Rockefeller, Taking on the Trust, has just
been published byW.W.Norton.Weinbergwrote this essay exclusively
for SEJ.
through with drama later.Tarbell’s book, which began as a
McClure’s Magazine series,
brought her fame and established a new form of journalism
knownas muckraking. She became a model for countless journalists,
anddespite the passage of more than a century, her work remains
anexample of how a lone journalist can uncover wrongdoing.Moreover,
through her exposé, Tarbell forever tarnished thepeerless
reputation of Rockefeller.
Reading Tarbell’s exposé of the Standard Oil Company is
aremarkable experience; in many ways it seems that it could
havebeen composed only yesterday, not more than a century ago.
Themost dramatic of all her dramatic discoveries involved
thecollusion between Standard Oil and the railroads, a vital form
oftransportation back then. Many citizens and their
electedrepresentatives believed railroads should act in the public
interest,especially given that their tracks often ran through
previouslypublic land. But Rockefeller and his colleagues at
Standard Oilturned railroad officials into their minions, gaining a
significantcompetitive advantage as the behemoth corporation
shipped oiland its byproducts all over the nation and across
oceans.
The strangleholds that Sam Walton’s Wal-Mart and BillGates’s
Microsoft demonstrate in their business realms arereminiscent of
the sway held byRockefeller’s Standard Oil. Theenvironmental
consequences ofenergy exploration have notchangedmuch, either.
Tarbell’s book played a sig-nificant role in my owncareer. In
addition to practicingthe craft of investigative journal-ism since
1969, I have studied it carefully—in large part becauseI served as
a spokesman of sorts for that branch of journalismwhile serving as
executive director of InvestigativeReporters and Editors (IRE).
Based at the University of MissouriJournalism School, IRE serves
thousands of members around theUnited States and increasingly
around the world. The techniquesTarbell used to gather information
about a secretive corporationand its evasive, powerful chief
executive taught me that a talented,persistent journalist can
penetrate any façade through closereadings of government documents,
lawsuits and interviews withknowledgeable sources inside and
outside the executiveoffices.Tarbell’s methods have allowed me to
train investigativejournalists around the world while directing IRE
and ever since.
The most importantof many factors thatdrove Tarbell year
afteryear into the 1940s, heroctogenarian decade, canbe stated
simply: apassion to discover anddisseminate the truthabout
political, economicand social issues. Shebelieved that
researchcould lead to anapproximation of Truth,
Tarbell’s research into the life of Rockefellerconvinced her
that good and evil could beembodied simultaneously in one
individual.
Ida Tarbell rarely relaxed, and often shefelt guilty for putting
her work aside. Hersecond home, in rural Connecticut,which she
shared with her sister, pro-vided her a peaceful retreat for
writingand research away from the demands ofNew York City.
IIDAM. T
ARBELL COL
LECTION, PELLETIER LIBRARY, ALLEGHENY COLLEGE
Rockefeller, who believed that hisBaptist faith accounted for
muchof his success, strolled on Fifth Av-enue with his only son,
John Jr.,on Palm Sunday 1915.AM
ERICAN
PRESSASSOCIATION/COURTESY
OFTHELIBRARY
OFCONGRESS/RMP
ARCHIVE
6 SEJournal SPRING 2008
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The new SEJ book award, along with plans for anincreased
emphasis on environmental books at this year’s SEJannual conference
in Roanoke, VA, are reflections of an increasinginterest in
environmental book publishing among SEJmembers. Yet trends in the
national marketplace of ideas seemparadoxical.
Two environmental books have topped the bestseller list inrecent
years— Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Glenn Beck’sAn
Inconvenient Book. (See page 11). That both would rise to thetop of
the market may seem to be a bit of a paradox.
But here’s another puzzle. While environmental awareness isat or
near a peak, the number of new non-fiction environmentalbooks
published each year has declined. The apparent high-watermark was
2001, with 3,571 new books. In 2007, only 2,840 newenvironmental
books were published. (See page 8).
The slight declines may be temporary, or even irrelevant,
giventhe creativity, range and depth of recent new environmental
books.In recent years, new titles have reached from the comic to
thecosmic, from highly personal to social, and from individual
narra-tives of exploration to hardnosed scientific exposition.(See
Environmental Books of the Year 2007 page 8).
Slight as they might be, the numbers are a concern. It’s notjust
a reflection of the overall book market, according to ChuckSavitt,
president of Island Press, a non-profit publisher thatspecializes
in environmental areas.
“One would have thought, given the attention to climate andthe
resurfacing of environmental issues, that there would have beena
lot more interest in books on the subject,” said
Savitt.“Unfortunately, we haven’t seen it.”
Comparing the environmental book trends to overall trends inthe
book industry is not easy. The U.S. Census reports a modestone
percent annual increase in overall book sales for the past
fewyears, but the Book Industry Study Group estimates that
overallbook sales fell from 8.27 books per person in 2001 to 7.93
in 2006.
And according to the Department of Labor, the average
Americanhousehold spent more on reading ten years ago than today
($163 in1995 versus only $126 in 2005).
There are various theories for the mossbacked market
inenvironmental book publishing. Savitt believes it may be due
toissue fatigue and the easy availability of reference information
onthe web.
Literary agent Amanda Mecke of Litchfield, Conn., thinksthere
might have been a peak of interest around Al Gore’s bookand movie.
Now, the market may be going back to more of anequilibrium
point.
Photographer Gary Braasch has another perspective.“Environmental
books are always a hard sell — unless you are
Al Gore,” said Braasch, whose book Earth Under Fire takes
thecamera to the front lines of climate change.
“I have noticed during the Bush administration a downturn
inphoto requests on environmental subjects from magazines whenMr.
Bush started the war,” Braasch said. “I also experienced thisduring
his dad’s administration when the Gulf War started, and
thenrecently a slight uptick as the news about global warming and
thefailures of the Bush Administration in various programs
arebecoming better known.”
A few bright spots stand out for environmental bookpublishers.
Universities are ordering more environmental books,
even as supplementary texts for courses outside
environmentalscience. And environmental issues are getting more
respect fromreviewers at many major newspapers and magazines.
“There’s definitely an interest in climate (issues), but
peopleare not interested in reading more books that scare them,”
Savittsaid. “They get enough of that from newspapers and TV and
radio.”
What speaks to the market these days, Savitt and others say,are
books about action and personal experience.
In short, hope sells. Some examples:• Michael Schellenberger and
Ted Nordhaus argue in Break
SPRING 2008 SEJournal 7
Environment,a hot topic,addressed infewer books
publishingparadox
Feature
By BILL KOVARIK
continued on next page
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This list of books was not selected through any comprehensive
ormethodical review process but rather with the assistance of
openrecommendation from SEJ members on the SEJ listserve,
SEJ-Talk.
Peter Annin, Great Lakes Water Wars, Island Press
David Beerling, The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed
Earth’sHistory, Oxford University Press
Mark Bowen, Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on
Dr.James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming, Dutton
Gary Braasch, Earth Under Fire, University of California
Press
John D. Cox, Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change and What
ItMeans for Our Future, Joseph Henry Press
Gwyneth Cravens, Power to Save the World: The Truth AboutNuclear
Energy, Knopf
Kevin Danaher, Jason Mark and Shannon Biggs, Building theGreen
Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots, PolipointPress
Brangien Davis, Wake Up and Smell the Planet: The
Non-Pompous,Non-Preachy Grist (magazine) Guide to Greening Your
Day,Mountaineers Books
Devra Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer, Basic
Bill DeBuys, The Walk, Trinity University Press
Through that the environmental movement must focus onbuilding
the politics of shared hope rather than fear.
• Jay Inslee’s Apollo’s Fire includes strong narratives of
thingsbusinesses and communities are doing about climate.
• Penny Loeb’s Moving Mountains presents a dramaticnarrative
about women leading the fight against mountaintopremoval mining in
Appalachia.
• And Thomas Friedman’s Green is the New Red, White andBlue, due
out next August, is expected to focus on the
“greenestgeneration.”
Personal narratives have also proven fascinating toreaders.
Julian Crandall Hollick’s Ganga, about travelingalong the Ganges
River, and Peter Thompson’s Sacred Sea,about a journey to Lake
Baikal in Siberia, are recent ex-amples of the environmental travel
genre.
Some ideas seem natural, taking off so quickly thatthey become
part of the language. Michael Pollan’s book,Omnivore’s Dilemma, led
to a new word for local foodpreference, “locavore,” that became the
word of the year2007 for the Oxford American Dictionary.
New 2007 books also included exposés like MarkSchapiro’s
Exposed, about the lack of US regulation oftoxic chemicals and how
it affects U.S. trade relations.Also in the genre of investigative
journalism and historyare Devra Davis’ Secret History of the War on
Cancer
and Cape Wind by Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb.Inevitably,
some environmental books are aimed by
authors to sadden us or force us to contemplate elementsof the
natural world that are lost or at risk and, possibly,inspire
action. David Wilcove’s No Way Home: The De-cline of the World’s
Great Animal Migrations describes air,land and water migrations
from Alaska to the Serengeti.Similarly, Calum Roberts’ Unnatural
History of the Seadescribes the decline of the seas and fisheries
throughhistory.
Finally, if you are looking for a book that will evoke
depres-sion akin to a Eugene O’Neill theatrical production, nothing
thisyear could serve better than Alan Weisman’s The World
WithoutUs— a book that frankly contemplates the end of humanity
andthe eventual recovery of natural systems.
But wait. If hope sells, why is Weisman’s book doingso well? In
February 2008, it had an Amazon rank of 236.
It’s the perfect paradox.
Bill Kovarik, an SEJ board member, teaches
environmentaljournalism at Radford University.
Joseph F. C. DiMento and Pamela M. Doughman, eds.,
ClimateChange: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and
OurGrandchildren, MIT Press
Josh Dorfman, The Lazy Environmentalist: Your Guide to
Easy,Stylish, Green Living, Stewart, Tabori & Chang
John Duffield, Over a Barrel: The Costs of U.S. Foreign
OilDependence, Stanford Law Books
Kerry Emanuel, What We Know About Climate Change, BostonReview
Books
H. Bruce Franklin, The Most Important Fish in the Sea,
IslandBooks
Eban Goodstein, Fighting for Love in the Century of
Extinction:How Passion and Politics Can Stop Global Warming,
Vermont
Al Gore, The Assault on Reason, Penguin
Peter Grose, Power to People, Island Press
Paul Hawken, How the Largest Movement in the World Came
IntoBeing and Why No One Saw It Coming, Viking
Mayer Hillman, The Suicidal Planet: How to Prevent GlobalClimate
Catastrophe, Thomas Dunne Books
Gary Holthaus, From the Farm to the Table: What All
AmericansNeed to Know About Agriculture, Univ. of Kentucky
ENVIRONMENTALBOOKS OFTHE YEAR 2007(From the Environmental
History Timeline www.environmentalhistory.org)
8 SEJournal SPRING 2008 continued on page 10
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New Government Effort to Produce More Data onToxic Chemicals
We don’t have a lot of information about many of theindustrial
chemicals that are in our air, water and soil, or those thatare
increasingly found in our blood.
This dearth of data often leaves audiences hanging when
jour-nalists report about pollution and biomonitoring. Toooften,
scientists just can’t tell us what the presenceof Chemical X in our
bodies means.
This information is scarce in part becausetesting chemicals to
see if they cause toxic
effects — like cancer or birth defects — takes along time and is
expensive. For instance, an ex-periment to determine whether a
substance can causecancer in laboratory rodents costsbetween $2
million and$3 million and takes about two years to complete.
TheU.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), a worldleader intesting
chemicals, has done studies on onlyabout 2,500 substances over the
past 30 years.
But the situation is starting to change. In February, two
U.S.government research agencies agreed to collaborate on new
testingmethods that could revolutionize the field oftoxicology.
These new techniques are expected to helpscientists learn why some
chemicals make people sick.
Thecollaboration,betweentheNational
InstitutesofHealth(NIH)andtheEnvironmentalProtectionAgency,shouldproduceheapsof
informationabout tens of thousands of industrial chemicals. This,
in turn, could lead tothe regulation of more chemicals, invention
of safer substitutes, and,ultimately, healthier people living in a
healthier environment. It will alsoprovide loads of new data for
environmental journalists to use in informingthe public.
The federal effort is fundamentally changing how chemicalsare
tested for toxic effects. The new methods rely on human
cellscultured in laboratory dishes and computer technology to
rapidlyassess what causes toxicity in those cells. The buzzword
“high-throughput” is used to describe these new techniques. It
meansdoing lots and lots of small-scale tests really fast.
This marks a big shift from past practice. For
decades,toxicologists have studied the effects of chemicals by
feeding orinjecting laboratory animals – mainly rats and mice –
with a rangeof doses of a substance.
Researchers look for effects in the animals, such as weightloss
or a shorter life than their peers who didn’t get exposed to
thechemical (the “control” animals) or those in the experiment
thatgot a smaller dose. At the end of study, researchers examine
theanimals’ internal organs for possible problems. In
sometoxicology tests, rats or mice are given the chemicals and
theiroffspring are studied for harmful effects.
These traditional toxicology studies on animals, sometimescalled
in vivo techniques, take years to complete and are
extremelyexpensive. Animal welfare proponents find these studies
abhor-rent and lobby hard to stop them.
The new methods – called in vitro techniques – hold
promiseforscreening tensof thousandsofchemicals forpotentially
toxiceffectsandfor reducing the need to use animal testing. These
procedures allow
scientists to determine how genes, proteins and
biologicalpathways are influenced, for good or for bad, by exposure
tochemicals. This helps researchers to pinpoint the key steps in
thedevelopment of diseases such as cancer.
The collaboration is designed to vali-date the new methods for
toxicity testing.It will begin by focusing on chemicals thatalready
tested through traditional means.NTP, located at the National
Institute ofEnvironmental Health Sciences in
Research Triangle Park, N.C., and EPA arecontributing
traditional toxicity data on 2,800
chemicals to the project. The compoundsinclude industrial
chemicals and ingredients in pesticides,
cosmetics, plastics and herbal supplements.Government
researchers will use the new
techniques to figure out why these substances are toxic.The
effort will fine-tune thecomputerized tests and demonstrate that
theyare as good as, or perhaps better than,
experimenting on rats and mice.The National Human Genome
Research Institute, part of NIH in Bethesda, Md.,has the
equipment to run the “high-throughput”
tests. Until now, this NIH program has focused on testing
com-pounds that could prevent development of diseases like diabetes
orbreast cancer. In the new program, the research institute will
dothe opposite by studying exactly how toxic chemicals disturb
bio-chemical pathways and cause disease.
EPA expects to release the first comparisons of
traditionaltoxicity tests and results from the new procedures to
the public
later this year.
Cheryl Hogue reports from Washington, D.C.,for Chemical &
Engineering News.
SPRING 2008 SEJournal 9
MEDIA CONTACTS
Raymond MacDougallNational Human Genome Research Institute,(301)
402-0911 [email protected]
Robin MackarNational Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
and National
Toxicology Program, (919) 541-0073 [email protected]
Bob CassellEnvironmental Protection Agency
(202) 564-3326 [email protected]
Science Survey
By CHERYL HOGUE
Whew - just in time!I wouldn’t want tohidemy natural beauty
in a laboratory.
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Julian Crandall Hollick, Ganga: A Journey Down the Sacred
River,Island Press
Christopher C. Horner, The Politically Incorrect Guide to
GlobalWarming, Regnery
Joy Horowitz, Parts Per Million: The Poisoning of Beverly
HillsHigh School, Viking
Mark Harris, Grave Matters: A Journey through the ModernFuneral
Industry to a Natural Way of Burial, Scribner
Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendricks, Apollo’s Fire: Igniting
America’sClean Energy Economy, Island Press
Jonathan Isham and Sissel Waage, eds., Ignition: What You Can
Doto Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement, Island Press
Eugene Linden, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and
theDestruction of Civilizations, Simon & Schuster
Penny Loeb, Moving Mountains: How One Woman and HerCommunity Won
Justice from Big Coal, KY
Bjørn Lomborg, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide
toGlobal Warming, Knopf
Chris Mooney, Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics and the
Battleover Global Warming, Harcourt Inc.
Timothy Morton, Ecology Without Nature: RethinkingEnvironmental
Aesthetics, Harvard
Bill McKibben, Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook forTaking
Action in Your Community, Holt
Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities andthe
Durable Future, Times
George Monbiot and Matthew Prescott, Heat: How to Stop thePlanet
from Burning, South End Press
John R. Nolon and Daniel B. Rodriguez, eds., Losing Ground:
ANation on Edge, Environmental Law Institute Press
Michael Novacek,Terra:Our 100-Million-Year-OldEcosystem—and
theThreats ThatNowPut It at Risk, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Fred Pearce, With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear
TippingPoints in Climate Change, Beacon Press
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food And the
ComingCrisis in Agriculture, New Society
Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Penguin
Alan Rabinowitz, Life in the Valley of Death: The Fight
toSaveTigers in a Land of Guns, Gold and Greed, Island Press
Trish Riley, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Green Living,
Penguin
Callum Roberts, An UnNatural History of the Sea, Island
Press
Elizabeth Rogers , Thomas M. Kostigen, The Green Book:
TheEveryday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a
Time,Three Rivers Press
David de Rothschild, The Live Earth Global Warming
SurvivalHandbook: 77 Essential Skills To Stop Climate Change,
Rodale
William Ruddiman, Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How HumansTook
Control of Climate, Princeton University Press
David Sandalow, Freedom From Oil: How the Next President CanEnd
the United States’Oil Addiction, McGraw Hill
Debra Schwartz, Writing Green, Apprentice House
Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of EverydayProducts
and What’s at Stake for American Power, Chelsea Green
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Break Through: From
theDeath of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility,
HoughtonMifflin
Fred Singer, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500
Years,Rowman & Littlefield
Henrik Svensmark, The Chilling Stars: the New Theory of
ClimateChange, Totem
Peter Thompson, Sacred Sea:A Journey to Lake Baikal,
OxfordUniversity Press
UN Development Program, ed., Human Development Report
2007:Climate Change and Human Development—Rising to theChallenge,
Palgrave Macmillan
Peter D. Ward, Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the
MassExtinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About
OurFuture, Collins
Thomas Raymond Wellock, Preserving the Nation: The Conserva-tion
and Environmental Movements, 1870-2000, Harlan Davidson
Alan Weisman, The World Without Us, Thomas Dunne Books
David Wilcove, No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s
GreatAnimal Migrations, Island Press
Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb, Cape Wind: Money,Celebrity,
Class, Politics and the Battle for our Energy Future onNantucket
Sound, Public Affairs.
E.O. Wilson, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth,
WWNorton & Co.
continued on page 23
10 SEJournal SPRING 2008
ENVIRONMENTALBOOKS OFTHE YEAR 2007(From the Environmental
History Timeline www.environmentalhistory.org)
continued from page 8
-
MarketWarms toClimate Change Books in 2007
In 2006, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth dominated The NewYork
Times best seller list. But in 2007, Glenn Beck’s
swaggeringrebuttal, An Inconvenient Book, topped the same list with
the ideathat climate change is “the greatest scam in history.”
While Beck’s book has little chance of outselling Gore’s
bookover the long run, the paradox illustrates a larger problem in
theenvironmental publishing industry: serious science is a hard
sell.
Joseph Romm, author of the 2006 book Hell and High Water,worried
in a Grist post a few months ago that the deniers “arewinning the
war of words.”
So, how true is that? How are those 2007 climate booksdoing?
We checked the Amazon sales ranks and the LexisNexusnewspaper
hits and TV mentions. We came up with the followinglist. It seems
that Romm is partly right – climate deniers are stillgetting a lot
of attention. But the picture is mixed.
One thing to notice is that the skeptics and contrarians maybe
selling more books, but they aren’t getting as much media
at-tention as scientifically oriented authors. The sustained
discussionseems to be taking place around the actual science rather
than thedebunkers of science. Beck, Lomberg, Singer and others seem
tobe appealing to a shallow audience pool.
CLIMATE BOOKS 2007(For Amazon sales ranks, low numbers are best;
for Lexis-
Nexis newspaper and transcript mentions, high numbers are
best.)
BOOKS BY SKEPTICS AND CONTRARIANS:Glenn Beck, An Inconvenient
Book: Real Solutions to the
World’s Biggest Problems. (119 Amazon, 196 newspapers, 230TV
transcripts)
Bjørn Lomborg, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’sGuide to
Global Warming (1,377 Amazon, 19 newspaper reviews,9 TV
transcripts)
Fred Singer, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years(3,267
Amazon, 82 newspaper reviews, 2 TV transcripts)
Henrik Svensmark, The Chilling Stars: The New Theory ofClimate
Change (19,305 Amazon, 6 newspaper reviews, 0 TVtranscripts)
SCIENCE-BASED CLIMATE BOOKS:Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (2006
book, Feb. 2008 rank)
(4,097 Amazon, Tens of thousands of reviews and transcripts;
toomany to count)
David de Rothschild, The Live Earth Global WarmingSurvival
Handbook: 77 Essential Skills To Stop Climate Change(14,906 Amazon,
30 newspaper reviews, 31 TV transcripts)
George Monbiot and Matthew Prescott, Heat: How to Stopthe Planet
from Burning (21,528 Amazon, 8 newspaper, 1 TV)
Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendricks, Apollo’s Fire: Igniting
Amer-ica’s Clean Energy Economy (22,247 Amazon, 151 reviews, 7
TV)
Chris Mooney, Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics and theBattle
over Global Warming (43,906 Amazon, 48 newspaperreviews, 7 TV )
Eugene Linden, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, andthe
Destruction of Civilizations (51,849 Amazon, 48 reviews,4 TV)
Gary Braasch, Earth Under Fire (55,599 Amazon, 13reviews, 0
TV)
Kerry Emanuel, What We Know About Climate Change(69,685 Amazon,
12 reviews, 0 TV)
BillMcKibben,FightGlobalWarmingNow:TheHandbook forTak-ingAction
in YourCommunity (99,735Amazon, 22 reviews, 1 TV)
Jonathan Isham and Sissel Waage, eds., Ignition: What YouCan Do
to Fight Global Warming and Spark a Movement(107,596 Amazon, 20
reviews, 0 TV)
John D. Cox, Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change andWhat It
Means for Our Future (122,960 Amazon, 3 reviews, 0 TV)
Joseph F. C. DiMento and Pamela M. Doughman, eds.,Climate
Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and OurGrandchildren
(143,681 Amazon, 1 review, 0 TV)
Mayer Hillman, The Suicidal Planet: How to Prevent GlobalClimate
Catastrophe (603,000 Amazon, 0 newspapers, 0 TV)
WINTER 2008 CLIMATE BOOKS IN PRINT:Robert Henson, The Rough
Guide to Climate Change, 2nd
Edition (Amazon, 31,480)Fred Pearce, With Speed and Violence:
Why Scientists Fear
Tipping Points in Climate Change (Amazon 32,000)
Bill Kovarik, an SEJ board member, teachesenvironmental
journalism at Radford University.
SPRING 2008 SEJournal 11
Feature
By BILL KOVARIK
-
12 SEJournal SPRING 2008
Feature
SEJ’s efforts to roll back some of the government secrecy
thathas made reporters’ jobs more difficult over the last decade
wonsome ground since last year.
Working through its First Amendment Task Force, often withother
journalism groups, SEJ’s advocacy of open governmentposted
successes on a variety of fronts. In fact, SEJ has often ledthe way
for other groups.
Sunshine Week 2007 Audit Project
Every March, journalism and open-government groupscelebrate
“Sunshine Week” — a beehive of projects promotingbetter public
access to information. In 2007, the national projectwas an audit of
state and local government compliance withemergency planning
disclosure requirements under EPCRA, theEmergency Planning and
Community Right-To-Know Act.
EPCRA requires every community to have a “LocalEmergency
Planning Committee,” which must draw up a plan forchemical
emergencies and disclose it to the public on request.Under the
audit project, reporters from more than 100 news mediaoutlets
across the country visited their local LEPCs and asked fora copy of
the emergency plan. The audit found that only 44 percentof LEPCs
nationwide were following the law on
disclosurehttp://www.sunshineweek.org/sunshineweek/audit07.
The idea for the project came from SEJ’s WatchDog Project,and
SEJ worked with groups like the American Society ofNewspaper
Editors and the Coalition of Journalists for OpenGovernment, who
coordinated the nationwide network of projectvolunteers. The upshot
was many more local emergency respon-ders becoming more aware of
their disclosure responsibilities.
FOIAUpdate Bill Enacted; Implementation Next
Five years ago, when the Freedom of Information Act wasunder
attack and new exemptions were multiplying in the name ofhomeland
security, the fight was to keep FOIA from being eroded.The idea of
actually strengthening it seemed like a pipe dream. Yetafter almost
three years of legislative effort, a FOIA-strengtheningbill
originally introduced by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and PatrickLeahy
(D-VT) went the distance and was signed into law byPresident Bush
on New Year’s Eve 2007.
The bill was modest in its ambitions — although it didestablish
some mild penalties for agencies who do not meet the 20-
day deadline for responding to FOIA requests. (Agencies who
blowthe deadline can’t collect search or copy fees.)
President Bush signed the bill without any statement orceremony,
after his Justice Department and Office of Managementand Budget had
opposed many of its provisions.
SEJ was one of many journalism groups who helped inform
peopleabout the bill and called on the record for Congress to pass
it.
But more effort may be required to force the executive branchto
implement the new law. The bill’s sponsors and journalismgroups
complained that Bush’s 2009 budget proposed moving theFOIA
“ombudsman’s” office from the National Archives to theJustice
Department, saying Justice had been an advocate for lessdisclosure.
Congress may ignore Bush’s request, but it could causedelay in
getting the ombudsman’s office up and running.
Photography Fees and Permits in Parks
The Interior Department’s efforts to require permits and feesfor
news photography in parks got a warning shot across the bowfrom the
House Natural Resources Committee in December 2007— largely at
SEJ’s instigation.
SEJ President Timothy B. Wheeler testified before thecommittee,
chaired by Nick Rahall (D-WV), saying Interior’sproposed rule for
“commercial filming” represents an unwarrantedinfringement on
journalists’ ability to cover natural resource issueson public
lands. Other groups also testified with concerns aboutthe proposed
rule, including the Radio and Television NewsDirectors Association
and the National Press PhotographersAssociation.
The Interior Department has not finalized the rule. But
SEJleaders are hopeful that SEJ’s comments — along with the
hearing— will prompt Interior to revise it.
Farm Bill Secrecy on Animal ID System
SEJ’s FirstAmendment Task Force won another success — at least
atemporary one — in defeating language in the Farm Bill that would
havemade it a crime to publish the address of a feedlot.
The language was meant to cloak in secrecy almost allinformation
in the National Animal Identification System— anill-starred federal
effort to track food cattle, pigs and poultry fromcradle to grave.
The system is ostensibly meant to keep the publicsafe from diseases
like Mad Cow (or its human version). But when
SEJ Gains Ground for Press Freedoms, Information
continued on page 30
By JOSEPH A. DAVIS
-
Layoffs and buyouts. Orders for shorter stories.
Proliferatingblogs. MoJos (that’s “mobile journalists” for the
uninitiated)hunting for breaking news.
That’s not all there is to American newspapering in 2008,
ofcourse, but such developments seem to foretell a future
fornewspaper journalism that’s dominated by the quick and the
terse.
In an ideal world, a greater emphasis on immediacy andconcision
wouldn’t necessarily mean a reduction in newspaperstories and
projects that are labor-intensive, long-form, in-depth,explanatory,
context-heavy, investigative, or some combination ofthose qualities
– in a word, enterprise.
Even so, no newspaper journalist – or any thinking personwho’s
aware of the current ferment in Amer-ican newspapers, for that
matter – shoulddoubt that such a reduction, if it’s not
alreadyhappening, could well be on the near horizonif current
trends continue.
Enterprise work costs money. Some-times, it’s money spent on
stories andprojects that just don’t pan out. Money thatcould be
spent on snippets of streaming videoor other website features to
lure the eyeballsof potential customers away from YouTubeand
MySpace and the myriad other manifes-tations of the New Media that
newspapersnow compete with for an audience.
Regardless of whether enterprisereporting in newspapers is or is
not on the
wane, such journalism continues to show upin a variety of forms
– in unexpected, as wellas predictable, places.
In the Winter 2008 issue of SEJournal,The Beat presented
evidence of an apparentupsurge in various kinds of
magazinejournalism on the environment. This install-ment focuses
solely on investigative andother enterprise journalism with a
hard-newsedge, produced recently by one traditional magazine and a
diversearray of other Old and New Media outlets working the
broadjour-nalistic territory beyond the pages and Web sites of
daily newspa-pers.
It’s no surprise that The New Yorker would be weighing inwith a
long explanatory piece explaining and weaving together
the-complexities of measuring carbon footprints, setting up
carbon-trading systems, reducing tropical deforestation, and more
in itsFeb. 25 issue.
The magazine is synonymous with long-form non-fiction,after all,
and some of the most memorable environmental
reporting to appear anywhere has been published in its pages
overthe years by writers such as John McPhee and Elizabeth
Kol-bert.
The Feb. 25 climate change story, “Big Foot” by MichaelSpecter,
ranges from the British supermarket chain Tesco’sproject to put
carbon labels on all its products, to the floor of theChicago
Climate Exchange, to a discussion of how logging inBrazil and
Indonesia might be reduced.
The article features arresting passages such as this
one:“Possessing an excessive carbon footprint is rapidly becoming
themodern equivalent of wearing a scarlet letter. Because neither
thegoals nor the acceptable emissions limits are clear,
however,
morality is often mistaken for science.”It’s probably fair to
say that a long
investigative piece on Sen. James Inhofe,the Oklahoma Republican
who calledmanmade global warming a “hoax,” wouldnot be expected by
most people unfamiliarwith it to turn up on a website called
TheDaily Green: The Consumer’s Guide to theGreen Revolution.
That assumption would be under-scored by a cursory glance at the
animatedsuccession of headlines on the site’s homepage, which
recently included “GreenRemodeling,” “Green and Gorgeous,” and“30
Days to Green Your Diet.”
But assumptions can be dangerous, asall journalists know. The
Daily Green, aproduct of Hearst Digital Media, publisheda report on
Jan. 11 that dug well beneaththe surface of the assertion by
Inhofe’sstaff in late December that “over 400prominent scientists
from more than twodozen countries recently voiced
significantobjections to major aspects of the so-called‘consensus’
on man-made global waring.”
Examining the names that accompanied that claim the DailyGreen
investigation concluded that the ranks of the 400-plusindividuals
included “economists, amateurs, TV weathermen andindustry hacks.”
Extensive annotated lists of the “prominentscientists” were
included in the presentation. The main story waswritten by Dan
Shapley and prominently credited research byMark V. Johnson of
AOL’s Propeller.com.
CNN describes its hour-long program “CNN: SpecialInvestigations
Unit” as a “long-form investigative series” thatfeatures “CNN’s top
correspondents delivering in-depth hours onpressing issues
currently in the news.”
SPRING 2008 SEJournal 13
Long-form stories - enterprise andinvestigative - still making
marks
The Beat
continued on page 24
By BILL DAWSON
Beat story urlsThe New Yorker
article:http://tinyurl.com/32aoum
The Daily Green article:http://tinyurl.com/2g8kh4
CNN story transcript:http://tinyurl.com/2z4gzt
CNN blog:http://tinyurl.com/ysn3gg
Circle of Blue project:http://tinyurl.com/34xvc5
Schneider blog:http://tinyurl.com/33c26t
Center for Public Integrity story:http://tinyurl.com/2x2982
-
The agenda for SEJ’s 18th Annual Conference — Oct.
15-19—continues to develop as a number of stars in the
journalismcommunity have committed, including legendary author
WendellBerry and former NPR Morning Edition host Bob Edwards.
Berry, the noted fiction and non-fiction author and
widelyacknowledged conscience of the region will join SEJ attendees
onSunday, Oct. 19, to read his work and discuss the writing
lifeduring the morning craft session. Joining him will be Ann
Pancake(author of Strange As This Weather Has Been), Erik Reese
(LostMountain) and others, including many SEJ authors.
Another speaker familiar to SEJ members: Edwards, host ofthe Bob
Edwards Show on XM satellite radio. Before moving toXM, Edwards
spent 24 years as host of NPR’s Morning Edition.He will moderate
the opening plenary session on Friday, Oct. 17,on the use of coal
as an energy source.
Experts on all sides, including Don Blankenship, theoutspoken
and controversial president of Massey Energy (invited),American
Electric Power CEO Michael Morris, and Big Coalauthor Jeff Goodell
will debate whether coal, which providesslightly more than half of
this country’s electricity, should have arole in America’s energy
future. Panelists will debate theeffectiveness of carbon
sequestration; mining’s toll on workers,mountains, streams and
forests; and whether the U.S. should finda way to wean itself from
this fuel.
A breakfast plenary session will address the
environmentaljustice movement. Since its inception in the 1980s in
NorthCarolina, the movement has drawn attention to the
inequitableenvironmental risks that many African American
communitieshave long been forced to bear. In Appalachia, these
sameinequitable risks have been borne by poor white
communities.Noted expert Robert Bullard will lead a diverse panel
discussingwhere the movement came from and where it’s headed.
SEJ’s annual awards ceremony will honor some of the
mostimportant environmental stories of last year. Co-hosts for
thepresentation will be Philippe and Alexandra Cousteau ofEarthEcho
International, ocean explorers in the tradition of theirgrandfather
Jacques Cousteau, and Jeff Burnside, SEJ boardmember and reporter
at WTVJ NBC 6 Miami.
Among concurrent sessions running on Friday and Saturdaywill be
computer labs and craft workshops offering hands-onexperience with
audio, video, podcasting, mapping, and turningdata into stories.
Other sessions will cover mobile media, searchengine strategies,
blogs, social media, citizen journalism, crowd-sourcing and
entrepreneurial media projects.
Eight tracks of concurrent sessions will bring
experts,advocates, policymakers and others together to discuss
coal,energy, climate, water, land, environmental health and the
nation,and will also include craft sessions like freelancers and
book
publishers pitch-slams and many how-to sessions, from Energy101
to being your own FOIA lawyer.
Thursday tours continue to be conference favorites
amongattendees, this year traveling to nine extraordinary
destinations inthe Appalachian mountain region for hiking,
kayaking, or learningabout energy issues like wind, nuclear and
mountaintop removalmining.
The tour line-up for the Roanoke conference
Almost Level I: Cutting Down Mountains for CoalLarry Gibson’s
piece of Kayford Mountain used to be the
lowest peak for miles. Now it’s the highest. There’s no better
placeto see the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining – a
practicethat is feeding a growing demand for coal and leveling
widestretches of Appalachia.
What Are Forests Worth? What Are They For?CanWe Sustain Them?The
Southern Appalachians provide a rare look at the chang-
ing face of America’s forests. The tour will look at how
foresters,community groups and others are spurring a new take on
sustain-able forestry; the U.S. Forest Service’s struggles to
balancerecreation demands with timber operations; invasive
species
literally eating away Appalachian hillsides; and emerging
“niche”forest products that could bolster rural communities.
Rural Energy: Wind, Hydro and Development inthe
HighlandsVirginia’s Western Highlands are some of the most
pristine
rural mountain regions left in the Eastern U.S. Bath and
HighlandCounties are among the least populated east of the
Mississippi,with county seats of fewer than 300 residents. But,
like much of therural U.S., these counties face new development
pressures fromenergy industries and vacation home speculators.
Highland County,with only a $7 million annual budget, has approved
a $60 millionwind power project. Construction is set for this year,
and if built,it will be the first industrial wind power facility in
the state ofVirginia.
Healthy Food ShedIn the wake of global warming concerns and
food-borne
illness outbreaks with mounting evidence pointing toward
indus-trialized agriculture, consumers are starting to pay
attention to howtheir food is raised and how far it travels.
Farmer, writer andspeaker Joel Salatin is the poster child of the
local food andfarming movement. The tour will visit Salatin’s
550-acrediversified Polyface Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley
andshow why his spread is, in the words of Michael Pollan, “one of
themost productive and sustainable farms in America.”
ANational Treasure at Peril – the Blue Ridge ParkwayWhy are the
Blue Ridge Mountains “blue"? The tour will travel
Wendell Berry, Bob Edwardsamong confirmed speakers
SEJ News
14 SEJournal SPRING 2008
SEJ’s Annual Conference
SEJ conference manager,Jay Letto, stands in front ofthe J-Class
train at theVirginia Museum of Trans-portation, the site of the2008
conference Saturdayevening get-together.
PHOTOCOURTESY
BILLKOVARIK
continued on page 17
-
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SPRING 2008 SEJournal 15
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16 SEJournal SPRING 2008
Ticketed Events Requiring Pre-registration (No Extra Fee):Please
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Thurs., Oct. 16 First Choice Second Choice Third Choice1. Almost
Level 1: Cutting Down Mountains for Coal $302. What Are Forests
Worth? What Are They For? Can We Sustain Them? $303. Rural Energy:
Wind, Hydro and Development in the Highlands $304. Healthy Food
Shed $305. A National Treasure at Peril - the Blue Ridge Parkway
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The Appalachian Trail - Land with a Past $309. Nuclear Power from
Ore to Volts $30
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ISTERIGREFOROUYKANTHONFECALNNUH AT81SSEJ’
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brPtion.a www
our hostam agenda;;groout the prtion abmaxhibite
eenceronfction;;taoranspg and tr
FORGIN!ERENCE
ruoyfotpiecernopg.orrg.sejj.orwww.sej rof
ech;TTech;ginia irV,host.eand morors;;bit
-
along lush ridgetops that were over-forested in the 1900s to the
most pho-tographed site on the parkway, Mabry Mill. The early 1900s
community-gathering place today operates as a restored gristmill,
sawmill andblacksmith shop. As the parkway approaches its 75th
anniversary, how-ever, America’s Favorite Scenic Drive faces
environmental issues andfederalbudgetaryshortfalls resulting
in57unfilledstaffpositions.Airpol-lution emanates from coal-fired
power sources, the mightyhemlocks are dying, and flourishing
development blocks scenic views.
Old River, New ChallengeThe New River, a misnomer if ever there
was one, is one of
the world’s oldest rivers. It’s also among the most beautiful.
We’llpaddle canoes 6-8 miles past towering cliffs and rolling
meadows.At the put-in, ecologists from Virginia Tech will conduct
anelectro-fishing demonstration and provide a brief presentation
ofthe New’s diverse aquatic species. After taking out, we’ll drive
ashort distance downstream to where the local power company
isplanning to landfill coal-fired power plant ash in the floodplain
ofthe New. Speakers will address the controversial issue ofmanaging
coal combustion residues. Note: mild whitewater rapidsare on this
run. Basic canoeing skills are preferred.
Journey Down the JamesThis tour will track the E. coli and
nutrient trail from
mountain farms to the Chesapeake Bay on a canoe journey downthe
James River. Nutrient and sediment runoff impacts waterquality for
everyone and farming in the mountains affects the bayhundreds of
miles downstream. Attendees will paddle down about10 miles of
river, through farmland and pristine forest. This trip issuitable
for beginners, but expect to be on the water between fourand six
hours with several breaks.
The Appalachian Trail – Land with a PastLike great chunks of the
Appalachian Trail that goes from
Georgia to Maine, the roughly 11 miles of the trail’s
CatawbaRidge section pass over land that once held buildings. The
jewelof this ridge is a rocky overlook, McAfee Knob,
federallyprotected since 1987. The trail protection project marked
a back-wards progression of sorts, from developed to backcountry—
areclamation of industrial and residential lands. Attendees will
hikethe trail to McAfee Knob and see the Catawba Valley below,which
is slowly being invaded by houses.
Nuclear Power from Ore to VoltsThere are five stages in the life
of nuclear power:
Mining,processingore, enrichment of uranium to commercial
orweapons grade, fuel fabrication, and utilization in a nuclear
powerplant. This tour covers the nuclear cycle with visits
encompassingthree of these stages. We’ll visit a 1,000-acre farm,
once owned byThomas Jefferson, and now proposed as the U.S.’s first
uraniummine outside the Southwest. Next, we tour a fuel
fabricationfacility and a full-scale nuclear plant training center,
owned by theFrench nuclear giant AREVA NP, Inc. We’ll watch an
actualproduction run from delivery of the enriched uranium through
tothe 12-foot-long nuclear fuel rods that power the nation’s
104commercial reactors. At the training center, we will see the
insideof a nuclear power plant, with full-sized cutaways of
steamgenerators, reactors, and other equipment.
Further details on the tours and sessions for SEJ’s 18thAnnual
Conference will be posted on www.sej.org as they becomeavailable.
Please check the website often for updates.
Conference concurrent session line-up
THE CRAFT• The Freelance Pitch-Slam• Covering Tragedies and
Disasters• Environment Reporters of the 21st Century• Book
Publisher Pitch-Slam• Energy 101: A Primer for Reporters• TV and
the New Media• Covering Climate Change Without Getting Whiplash•
The Dating Game: Connecting Scientists and Journalists• How to Be
Your Own FOIA Lawyer• Getting the Goods: Using Court Records
forEnvironmental Investigations
COAL• Coal Around the Globe• Carbon Sequestration: Silver Bullet
or Black Hole?• Almost Level: Mountaintop Removal Overview• Beyond
Coal: Strategies for Appalachian Reclamationand Renewal
ENERGY• Must We Grow? Conservation, Green Lifestyles
andAlternative Energies• Take Two: Nuclear Power Reconsidered•
Biofuels: Beyond the Steel Cage Debate• Is Energy Independence
Green? Liquid Coal, Tar Sands,Natural Gas and More...
THE CLIMATE• Close Quarters: Can Controlling Population Growth
HelpStabilize the Climate?• Climate Change and Agriculture• After
Tomorrow: Can We Adapt to Climate Change?• Climate Change and
Emerging Legal Challenges
THE WATER• Are the Oceans Already Lost?• Water Quality from the
Headwaters to the Chesapeake Bay• Dams: Past, Present and Future•
Ends of the Earth: Polar Science and the Environment
THE LAND• Sharing Life on Earth: Biodiversity in Appalachiaand
Beyond• Animal Business: Wildlife Trafficking andInternational Law•
Joy Ride or Ecocide? ATVs on Public Lands• Suburban Decay: The
Sub-prime Mortgage Mess as anEnvironmental Story
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH• The Rollercoaster World of Toxicology•
Women’s Environmental Health Issues• Toying with Toxics: Childhood
Exposure to Chemicals• Workers and the Environment: Asbestos and
OtherOccupational Hazards
THE NATION• Environmental Policy, Public Opinion and the
Election• Broken Bridges and Straight Pipes: Aging
Infrastructureand the Environment• Environmental Justice and the
Economy: From Cap-and-Trade Concerns to Green-Collar Promises• The
Clean Air Act’s Unfinished Business
SPRING 2008 SEJournal 17Watch www.sej.org
Conference continued from page 14
-
Details of People’s Lives
By BILL DAWSON
Lisa Margonelli is an Oakland, Calif.-based freelancejournalist,
a fellow of the New America Foundation, and the authorof Oil on the
Brain, a book that describes “petroleum’s long,strange trip to your
tank."
Margonelli has written for publications including the
SanFrancisco Chronicle, Wired, Business 2.0, Discover and Jane.
Shewas a recipient of a Sundance Institute Fellowship and
anexcellence in journalism award from the Northern
CaliforniaSociety of Professional Journalists.
Recently issued in paperback, Oil on the Brainearned wide praise
when it was first published in2007. Reviewers’ comments included
this one byThe Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin:
“Before reading Lisa Margonelli’s Oil on theBrain, I never would
have called the process ofenergy production ‘fascinating.' But
thisthoroughly engrossing and entertaining booktravels to the heart
of Texas and across continentsto show exactly how the gas in our
tanks gets there– as well as its financial, social and
environmentalcosts."
Q: Tell me a little about yourself –especially how you decided
to become ajournalist and writer.
A: I grew up in rural Maine and I’ve alwaysbeen interested in
oral histories—from familystories to Studs Terkel’s books. In
college, I usedoral histories as often as I could when doing workin
history and American Studies. After college, Imoved to Japan and
spent the next four years inAsia. While there I felt that news and
magazine accountsoversimplified what I saw and heard.
When I returned to the U.S., I got an internship at PacificNews
Service writing about the Pacific Rim and immigration. Iimmediately
loved reporting and I continued to use oral historiesin my work. I
worked on a collection of oral histories of immigrantkids, then
used the same approach to write about health,technology, economics,
and Eastern European filmmakers, amongother things. “Oil on the
Brain” also used people’s life stories togive a portrait of the oil
supply chain.
Q: You’ve said your interest in oil, as a subject for
yourwriting, dates to a magazine assignment in 2001 to
coverSaddamHussein’s birthday party in Iraq.And you’ve said the
idea for the book arose as a result of a subsequent
reportingtrip to Alaska for another story, when you looked down
fromyour airplane on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Please elaborateon
how those seeds grew into a book examining, as the subtitlesays,
“petroleum’s long, strange trip to your tank."
A: The months of April to June of 2001 were very surreal.First I
went to the bizarre birthday party in Iraq— where oildetermined
everyone’s destiny—and then to Alaska, where a groupof native
Americans in a remote town called Arctic Village wastrying to keep
oil development out of ANWR (the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge)—and prevent oil from becoming partof their
destiny.
I had seen the Alaska pipeline before, but thistime I saw it as
a giant straw connecting me and mypickup truck in San Francisco
literally to the ends ofthe earth. I wondered how I could use so
much oil andknow so little about the stuff – its chemistry,
geology,economy, politics, culture. I had the beginnings of
anobsession, and at first I decided to write articles aboutoil that
were unexpected – for example, what does anoil spill look like to a
scientist? Then I thought maybeI’d write a travel book about
oil-producing countries,but the more I researched it became obvious
that abook about oil needed to be a full story connecting thegas
pump to the cultures at the other end.
I wrote a long proposal that involved both historyand a fair
amount of travel. When the publisher boughtit, they said, “You know
you can’t start in 1850 – itneeds to start now.” So my proposed
first chapter wasout the window. I realized that an obvious
beginningwas the gas station, which was quite close by, andoffered,
I hoped, a portrait of the gasoline consumer.From the gas station,
the book evolved into an
exploration of the supply chain.
Q: Book editors often want authors of non-fiction topresent
what’s called “an argument." This is a concept thatmay be
unfamiliar to some newspaper reporters and magazinewriters who want
to try their hand at book writing. Does yourbook make an argument?
What is it? Was it a premise youstarted the project with, or
something that grew from yourreporting?
A: I didn’t start with an argument. I started with a lot
ofquestions, and a feeling that there was a bigger story in oil
than anargument that it was either good for the economy or bad for
theenvironment. I really set out to find stories and ideas that I
hadn’t
Inside Story
Freelancer Lisa Margonelli reveals how focusing onpeople’s
stories can reveal a complex story beyond the facts.
18 SEJournal SPRING 2008
-
heard before – in particular, things that made me
uncomfortable.Once I’d found those stories, I realized that I’d
found an argumentwithin them: Oil costs far more than we pay at the
pump.
In the U.S. we pay subsidies to the oil industry, of course,
butwe also have to pay for kids with asthma, environmental
damages,military costs in the Middle East, global warming, and in
lostfuture opportunities. Our confused sense of oil’s domestic cost
haskept the political logjam over CAFE (Corporate Average
FuelEconomy) standards and energy policy static for
decades.Overseas, the costs of oil are higher – human rights,
poverty,corruption, war and a feeling of hopelessness.
I came to believe that because the oil market is
global,environmental damage and human rights abuses now
aretransmitted directly to the cost of gasoline at the pump. You
can seethis happening when Nigerian youths attack an oil
installation andthe gas price jumps here. Because of this and
because of globalwarming, among other reasons, we need to
completely re-under-stand oil’s cost in a more holistic way. We
need to make bigchanges. I wanted to tell this as a visceral story,
rather than anargument, and the book format allowed me to do
that.
Q: A few practical questions that maybe helpful to aspiring book
writers among SEJour-nal’s readers: Was it hard to sell the book
idea to apublisher? Your reporting lasted a staggering pe-riod of
almost four years and took you on journeystotaling 100,000 miles.
How did you pay for thisdaunting enterprise? Doing other writing
duringthat period? Book advance? Fellowship? All of theabove?
A: Many editors were interested in the proposal,but only one bid
on it, which meant I didn’t really havethe money to do the
traveling I’d initially proposed. Idecided to keep doing a column I
did for the SanFrancisco Chronicle online, try to get
magazineassignments when I could, and to go as cheaply as
possible.
In China, Venezuela and Nigeria I stayed for more than amonth,
figuring that time would allow me to understand what washappening
at a deeper level. My favorite hotels were $15 a night,and the
cheapest was $6. Fortunately, I was really obsessed withthe process
of getting entry to petroleum installations, and withferreting out
the complexities of the story, and that made thefinancial strain
less of a slog than it really was.
At one point I wrote 5,000 words about asphalt for
BicyclingMagazine, which funded me for a few more months. In the
fall of2005, the New America Foundation