How to be a Good Source of Environmental News

By David Poulson, Associate Director, MSU Knight Center for Environmental Journalism

Near the top – often at the very top – of every well-written news story is what journalists call the nut graph.

It is the paragraph that succinctly answers this question: “Why should my readers care about what I’m about to write?”

If reporters don’t include a nut graph, good editors will demand it. In fact, good editors will demand to know the nut graph before the story is written – perhaps even before deciding to assign it.

Nut graphs are hard. They take time, a laser focus and an economy of words. But more than any element, they decide if a story gets produced and how it will be played.

If I was pitching a story to a journalist, I’d write my own single-sentence nut graph. I would memorize it and repeat it often throughout the interview. Everything I said and every document I provided would directly support that sentence.

I would make it as easy as I could for a reporter to answer an editor who demands, “Why should anyone care about this stuff?”

Understanding how journalism works and the hurdles that reporters face goes a long way toward getting a story covered – particularly those messy stories on the environment that are so difficult to explain.

Being a good reporter is a challenge. So, too, is being a good source. Both require cultivating relationships. Don’t wait for news to happen.

“A disaster is no time to be making new friends,” says Mark Schleifstein, environment reporter for the New Orleans Times Picayune.

Or consider this warning from Merritt Clifton, editor of Animal People, a newspaper that covers animal protection: “I always tell humane workers that dealing with the news media is exactly the opposite of catching feral cats. You can’t wait for them to come to you, because if you do, they will only come if they think you smell like dead meat.”

Here are some tips provided by members of the Society of Environmental Journalists on how sources can improve communication and the likelihood of getting a story covered accurately.

Kristen Kusek, Oceanus/InterRidge, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Limit your message to no more than three points, call reporters back, provide context. “Pretend you’re talking to my great Aunt Helen, who thinks the fact that I work as a writer in ‘marine science’ means I work for Greenpeace. She’s thought this since I first mentioned marine science to her more than 15 years ago and still thinks I work for Greenpeace. I do not and never will. In other words, do not assume prior knowledge, and err on the side of the Aunt Helen’s of the world as you formulate your message. There are lots of misunderstandings out there, and it’s better to be aware of them, addressing them head-on, rather than to ignore them and hope for the best.”

Audrey Cooper, reporter, San Francisco Chronicle
“I’d say the No. 1 thing is to put all measurements and data in perspective. Is the ppb measurement five times above what is allowed in drinking water or a thousand?”

Bruce Barcott, contributing editor, Outside Magazine
“One of my biggest frustrations is sources who seem unable to detach themselves from their cubicles and just meet me at the river/lake/field/shoreline, whatever, to talk about the issue on site. Being able to see what we’re talking about, walk the ground, point to the landscape, etc, gives me ten times the information and understanding. I’m a notebookand-pen guy, so I don’t have the leverage of a camera crew to get sources out in the field, but I still need to capture issues in scenes, with dialogue/quotes, etc. Pull on your boots and let’s get out there.”

And documents are an enormous help.

“I want ‘em. I need ‘em. Most stories I work involve two or more sides fighting over a creek, a river, whatever. Both sides have competing points. I’ll hear you out, but I have to see backup. You say scientific studies back up your point? Show me the studies. That means give me a copy. Take 10 minutes and work the photocopier. Or at least let me have it for an hour so I can run to Kinko’s. Don’t assume I won’t be able to read it. I will. Memos, too. E-mails. Anything on paper. Because I write a lot of chronologies, I’m a junkie for documents with dates.”

Jeff Kart, environment reporter, Saginaw (Michigan) News
“If you’re an environmental group pitching a story, I need local angles and local people. It’s not good enough to talk to the spokesman for the environmental group. I want a local person who has an opinion or is affected.

“If…you want to release a study, tell us exactly who conducted it and how it was conducted. Was it peer-reviewed? Who did the research? Does it build on other research?
“And when you’re a scientist talking about your study, put it in laypeople’s terms. Tell me why I should care, and don’t be offended if I ask the question: Why should people care that windmills are killing x amount of birds, for instance. And don’t use all the fancy terms – hypoxic and benthic, etc. Explain it to me, don’t try to impress me with your degree. I know you went to school for a long time. Also, disclose and don’t be offended if I ask you where the funding for the study came from.

“I need pictures to illustrate a story. If you’re flying a Lear jet over the Great Lakes,
taking infrared pictures of algae, I need photos of the jets (and) the infrared pictures.”

Nancy Gaarder, environment/energy reporter, Omaha World-Herald
From a panel of journalists that advised the Nebraska utility industry:
• Be aware of competition. If you want a great story in my newspaper, don’t call the TV station first; don’t send out simultaneous press releases. Call me.

• Be aware of competition. If the newspaper isn’t interested, tell them you’ll be calling the TV station. The newspaper may become interested.

• Pitch environmental stories based on impact. Find a citizen who is affected by the environmental harm.
• Explain the idea as if you are talking with your mom, Aunt Betty, grandpa.

• Don’t get discouraged if reporters don’t bite. They are overbooked. Legitimate stories don’t get written. Keep trying.

• Try multiple paths. The same story can get into the newspaper through the outdoor, environment, home/garden, weather and briefs reporters.

• Double check facts, spellings, titles.

• Provide office, cell and home phone numbers and an email address so that reporters can check details anytime.

• Maintain good files. I may not call you when you send a release, but I might just call you when we’re scrounging for a quick hit.

• Put facts-at-a-glance, budgets, maps, etc. on a Web site. Maintain an archive so reporters can refer to baseline information, especially during a disaster.

Amy Gahran, journalist and media consultant, Contentious.com
Blog. You can tell your story directly to readers and also reach reporters. “A lot of great sources are blogging, and also participating constructively in online communities. That makes them very findable, and establishes their expertise and
relevance.

“I think the best general-environment communities for sources to start chiming in on
are treehugger.com, worldchanging.com, and inhabitat.com. Those communities cover a
wide range of topics, generally have constructive, thoughtful conversations and are very
well-connected for search visibility. But there are others — especially on various niche
environmental topics.”

Jon Cooksey, television writer/director, producer of the documentary “How to Boil
a Frog” (www.howtoboilafrog.com), on communicating with the public:
“Personalize things — put them in human terms — don’t be afraid to talk about how it affects you personally. Talk to people like you’re a human being, just like them, and not an expert, regulator, reporter, etc.

“Talk about how the news makes you FEEL. The point of enviro-journalism is to wake people up, engage them, alert them, and hopefully get them to take action. Information won’t do that. People need to know it’s OK to feel despair, fear, sadness,
grief over the multiple awful things that are happening right now. So seeing a real human being having those feelings, and admitting to them, lets them take it in. Just as importantly, seeing someone who is an “expert” have those feelings alerts them that this is SERIOUS, and they need to pay attention. If the expert is calm, then they assume the problem is not serious and someone else will handle it.

“Be funny, even if it’s gallows humor.”

“Identify the people who are to blame, if someone is to blame. The world didn’t get this way by accident. Not doing so is not only a moral lapse, but doesn’t take account of human psychology — people need to see a face. We’ve been so brainwashed about
“finger-pointing” and the “blame-game” that we’ve become afraid to say the freakin’ obvious, which is that some people act in very evil ways, that hurt millions of people, and could ultimately wipe out the human race.

“Faces, faces, faces. People respond to human faces. Look at the poster for 10 movies, and 9 out of 10 will be one big face. The 10th one will have a cute puppy.

“People also like puppies.”

Mark Schleifstein, environment reporter, New Orleans Times Picayune:
• Persevere. Understand that our relationship is not a one-time event. It may take a long time for you to trust the reporter and for the reporter to trust you.

• Be accurate, and make sure your message is clear before the reporter leaves. Don’t exclude facts or take short-cuts. They’ll lead to errors.

• Complain. Make sure reporters know when they commit errors. They could be repeated in future stories. Be clear if you want a response to your complaint.

• Respect and understand the rules. While there seems to be clear rules about what off-the-record or on-background mean in Washington, D.C., their meaning is often different elsewhere.

• Embrace my deadline. If I need information immediately, be clear whether that’s possible. If it is difficult to meet deadline, let the reporter know fast.

• Be available. If you tell me you can’t reach your boss, that’s not necessarily going to keep me from trying to reach him. Don’t get angry when I do.

• Be a generalist. My readers aren’t stupid, but they may not be technically educated. Often neither are reporters. Avoid jargon and alphabet soup. Simplify concepts like when Richard Fehynman explained the Challenger accident by dropping an O ring in cold water to show how easily it broke.

• Be patient. It may take several explanations before we figure out what you’re saying. If you seem annoyed, the reporter may stop trying to understand.

• Sources talk about reporter with biases. Reporters talk about achieving balance. I’ve rethought both in the aftermath of Katrina. In New Orleans, we’re reporting on issues where the bias seems clear – I’ve been reporting on the reasons for levee
and floodwall failures in New Orleans for the past two years despite the fact that my house was destroyed by those failures. There’s a clear potential of bias there. But there’s no reporter in the city who doesn’t have a similar bias, and we have to
just deal with it – both sides. And I’m much more interested in accuracy than balance. I won’t give equal time to two sides of an issue when one side is clearly wrong. It’s like giving the crook equal time with the cop who arrests him.

• Reach out now to reporters and editors whom you might be working with during a hurricane or an epidemic or a terrorist event. Now’s the time to bring them up to speed on how your agency works, what kind of information you have available.

New journalism is not just about glitzy story-telling

A tipsheet by David Poulson, Associate Director, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism

New story forms are the big buzz in journalism. Seconds after you suggest an idea, chances are an editor demands that you grab a quick video interview for the Web.

Maybe your art department inserts information that pops up on a graphic at the touch of a mouse. Perhaps you’re narrating slideshows.

Maybe you’ve produced a podcast or – heavens – are telling stories on a blog.

All that is very cool and exciting and something we should be doing as we figure out journalism nowadays. But lost in all the story-telling glitz are the new tools for the mundane aspects of our job.

You know – finding, gathering and organizing all that information so that you have the building blocks of a story, the stuff you need regardless of how you choose to tell it. In a very fundamental way our job remains unchanged. Journalists still sift through
overwhelming, suspect, confusing and seemingly unrelated bits of information to interpret the world for others. It’s just that nowadays powerful tools are needed to sort through an information explosion.

You don’t have to use them. But chances of finding a good story are better if you do. Here are four Web tools that may keep you from drowning in data:

Tags – If you’re bookmarking Web sites, you’re already tagging. But if you think bookmarking with your browser is helpful, try a social bookmarking site. Visit http://del.icio.us/ and sign up for a free account. With Del.icio.us you can sort into a virtual bin (or tag) anything you come across on the Web. It might be of long term interest or fodder for a breaking story. Maybe it’s about a lake integral to your beat. Every government report, news story or academic study relevant to that lake can be tagged with its name. Then your source documents are at your fingertips when you sit down to write. Here’s how tags are superior to simple bookmarks:
• You can quickly tag the same document several ways. A report on habitat loss could be tagged by geography, cause or consequence. That same report can show up under separate tags for Lake Ojibway, climate change, water pollution or others.
• You can see what other people tag. Follow what a trusted source is tagging and you may find a story. Got a favorite reporter who is always ahead of the curve? Check out what he or she tags and maybe you can borrow a story idea or source.
• Unlike bookmarks, you can access your tags from any computer. RSS feeds – SEJ member and self-described media consultant/info-provocateur Amy Gahran introduced me to feeds at the 2003 SEJ national conference in New Orleans. I grabbed hold of the concept as a useful way of publishing one of my projects. Content producers find feeds handy for bypassing congested e-mail boxes to reach subscribers directly.

But nowadays people use feeds to surf efficiently. Instead of checking Web sites for new content, have Web sites tell you when they have something new.

Check out Google’s free feed reader. Just click on the reader link after you create or sign onto your account at google.com. The directions are straight forward, and Amy has an excellent video tutorial at http://www.capturetheconversation.com/internet-marketing-training/googlereader/.  Once you have a reader set up, you can quickly organize content and track it for updates.
You’re no longer searching for new information. New information finds you. One caveat: Work your feeds a couple of weeks. It’s a bit of an adjustment. But give it a fair trial and you’re unlikely to return to blind surfing.

I’m tempted to say that feeds drastically reduce my online time. Instead, I think that I surf just as long, perhaps longer. But I see much, much more of the Web that interests me.
Social Media – I don’t practice what I’m about to preach. Maybe I’m anti-social. Maybe I’m too busy reading all those feeds. But if I was reporting again, I’d reconsider. Here’s why:

One of my students wrote about a warm winter forecasted for our region. Typically you might approach such a story by interviewing weather experts and then conducting a dozen person-on-the-street interviews in hopes of capturing three useable quotes.

But this student went to Facebook and quickly limited potential sources to those attending our university. Then she checked for students listing winter sports as a favorite pastime. That gave her local sources most likely to gripe about a mild winter. All that was left was to track them down, assess their credibility and arrange quick interviews. Find more professional sources at linkedin.com. Here you can search for experts, post questions, sort through an archive of answers for story ideas. Post a profile that describes your reporting needs. Now sources can find you with stories and ideas. Can you trust sources found this way? Hey, you’re the reporter. You don’t get off the hook that easily. You need to investigate and assess credibility. But at least you have something to evaluate. That’s why you’re paid the big bucks.

Twitter – It took me a while to warm to the utility of a service that limits posts to 140 characters and tells a network of contacts what you’re up to at any given moment. The first thing I posted in response to “What are you doing now?” was “Trying to figure out why Twitter is remotely useful.”

I’ve read suggestions that journalists should create a Twitter “posse” of expert sources. The idea is to gain instant feedback on story angles or questions to ask while you’re working a story. That may be particularly handy because you can access Twitter with a cell phone from a crime scene or breaking news event.

Still, I was cynical about anyone taking the time to do that while chasing a story. But a former student in my computer-assisted reporting class who found a job in online news convinced me that there may be something here for journalists. Shawn Smith is a senior content producer for MLive.com, the online arm of Booth Newspapers, a chain of eight daily newspapers in Michigan. He also blogs about new media applications for journalism at www.newmediabytes.com.

Shawn has about 120 followers on Twitter, all self-identified as interested in the same stuff that he is. During the primaries he read that Barak Obama followed 12,000 people on Twitter and that Hillary Clinton followed zero. He figured comparing the campaigns’ social media strategy might make a good story. So he posted the idea on his Twitter account. Several of his Twitter connections responded with pointers to helpful research and news stories.
“What’s really helped me is creating a bigger network,” Shawn said. “When I post things, people respond because they are interested in what I’m interested in. It goes into their Twitter feed, and they say, ‘I may have an answer to that.’”

People can respond in ways that lead you to thinking differently about an issue, he said.

Those are just four tools for helping you navigate the drink-from-a-firehose-informationmadhouse reporters face today. There are certainly more. Send your favorites to Poulson@msu.edu. I’ll collect them for a subsequent column.

David Poulson is the associate director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at
Michigan State University. He teaches environmental, investigative and computer-assisted
reporting.

Some land use story ideas

A tipsheet by David Poulson, associate director, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism

Walking the talk

Advocates of growth-shaping policies say that the key to efficient land use is to convince people that they can live comfortably on less land and in vibrant urban cores. Do they?

Examine their lifestyles. Where do they live? Downtown? Or do they commute great distances from 10-acre country plots – the same kind of building sites they deplore?

Murray Carpenter checked out this angle when the Northern Sky News ran a story about Augusta as Maine’s capital of sprawl:

“At that time, the governor was giving a lot of lip service to fighting sprawl. Meanwhile, he opted not to live in the Governor’s mansion in blighted downtown Augusta, choosing instead to commute 40 miles each way, by SUV, from his home in a coastal town. The state’s anti-sprawl planning guru, meanwhile, was commuting 60 miles each way to avoid living in Augusta. “The regional story that is probably universal is for policy experts and politicians to advocate density for the masses, while living in mini-estates in the burbs and commuting great distances in single occupancy vehicles. This is a quick, simple story that readers really respond to.”

The point isn’t to embarrass these people. But this is an effective way to look at the overwhelming psychological forces that drive these issues. And there are a number of Smart Growth advocates in Michigan who are ripe to be asked these questions.
Lack of coordinated planning

The gripe about land use is that there is too much local land use planning and not enough coordination between local, county and regional plans. Michigan in particular has a plethora of government units (more than 1,850) that have something to say about the way land gets used.

How bad is it? Find out. Go to every municipality within your circulation and ask for their “buildout analysis.” This is a study that shows the number of homes, businesses and industries that would result if the municipality was “built out” to what zoning allows.

Many communities will not have such an analysis, but with the help of a local planner you can probably come up with some rough estimates, particularly with residential development.

Now aggregate all your information to get a sense of what your entire region would look like if each community got what it planned for. Interview local leaders and ask them what would happen to their community if the neighboring community achieved it’s built out. How would it affect schools, traffic, jobs, emergency services, and water and sewer services?
What if your entire circulation was built out as zoning allows? Does this make sense?

More uncoordinated planning

When a school district decides to build a new school, it produces a magnet for growth and development. Did it discuss that impact with the community that will have to manage that growth? Can that community handle it? Did the district consider the impact of its decision on neighboring schools and communities that could be drained by that growth? Can they handle the impact? Will public buildings be left abandoned or under used?

These are fair questions. They are seldom asked by school board members, let alone by journalists.
Is density a bad thing?

Interview advocates of higher density communities. Interview people who live in them. Do they feel crowded? Get perspectives from experts, such as the Michigan Farmland and Community Alliance’s Kurt Norgaard, who have done visual preference surveys.

This could stand alone as a story. But it can also provide critical perspective in stories about debates over the density requirements of proposed developments.

Religion

Even non-believers love to read about religion. And it’s an unusual land use hook that draws in readers. What’s more, West Michigan is a bit of a hotbed of people with strong views on this issue.

On the philosophical level, there are groups that disagree over the meanings of such terms as stewardship and dominion. In west Michigan, you can find several interesting perspectives including a free-market view from the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, (616) 454 3080, www.acton.org. Another view is provided by the Au Sable Institute based in Mancelona, (608) 663-4610, www.ausable.org. Other area sources: Steven Bouma-Prediger, Hope College, Holland, 616-395-7757, boumapred@hope.edu; David Warners, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, dwarners@calvin.edu, 616-957-6820; Uko Zylstra, Calvin College, (616) 526-6499, zylu@calvin.edu; Dean Ohlman, RBC Ministries, Grand Rapids, 616-974-2726, dohlman@rbc.org; Randall Van Dragt, biology department, Calvin College,616-526-6497, vdra@calvin.edu; Janel Curry-Roper, geography dept., Calvin College, 616-526-6869, jcurry@calvin.edu

On the practical level, check out how faith-based environmental justice groups in urban centers are partnering with rural faith groups worried about the loss of a rural way of life.

And what about those mega churches that draw thousands of people with sports, fitness centers, entertainment and even shopping? They draw traffic from great distances, can break noise ordinances, cause parking headaches, street congestion and even draw development. The federal courts and Congress have been trying to sort out conflicts between zoning restrictions and freedom of religion issues. James Schwab, a senior research associate with the American Planning Association in Chicago, has been closely watching these clashes. Schwab, co-editor of a zoning publication, has helped mainstream reporters cover this issue. He is at 312 786 6364 or jschwab@planning.org.

Rural roads

One way of getting a handle on development pressures in rural areas is to look at accident rates, particularly car-deer accidents. Are they going up? Can police handle the increase? Can the county road commission afford to maintain them as traffic increases? Michigan accident stats collected from every police agency can be found at www.michigan.gov/msp.

Urban roads

Along those same lines, Stuart Leavenworth, who covered growth for the Raleigh News & Observer, says reporters can find great stories by analyzing pedestrian accident data:

“It is always fascinating to learn which intersection in your area is the most dangerous. This isn’t always a sprawl story — sometimes accidents are higher in older parts of town than newer ones. But pedestrian safety is a big factor in whether people chose to walk or get in their car, so it all gets back to how we are designing our communities.”

Again, local data can be ferreted out from the Michigan State Police.

Scenic roads

Often the trip is as enjoyable as the destination. Conservancies are frantically trying to preserve view sheds along scenic highways in northwest Michigan. Is development ruining scenic highway routes in your community? Is it poised to? Is this a loss that should be weighed against the benefits of development? Rumor has it that even 28th Street in Grand Rapids was once an attractive rural road.

Sprawling cities, sprawling waistlines

Does sprawl make you fat? No less than the U.S. Centers for Disease Control makes that link. It’s no news that Michigan residents are particularly out of shape. Increasingly, health experts say communities that discourage walking contribute to the problem. And rising health care costs make it an economic problem.

How walkable is your community? Find out. Do a walkability audit.

Sources: Risa Wilkerson, rwilkerson@michiganfitness.org, is the active community environments director for the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness. The Michigan Department of Community Health has an active community assessment tool at www.mihealthtools.org. The governor’s council has a study linking $8.9 billion in health care costs to poor fitness at www.michiganfitness.org. The MEDC, the economic development arm of the state, recently made the same link with another study.

Igor Vojnovic, an assistant professor of Urban and Metropolitan Environments at Michigan State University, is an expert on community design. He is at vojnovic@msu.edu Other Web sites:

http://www.activelivingbydesign.org/

http://www.activelivingleadership.org/

Can kids walk to school in your community?
Stuart Leavenworth, now at the Sacramento Bee says this is his favorite angle to the sprawl story: “The fact that, in most new communities, these days kids can’t walk or ride their bikes to school. New schools tend to be planned like strip shopping centers, surrounded by six-lane highways, so parents drive their kids to and from school, adding to rush-hour gridlock. Of
course, there are other reasons parents drive their kids (fear of crime) but the design of communities is a big factor.

“This is a sprawl story that almost everyone can relate to, since most of us recall fondly walking to school (and being independent of our parents!)”

Interview parents of elementary school kids. Are they frightened to let their children walk to school? Better yet, do a walk-to-school audit. Walk from a new residential neighborhood to the school that serves it, and note dangerous intersections, high traffic areas and lack of sidewalks and crosswalks. More information: http://www.walktoschool-usa.org/

Demographics

You can find stats you need for local land use stories at www.census.gov. Don’t just check out the population trends. Studies show that the number of households has a greater impact on the environment then just the number of people. So while the number of people per household drops, the number of households likely increases.

Get the local numbers and see. And for a broad perspective on this issue contact Jack Liu, 517 355 1810, a fisheries and wildlife scientist at MSU. His research found that worldwide fewer people in more households is a much greater strain on resources.

More Demographics

So just where are all your residents moving? Where did they come from? The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently analyzed census data and found that just over half of the residents fleeing its core community were moving to a nearby county. The census provides county-level origin and destination figures for people who moved in the past 5 years.

You may not find as clear of a pattern as Cleveland, but there could be a good story here, particularly if you can track it by zip code. Just pick your fastest growing area and figure out where the new residents came from.

Or look at the whole county and see where the out-migrants went.

School demographics

With Proposal A’s school finance reform schools need to maintain or increase their student population to hang onto or increase funding. Wealthier communities can no longer vote to tax themselves to boost local school funding.

They need bodies that their community’s zoning structure may keep out of the classroom.

Check out the demographics of a local wealthy district. If the senior class is larger than the first grade class, it is headed for trouble. Enrollment is in decline and along with it the funding that goes with those lost students.

How come a wealthy district is losing students? Look at the community’s zoning. Does it allow developers to build homes that young parents of young children can afford to buy? Or does lot size and other requirements mean only wealthy, older people can afford to live there.

Some wealthy communities have zoned out the parents of the next generation of students. In some situations wealthy Michigan districts are unsuccessfully lobbying their municipalities to allow affordable housing. Is that happening in your area?

Solutions are controversial and newsy: Let wealthy districts tax themselves and increase the disparity with poorer districts that prop A was supposed to solve? Pass a state law requiring that every community zone for affordable housing?

Make the lack of information a story

Paul Muschick, the Growth and Transportation reporter at the News&Record in High Point, North Carolina, did an extensive story exploring growth in his region. The most startling revelation: “No one in our planning community had been tracking how much land was actually being developed,” Muschick reports. “ To me, and several people I interviewed, that is a huge piece of information not to have in a community where growth and development is the number one topic of interest/concern outside of schools.”

So if data is missing, ask why. And ask community leaders how they can make critical growth decisions without it.

Odds and Ends

When a new development is approved, check to see if it is consistent with the community’s master plan. If it’s not, check if the community has a history of approving exceptions to the master plan. Quantify it, and then ask community leaders why they ever bothered to plan in the first place.

Compare minimum lot sizes in growing suburbs with older suburbs and inner city. How are increased minimum lot sizes in zoning ordinances contributing to sprawl?

When a new development comes to a rural area, ask county road commissioners how they’ll pay to improve the roads that serve the development. You may be the first to ask them, another example of uncoordinated planning. For additional perspective, get a recent study published by the Planning & Zoning Center, Planning and Zoning Center, (517) 886 0555 in Lansing that indicates planned density in rural townships often outstrips road capacity. It indicates the amount of development a rural area can take before affecting its attractions.

How well informed are your zoning board members and planning commissioners? Do they avail themselves of training? Should they?

Second (or vacation) homes on lakefronts have introduced a number of aesthetic and environmental questions. Check out the growth of second homes for your community. The U.S. Census does some tracking. What is the impact of intensive shoreline development?

Redevelopment of brownfields has been an ongoing urban story for more than a decade. What’s the status of your community? How many abandoned buildings or vacant lots are you warehousing? How many new businesses are springing up?

Making Words Count
A tipsheet by David Poulson, associate director, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism

When Darren Samuelsohn heard “global climate change” during January’s State of the Union address, he suspected it was the first time the president had uttered the phrase in any of his previous annual assessments of the country.

The Greenwire senior reporter returned to his office and verified his hunch by combing through the six others. His story was the first to lead with the fact that 2007 was the first year Bush mentioned global climate change in a State of the Union.

“This was a big deal,” Samuelsohn said. “While Bush may not have made any major policy reversals on mandatory caps, it put him on record on national TV and before the new Democratic Congress as saying this is a priority for his administration.”

It took Samuelsohn about 30 minutes to cut and paste the texts of the past speeches into a Word document and scan them to make sure he was right. But there is an easier way for reporters on deadline to count how often words appear in the State of the Union.

What’s more, there are easy techniques for quickly counting the incidence of certain words in speeches given by anyone – your state environmental department chief, the leader of an environmental group, the mayor, school superintendent, police chief, governor.

It’s an analysis that may help a reporter read the tea leaves for shifts in policy or priorities. At a minimum, it provides a fun entry point and fodder for a graphic to spice up what may be a dull speech story.

For the State of the Union, check out http://style.org/stateoftheunion/parse/. It’s a nifty parsing tool for counting words. The side-by-side comparison of each of Bush’s speeches shows the evolution of which subjects are emphasized. Check out words like terror, terrorism, Iraq and war to see how often they appear each year.

You can do the same thing with environment-related words and phrases – energy, ethanol, pollution, nuclear power, global warming. Or contrast the incidence of words like war and peace or drugs and education.

That’s pretty nifty. But most reporters have greater need for analyzing local speeches. There are two techniques for doing this quickly. One involves simple spreadsheet skills. The other uses a speedier Web-based tool, but you don’t get the satisfaction – and the security – of doing the work yourself.

First, the spreadsheet technique:
1. Paste the text into Microsoft Word. You may want to highlight it and go to edit/clear/formats to get rid of extraneous formatting, particularly if you copied it off the Web.
2. Call up the search and replace function (control f on PCs; open-apple f on Macs) and replace each punctuation mark with nothing by leaving the “Replace With” box empty.
3. Now replace spaces (hit the spacebar once) with paragraph marks (^p). That will put each word on a separate line.
4. Paste the result into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet under a column labeled Words.
5. Run a pivot table to find how many times each word appears. Sort the results by descending order. Don’t be intimidated by pivot tables. Just:
- Highlight the entire column including the header and go to Data/PivotTable and PivotChart Report.
- Click the “next” button in the first wizard window. Click “next” in the next dialogue box. Now click the “layout” button.
- Drag the “words” button into the row area of the chart. Again drag the “words” button but this time drop it into the data area. It will change to “count of words.”

- Click OK and then finish. To put the incidence of words in order, double click on the gray box behind the word column header. Click on advanced. Under “AutoSort options,” check descending. Under “Using field,” click on the drop-down arrow to sort by “count of words.” Click OK and OK again. The most frequently used words appear at the top of the list.

6. Just ignore words like the, and, or, it, they, he, she and others that are not so interesting. Or use search and replace to get rid of such words before pasting your text into a spreadsheet.

For a faster automated process, go to http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/webtools/web_freqs.html. Just paste the text into this tool developed by Georgetown University and let it rip. You can sort alphabetically or by frequency.

If you just want to count the incidence of a particular word or phrase, you can always do a search for it in Word and replace it with something else. A dialogue box will tell you how often the substitution was made.

There is a legitimate argument over whether the number of times something gets mentioned in a speech represents the priorities of the speaker. A word count might be an objective indication of emphasis and perhaps policy shift. But you’ll need your reporter’s brain to provide the proper context.

And it doesn’t all have to be heavy duty analysis. Use the same techniques to find out how often someone’s favorite buzz word or phrase pops up in a speech. Even they may be surprised at how they litter their prose with the same words.

Word counts lend themselves well to graphical presentation. The New York Times used circles of varying size and divided them into categories – domestic affairs, taxes and the economy, terrorism and foreign affairs – to visually depict the frequency of words used in the 2007 State of the Union. In 2004, the Times used similar circles to depict the incidence of 20,000 words spoken by politicians at both party conventions.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at one of these circle charts and figure out what a politician’s priorities are by the words they use,” said Karl Gude, the former information graphics editor at Newsweek who now teaches at Michigan State University. “And that’s just what I love about them. They convert a daunting amount of data into a simple and instant read.”

If nothing else, counting words is a lot more interesting than the old staple of counting how often a speech is interrupted by applause.

David Poulson teaches environmental journalism and computer-assisted reporting at Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.

The Write Word

A tipsheet by David Poulson, associate director, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism

When a journalist uses the wrong word it is like a carpenter using a screwdriver to pound a nail. It won’t get the job done.
And it undermines credibility with readers, sources and colleagues.

Few people witness the screwdriver-hammering carpenter. Journalists publish their mistakes for thousands to see. And then they sign their names to them.

This list of potential linguistic pitfalls comes from those who cover the environment:

data – Sigh. Disagreement on treating data as a singular or plural noun approaches the level of religious conflict. Many scientists insist on data’s plurality. They’re right, strictly speaking. The singular form is datum. But who are scientists to dictate the conventions of an ever-evolving language? The AP Stylebook, some dictionaries and grammar references say it can be both plural and singular. Here’s one line of reasoning: When scientists talk about data, they are talking about discrete values that they measure in the field. But when you process data – crunch it in a spreadsheet, stream it over the Internet – it becomes a collection, a unit, a commodity – an “it” rather than a “they.” Literate people use data in a singular sense. Should you? The best answer – and admittedly a copout – is to check with your publication. But whatever you decide, make sure your pronouns and verbs are consistent:

- The data are shaky. They should be measured again.
- The data is bogus. It should be ignored.

effluent – That’s the stuff that comes out of a properly working wastewater treatment plant. It is sewage before it arrives.
fireproof – An adjective describing an inability to burn.

fire-resistant – An adjective describing a material that’s hard to ignite.

fire-retardant – An adjective describing an ability to resist burning and withstand heat.

fire retardant – A noun with fire-retardant properties. The hyphen distinguishes the adjective from the noun.

genus – Part of a naming convention that scientists use to identify organisms with similar traits. Many species can be part of the same genus. When a specific genus is written, it is always capitalized and italicized. The correct order is Genus species.

genera – The plural of genus.

genuses – This word does not exist.

genius – It shouldn’t take one to properly use the term “genus.”

global warming/climate change – Both also happen by natural processes so precede them with a modifier like “human-caused” if that is what you mean. Human-caused global warming is a rise in global average temperature caused by greenhouse gasses released when fossil fuels are burned. It is one of many climate changes that are natural or human-caused. Global warming can trigger other climatic shifts like drought.

Climate change has been used as a less alarming way of referring to global warming. Although the two terms are often used interchangeably, climate change is a more general term that can encompass increasing temperature at local, regional and global levels, more frequent droughts, more intense storms and cooling in certain regions despite an average global temperature rise.
mucous – An adjective pertaining to mucus.

mucous membrane – Mucus-secreting tissue. The mucous membranes in your nose may be clogged with mucus.

mucus – The slimy stuff secreted by mucous membranes. Snot, for instance.

nuclear – It is pronounced “noo-klee-er” and not “noo-kue-lar.”

sewage – That’s the foul-smelling, black-tinged, semi-liquid that flows through waste pipes and into a sewage treatment plant. It becomes effluent when it leaves – or at least it does if the plant is operating correctly.

sewerage – The pipe system that carries sewage to treatment plants. Sewerage may be part of the name of a utility authority. Since these authorities often run the plant as well as lay and maintain the pipe, “sewerage” has come also to mean the plant itself.

species – Part of a naming convention that scientists use to identify organisms capable of interbreeding. It is a closer relationship than genus. When a specific species is written, it is always lower case and italicized. The correct order is Genus species.

specie – Coin money. It has nothing to do with the scientific naming convention.

tocsin (TOK-sin) – An alarm bell or a warning signal. Example: The device triggered a tocsin whenever it sensed a toxin, toxicant, toxic substance or any of a list of toxics.

toxic – An adjective meaning harmful, even poisonous.

toxics – EPA refers to pesticides and other harmful agents with this inelegant term in recognition that they are not toxins but are toxic. It’s the agency’s short-hand for the more accurate but boring mouthful: toxic substances.

toxins – These are poisons made by biological organisms–as in bee venom, snake venom, the damoic acid produced by some harmful algal blooms or the blistering agents released by some insects. A toxin is NEVER a synthetic chemical, such as a pesticide, combustion byproduct, or flame retardant. It is NEVER a natural inorganic chemical or element, such as lead, arsenic, or asbestos.

toxicant – Some publications prefer this rather clunky word to toxin when describing the same thing.

wetlands – They don’t have to be wet. The federal government says they are areas soaked with water often enough that they support vegetation adapted to saturated soils. There are many flavors of wetlands – swamps, marshes, bogs, fens, swales, potholes. Distinctions are at http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/types/

Special thanks to Janet Raloff, Kimberly Thigpen Tart, Sylvia Forbes, Wendee Holtcamp, Robert A. Thomas, Joseph A. Davis, Cheryl Hogue, Sarah Whyman, Thomas H. Yulsman

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