Yes, the U.P. does exist ...
... and other tidbits to share (or not!) with your editors.
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| McDiarmid Jr. |
“Why are we writing a story about the Upper Peninsula?” asked an editor, referring to Michigan’s far north — a huge expanse of sparsely populated wood that is a veritable magnet for hunters, anglers, hikers, vacationers, snowmobilers and skiers from population centers like Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing and Chicago.
“Why not?” I replied.
“Well,” she responded. “We hardly have any readers up there, do we?”
I laughed. She didn’t.
Then it dawned on me. She was serious.
For reporters hoping to incorporate environmental reporting into their beats, the going can be tough: Mall rat editors incapable of making the connection between the woods and the urban readers who flock to them (and want to read about them); competition from “quick-turn” stories that feed the daily beast; and bosses used to seeing stories with — quite literally at some papers — bodies in the street.
“Can we say for sure anyone has been killed or made really sick from this?” is a typical editor’s question on an environmental story. It’s a legitimate question, but the answer is often unsatisfying for folks who are used to direct cause-and-effect.
Answering that question may require an explanation about how dioxin or mercury in an ecosystem may pose significant health risks despite lacking simple linear beauty of “deranged gunman = mayhem” or “car crash = innocent victim.”
That’s when you learn what kind of editor you have.
Mine is a former environmental reporter, so I have few complaints. But it wasn’t always so.
There was an editor who’d never been outside the seven-county Metropolitan Detroit area (that leaves 76 counties she’d never seen. Frankly, I don’t think she believed the Upper Peninsula existed.)
Another who believed in two kinds of environmental reporting: zoo animals and weather stories.
One for whom “wacko” was synonymous with “environmentalist.”
Alas, even in the Great Lakes state, there are plenty of newspaper people who’ve never boated, fished or even swam in a Michigan lake or stream.
So how do you successfully pitch environmental stories to these folks? Some suggestions. Some of them honorable. Some downright underhanded!
- Make the human connection. You may not have dead bodies, but you’ve got to find someone affected by your topic. An air pollution story is nothing but numbers and science (yuck, science!) unless you find that asthmatic child or an elderly person who can’t go outside on muggy days.
- Exploit your editors’ pet peeves. His flooded basement may be your ticket to a story on the water-retention value of vanishing wetlands. Or, if the flooding includes backed-up sewage that may be the jackpot — pitch a story on the inadequacies of the local sewage system.
- Work off the clock. Pick away at a good story in down time and off hours. Once you’ve got a working draft, it’ll be easier to get the time to finish it.
- Connect it to your readership. A story on logging in the state forests (we don’t have subscribers in the forests!) needs someone from your circulation/viewership area who spends time in those forests.
- Watch the vacation schedule. If you’re being blocked by an editor who believes mercury is a non-issue (we played with the stuff when we were kids, and we turned out fine!), wait until they’re out of town and sneak it in then. I’m serious. And, no, we’re not hiring if you get fired over it.
- Don’t ignore the local-local. Environmental stories abound on local beats if you know where to look for them. New subdivisions and retail stores eat up wetlands and fields; every pond and creek is affected by non-point pollution sources; and your state environmental regulators certainly can tell you where the brownfields are in the town you cover.
- Find the troublemakers. Every community has at least one raving eco-lunatic.
You may have to listen to eight or nine “outrages of the week” before they bring you one that’s solid … but it’s worth the wait. - Think bells and whistles. Graphics, photographs/videos and break-out boxes will give the story visual impact that can sell it up the chain of command.
- Finally, make the boss look good. If your environmental stories are solid, connect with people and create feedback for your paper or station, you’re halfway to getting the green light next time.
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Hugh McDiarmid Jr. is a graduate of the Knight Center’s 2004 Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute. When he wrote this, he was the environment reporter at the Detroit Free Press. He now serves as the communications director for the Michigan Environmental Council.
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