“There are three kinds of people who run toward disaster, not away: cops, firemen and reporters.” -Rod Dreher, newspaper columnist

I saw this quote on the wall at the Newseum in Washington DC this past autumn, just days before the anniversary of September 11th. While the quote is not entirely accurate, as evidenced by all the people who ran towards the explosions to help others yesterday at the Boston Marathon, it does draw attention to a set of people who often go under-appreciated during crises: journalists.

Journalists provide a public service; their job is to report and inform, bringing knowledge and answers to their audience. In the case of visual journalists, they also take on the role of being the eyes of the viewers. It’s often easy to overlook what they do, or forget that they perform their jobs at their own risk during a crisis. It’s easy to assume that they are detached from a situation as the cover tragedies too, but the reality is this: journalists covering these events are in the midst of a balancing act. They are balancing performing their job while processing the same events they are experiencing. They are balancing getting the news while being sensitive to the victims.

In today’s Boston Globe, columnist Kevin Cullen recognizes this balancing act, writing:

I saw Lisa Hughes from WBZ-TV trying to do her job, amid the blood and the body parts. And then I remembered that Lisa, who is as nice a person as you’ll find in this business, married a guy from Wellesley named Mike Casey who lost his wife Neilie on one of the planes out of Boston that crashed into the Twin Towers. And then I tried not to cry and just marveled at how professional Lisa was.

This balancing act is what struck me the most at the Newseum’s 9/11 exhibit. The film “Running Toward Danger” shares first-person accounts from journalists covering the events of September 11th– how they were reporting one minute and running for their lives the next, trying to perform their jobs but then breaking down and crying while trying to process what had just happened. It’s a story that is resounded in Time’s Q&A with Boston Globe photographer John Tlumacki does a really great job of illuminating what one photojournalist experienced while working an event like yesterday’s. Tlumacki says “you try not to get your emotions involved as a photographer” and describes sticking to the job and exercising good judgement. Then he says:

I was so shook up about it — I was speechless when I was there [on scene]. My eyes were swelling up behind my camera. We use a camera as a defense but I was shaken when I got back, just scanning the pictures. The other sad part was that I took my shoes off because they were covered in blood from walking on the sidewalk taking pictures.

I always wondered what it would be like when I see photographers covering this stuff all over the world. You go to Israel and then there’s an explosion and photographers are there. It’s haunting to be a journalist and have to cover it. I don’t ever want to have to do that again.

According to Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, journalists’ symptoms of traumatic stress are remarkably similar to those of police offers and firefighters who deal with tragedies. Yet unlike other first responders, journalists seldom receive support such as debriefings and counseling, Tompkins says.

The mental risks are just one component of covering trauma. There’s also the risk of personal injury or death. In the United States, only one journalist has died as a result of a dangerous assignment since the Committee to Protect Journalists started keeping track in 1992. That one journalist was Bill Biggart, a freelance photojournalist who died during the September 11th attacks. Biggart was walking his dog when he learned that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. He ran home, grabbed his camera, and rushed to the scene. At 10:28:24 AM, he took his last shot, before the second tower collapsed, killing him. Biggart’s body was recovered in the rubble four days later, along with three cameras, six rolls of film, and one compact flash card containing nearly 150 digital images. As I walked around the Newseum and saw the images from Biggart’s final moments next to his battered gear, I broke down and cried.

Biggart is just one of 123 journalists who have died on dangerous assignments around the world since 1992, and another 856 have died in connection with their work as a result of murder or combat.

So today while we reflect on yesterday’s events and the brave people who put themselves in harm’s way, let us think of the journalists as well, not just in Boston, but around the world.

A lion in a fenced private reserve in South Africa. Copyright: Allie Wilkinson

To fence, or not to fence: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler for lions to suffer
The slings and arrows of outraged farmers,
Or to take measures against the wrath of men,
And by fencing protect them?

Conservation biologists have long debated whether wildlife, and carnivores in particular, should be managed through landscape approaches or through physical separation (i.e. fences). The case for carnivores lends itself to fencing them in; populations of large carnivores are decreasing around the world, and conflict with humans is a big problem. Large carnivores range far and wide, making it nearly impossible to avoid coming into close proximity to humans at some point in their lives. With livestock lost to tooth and claw, and personal safety at risk, humans are generally not happy about sharing space with carnivores. Conservation efforts try to decrease the stress of cohabitation with compensation schemes, such as those that offer economic incentives to farmers and ranchers for lost livestock– bribery at its finest.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our lions, but in ourselves.

Over the past 100 years, habitat loss has reduced the lion’s range by 75 percent, which has only intensified human-lion conflicts. Poorly regulated sport hunting has resulted in over-harvesting in some areas. Add to that mix genetically isolated populations, which leads to inbreeding and all the troubles that come with it–such as reduced reproductive rates and greater susceptibility to disease– and it’s not a pretty picture for lions.

Yet not all lion populations have declined. Lions in the Serengeti have increased steadily over the past half-century, and populations have remained stable in several large South African national parks. Private game reserves in South Africa and Zimbabwe have had success in restoring lion populations to their former glory before they went locally extinct. The secret to success in South Africa’s national parks (and I suspect many of the private reserves) is fencing; all of South Africa’s national parks are fenced in. Lions are considered so dangerous in South Africa that they can only be re-introduced after wildlife managers erect lion-proof fencing and agree to recapture or destroy any escaping lions. The fences are effective at preventing most conflicts between lions and humans, but it runs against the conservation ethic of keeping protected areas unfenced. Another issue is that many countries in the lions’ range have policies against fencing.

It might be time to change those policies. Nearly half of Africa’s free-roaming lion populations are expected to decline to the point of near-extinction over the next 20 to 40 years, according to a new study published in Ecology Letters. By looking at lion population densities and trends in comparison to management techniques, they found that lions in fenced reserves fare better, with population levels closer to the number of lions that the environment can sustain. Fencing in lions also makes more sense financially: you get more bang for your buck, or in this case, lions for your dollar. Fenced reserves maintained 80 percent of the lion population they could sustainably support at $500 per square kilometer; unfenced populations cost $2000 per square kilometer and only support half the amount of lions the land could sustain.

While enclosing lions isn’t ideal, it is effective– and may also be just the thing conservation efforts need to maintain intact savannah ecosystems. Carnivores and healthy ecosystems go hand-in-hand. Top-level predators help keep the balance of nature, and their loss can have disastrous consequences: altering landscapes, impacting ecosystem dynamics, and generally causing mayhem.

In sub-Sarahan Africa, the decline of lions has led to a dramatic increase in olive baboons, which has intensified conflict between humans and baboons. As baboons become more brazen in their crop-raiding, families resort to taking their children out of school to help guard the fields. So while living with lions may come with its fair share of headaches, humans are a lot better off living with them than living without them.

Packer C., Loveridge A., Canney S., Caro T., Garnett S.T., Pfeifer M., Zander K.K., Swanson A., MacNulty D. & Balme G. & (2013). Conserving large carnivores: dollars and fence, Ecology Letters, n/a-n/a. DOI: 10.1111/ele.12091

Last night I gave a talk with Denise Graveline on using Pinterest for science writers, an event hosted by Science Writers in New York and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. (If you missed it, ASJA has an archive of the event.) Denise has shared her slides and recapped the event on her blog, explaining ways science writers can use Pinterest. Since so many attendees were eager to get started with Pinterest, Denise already covered the why, I decided to explain how to use Pinterest. Let’s get started, shall we?

Getting Started

Pinterest allows you to set up an account either by email, or by connecting to your Facebook or Twitter. If you connect your social accounts, it helps you find friends to follow. Once your account is created, Pinterest may suggest some people to follow or pre-labeled boards for you to start out with. (Note: I was an early adopter who got in during beta, so this part is a bit fuzzy for me.) Feel free to ignore these suggestions or rename your boards if you don’t like what Pinterest recommended.

Next step is setting up your profile. Any time you want to update your profile, you can look to the upper right corner of Pinterest and select “Settings” from the drop-down menu. Here you can enter or change your display name, Pinterest username (which doubles as your custom URL), bio, location, website, and any social accounts you want to link and have displayed.

Who to Follow

You can use the same drop-down menu to also find friends from Facebook. (Pro tip: There is no way to find your Twitter friends through the “Find Friends” feature, so I highly recommend initially creating your account by connecting your Twitter. While it is more of a pain and you only get 3 options at a time, your Twitter friends will appear under “Friends to Follow” on your home page.)

The “Following” page is your home-base on Pinterest. Much like your Twitter feed or Facebook News Feed, the Pinterest “Following” page shows pins from all pinners and boards that you follow, with the most recent pins at the top. On the left-hand sidebar, Pinterest recommends friends to follow and displays recent activity- people who have started following you, as well as likes, comments and repins. You’ll also a notice a navigation bar directly below the Pinterest logo.

The navigation bar gives you different options for viewing pins. Your options are:

• Following: Shows pins from boards and pinners that you follow
• Categories: Allows you to select specific categories of pins from everyone. (Science & Nature is a category.)
• Everything: Any and every pin added to Pinterest.
• Popular: What’s Hot.
• Gifts: Offers different price points for browsing products with a price listing.

Exploring categories that interest you is a great way to find people and boards to follow.

Once you find accounts you like, you can also look at who they are following to find more people that may interest you. (Pinterest gives you the option to follow all boards, or just specific boards from a pinner.)

You can also use the search function to find people or boards to follow.

Your Pinboards

The first step to happy pinning is creating your boards. It is important to name your board in such a way that others can find it via search. If your board is about microbiology but you name it “Teeny Tiny Things”, it won’t show up for a search for the term microbiology. Also categorize your board so that people can find it easier.

Pinterest now has an option for secret boards. While their example is to use it for planning a surprise party or collecting potential birthday gifts for Dad, for the science journalist it offers the ability to collect information and source for a story you are working on, without showing all your cards to the world. (Or if you are shy about starting out on Pinterest, why not try a secret board until you gain confidence?)

You can also edit boards once they are created.

Let’s say you’re regretting your decision to name your board “Teeny Tiny Things” and you want to change it. You can do that. Or maybe you want to clarify what the board is about so that it can be found via search. Now you can add microbiology in the description, and a search for boards with the term “microbiology” will now display your board in the results. You can also add collaborators, which is great for institutional pinning.

Get Pinning!

Now that your boards are created, you are ready to pin. (But if you haven’t created your boards or you want to pin something that doesn’t have an appropriate board yet, you can create a new board while creating a new pin.) You can either repin content already on Pinterest, or find new content online. If you are pinning content from the web, be sure to check your browser’s address bar. Make sure that you are pinning from within a particular page or post and not from the homepage. While that picture may be at the top of the homepage now, if you or another pinner go back weeks later the content you pinned will be buried and it will be a hassle to locate it.

Pinterest provides a handy “Pin It” button that you can add to your browser’s navigation bar, for easy pinning from anywhere on the internet. When you click the Pin It button, a window comes up with all the images from that site that can be pinned.

Select the image you want to pin. This opens a pop-up window that allows you to select (or create) a board and enter a description.

There is also an option to post to any select social accounts you have connected to Pinterest.

Get Social

Pinterest is a social network, so that means interaction. If you hover over a pin, you will see options to repin, like, or comment.

Hidden Extras

If you’re using Pinterest for promoting yourself, you may want to monitor who is pinning content from your website. You could look at the repins and your likes,but that doesn’t show everything pinned from your site. Try this little-known trick: type pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com in your browser’s address bar, and you can see what is being pinned from your website. Here’s an example of content pinned from Scientific American:

Now go forth and pin!

As you may have gathered from my prior post on the matter, I was very upset when the New York Times closed its environment desk seven weeks ago– fearing that environmental coverage would take a hit at the Times, and that the decision would send the message to other outlets that environmental coverage isn’t a necessity. With the loss of both environmental editors, it comes as no surprise to me that the Times would close up shop for the Green Blog. The blog was bound to end up adrift without the guidance of dedicated editors, and would end up as collateral damage in the decision to disperse the environment desk. While unsurprising, the decision still makes me angry. In a similar fashion to the announcement of the environment desk’s closure, the Times made their announcement regarding the Green Blog on a Friday. Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review called the timing of the announcement an act of “total cowardice”, saying that the decision was timed to avoid the widespread criticism that was sure to come in the wake of the announcement. Brainard goes on to share the same outrage that I had formerly expressed. He writes:

They’ve made a horrible decision that ensures the deterioration of the Times’s environmental coverage at a time when debates about climate change, energy, natural resources, and sustainability have never been more important to public welfare…

The decision is not only a disappointment to those on the environment beat, but for scientists as well. Dr. Holly Bik, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Davis shared her thoughts on the value of the Green Blog via Twitter, saying:

@loveofscience @dnlee5 @nytenvironment Green Blog covered one of my papers–was good outlet for add’l science news, not just sexy papers — Holly Bik (@Dr_Bik) March 3, 2013

The loss of the Green Blog leaves a gaping hole in the blogosphere of the New York Times. Listed as one of only three blogs under the “Science and Environment” section, the Times’ science and environment blog readers are now left with “Scientist at Work” and “Consults” – the latter of which features experts in medicine answering to health questions posed by readers. Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog was moved from the news section to the Opinion section quite some time ago, but remains a beacon for the environment in an otherwise barren blog landscape.

In writing his farewell to the Green Blog, Revkin points out that the Times has nine sports blogs and nine blogs covering fashion, dining, lifestyle, and the like. ”I would like to have thought there was space for the environment in that mix,” wrote Revkin. So did I Andy, so did I.

And then my eyes welled up with tears….angry tears. How can there be NINE sports blogs and NINE fashion and lifestyle blogs, and yet there isn’t room for ONE environmental news blog?

We may take enjoyment from knowing what our favorite teams or designers are up to, but that information doesn’t hold bearing on our lives. Yet environmental issues intertwine with many important aspects of our lives- like our health, safety, and food security. The media is the leading source of environmental information for adults over the age of 35, according to a report by the National Environmental Education Foundation and Roper Reports, and plays a critical role in linking science and politics with the reality of impacts on people. While some might think of environmental journalists in a Lorax-like role, that we “speak for the trees”, really what we speak for is YOU.

Environmental coverage deserves a home. Yet with the dismantling of the Times’ environment desk, InsideClimate News reported that the nation’s top five newspapers by readership—the Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal—will have about a dozen reporters and a handful of editors among them whose primary responsibility is to cover the environment. (At the time, an exact tally could not be given since the Times had yet to reassign its reporters.) Out of the five newspapers, the LA Times is the only one to have a designated environment desk.

There is something wrong with this picture.

Out of those top five newspapers, the LA Times leads in environmental coverage- with environmental headlines making up 2.66 percent of coverage between January 2011 and May 2012, according to data provided by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The New York Times was a close second at 2.5 percent, which leads me to wonder if having a designated environment desk is responsible for the increased coverage, and how those numbers might change for the Times in the coming months.

Using that same data, a report by the non-profit organization Project for Improved Environmental Coverage found that in the United States, coverage of the environment represented just 1.2 percent of headlines in the thirty nationally prominent news organizations ranked. Local newspapers prioritize environmental coverage 2.5 times more on average than nationally focused news organizations.

Consider the fact that the Kardashians receive nearly 50 times more media coverage than ocean acidification. What relevance do the Kardashians have on your life? None. But ocean acidification? It has dramatic effects on calcifying species such as corals, which are crucial members of reef ecosystems, and could affect marine food webs- leading to substantial changes in commercial fisheries and impacting our food security.

The issue isn’t just with print media. Despite record temperatures and a rash of extreme weather events in 2012, a Media Matters analysis found that broadcast coverage of climate change remained low. And among cable and network news outlets, Fox News has the highest percentage of headline environmental stories at 1.57 percent, compared to CNN’s measly 0.36 percent. (Imagine the irony then CNN cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff in December 2008 when top CNN executives described environmental stories as “elite issues or liberal issues”  that would not help them compete with Fox News.)

But quantity doesn’t equal quality, and Fox News is often criticized for not acting in accordance with quality journalism principles, routinely misleading viewers with biases and false facts when covering environmental stories. Is this really what we want as the main source for environmental headlines? This statistic captures the need for mainstream organizations to step up quality environmental coverage to counter the spread of misinformation.

Nearly 80 percent of Americans believe that environmental coverage should be improved. Which begs the question of those in charge  of decision-making at the national mainstream news organizations- where is this disconnect in coverage coming from, and whom are you catering to? It’s about time you give the American people what they need.

Helpful tips from “”The art, craft and business of freelancing” session at ScienceOnline 2013, moderated by Maggie Koerth-Baker (@maggiekb1) and Charles Choi (@cqchoi).

]]> http://ohfortheloveofscience.com/2013/02/07/freelancers-anonymous-support-group-conquering-your-freelance-fears/feed/ 0 http://ohfortheloveofscience.com/2013/02/06/asbury-h-sallenger-jr-renowned-oceanographer-dies-at-63/ http://ohfortheloveofscience.com/2013/02/06/asbury-h-sallenger-jr-renowned-oceanographer-dies-at-63/#comments Thu, 07 Feb 2013 04:14:29 +0000 Allie http://ohfortheloveofscience.com/?p=1901

Asbury “Abby” H. Sallenger Jr., research oceanographer at the U.S. Geological Survey and expert on hurricanes and coastal-change, passed away at his home in Pinellas County, Florida last night. He was 63.

“Abby was an imaginative researcher and was engaged in his own research, and in the broader community, until the end,” wrote John W. Haines, Program Coordinator for the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program in an email announcing the passing of Dr. Sallenger. “He had an enduring impact on the USGS.”

A former Chief Scientist of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Coastal Geology, Dr. Sallenger recently served as the leader of the USGS storm impacts research group, investigating how coastal environments such as barrier islands, sand dunes, beaches and cliffs change over the long-term and during extreme storms. As architect of the coastal and marine geology program, his vision can still be seen in the structure, objectives and values of the program. He insisted that science comes first, and relished the responsibility of ensuring that science was used to make a difference in issues of national importance, especially coastal issues.

Dr. Sallenger was selected as one of the lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, to be published in 2014, assigned to co-author Chapter 5, which will be an international assessment of climate change impacts and vulnerabilities in coastal and low-lying lands.

Within the last year, Dr. Sallenger and his colleagues published important research on regional sea level rise in Nature Climate Change, which reported that sea-level rise along the U.S. Atlantic Coast has been climbing at a rate three to four times higher than the global average since 1950.

Dr. Sallenger received many honors and awards over the course of his career, In 2007, the received the USGS Shoemaker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Communication, which honors a USGS scientist who demonstrates great skill in presenting complex concepts to nontechnical audiences, and honors the recipient’s skill and enthusiasm for conveying science in multimedia. In the award announcement, USGS wrote, “Whether it is a briefing on the Hill, a presentation to the research or local community, or an interview with the media, Sallenger knows how to communicate the value of USGS science and its relevance to the audience in question. He has become the voice of the USGS with respect to hurricanes and coastal change.”

He also received a “Special Award in Oceanography” from the National Hurricane Center in 2009 for revolutionizing the study of hurricane impacts, and his book “Island in a Storm” was named 2010 Outstanding Academic Title by the Choice magazine of the American Library Association.

To see a video of Dr. Sallenger’s work, check out “In Harm’s Way: Measuring Storm Impacts to Forecast Future Vulnerability”, a Coastal and Marine Geology Podcast from the USGS.