Can Journalists Save the Planet?​

THU, NOV 21, 2019 (1:48:11)

An MIT Communications Forum

You heard news in 2019 about more epic forest fires, of the loss of many of the oceans coral reefs and of more glaciers falling into the sea. As Planet Earth reaches the global warming brink, journalists are striving to translate the impact of climate change and hold the powerful accountable. Meet two of them in this forum hosted at MIT: Propublica’s Lisa Song and The New York Times’ Kendra Pierre-Louis discuss the media’s role in illuminating environmental issues, promoting environmental justice and ethics, and the future of climate journalism. Beth Daley, Editor and General Manager for The Conversation, moderates.

Photo: National Park Service, Mountaineering ranger on mountaineering patrol on the remote Dall Glacier in the western Alaska Range.

+ BIO: Lisa Song

Lisa Song is a reporter for Propublica. She covers the environment, energy and climate change.

Song joined ProPublica in 2017 after six years at InsideClimate News, where she covered climate science and environmental health. She was part of the reporting team that revealed Exxon’s shift from conducting global warming research to supporting climate denial, a series that was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for public service. From 2013-2014 she reported extensively on air pollution from Texas’ oil and gas boom as part of a collaboration between several newsrooms. Lisa is a co-author of “The Dilbit Disaster,” which won a Pulitzer for national reporting. She has degrees in earth science and science writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Follow Lisa on Twitter.

+ BIO: Kendra Pierre-Louis

Kendra Pierre-Louis is a journalist covering climate change for The New York Times. Her writing, which includes the book “Green Washed: Why We Can’t Buy Our Way to a Green Planet,” focuses on science with an emphasis on the relationship between humans and our environment.

+ BIO: Beth Daley

Beth Daley took the lead as Editor and General Manager at The Conversation in March 2019.

Prior to that, Daley covered the environment, science and education at NECIR and Inside Climte. For almost two decades Daley covered the environment for The Boston Globe and won numerous awards for her work including being named a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Among her many stories–a two-year investigation on mislabeled fish in Boston area restaurants that won three awards from the Society of Business Editors and Writers along with additional awards from the National Press Club, the Society for Features Journalism and the National Headliner competition. Daley spent the 2011-2012 academic year as a Knight fellow at Stanford University, a program designed to foster journalistic innovation and entrepreneurship. There, she became deeply interested in new journalism models and created EnviroFact, a collaborative clearinghouse to check environmental claims in the news. From 2001-2003, Daley was the Globe’s science and 9/11 reporter covering the anthrax scare, the war in Afghanistan and the U.S. space program. From 1997-2001, she was the newspaper’s education reporter. On that beat, she wrote a series of award-winning stories on shoddy school construction and covered urban education in Boston and across the nation. Prior to joining the Globe in 1994, Daley worked as a reporter for the Newburyport Daily News and as an English teacher in Sri Lanka and Thailand. She is a graduate of Northeastern University.

Follow Beth on Twitter.

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Climate Change