Determining challenges and potential solutions to environmental journalism education

In the 1960s, the U.S. environmental movement led to a new branch of journalism focused on environmental news and stories. Following a need for environmental journalism, universities and colleges began incorporating it into their respective programs and curricula. While previous research demonstrates an interest among the U.S. public for environmental communication courses at higher education institutions, few studies have evaluated the efficacy of pedagogical approaches to environmental journalism. Climate change, sea level rise, and pollution often figure prominently in the news, therefore a need exists to identify challenges to environmental journalism education and improving curricula. Although U.S. higher institutions have seen a decline in students interested in journalism, there has been an increasing number of students with a science or environmental background enrolling in journalism courses. This study sought to determine the primary challenges faced by environmental journalists and educators of the topic with the goal to reform journalism coursework in U.S. universities and colleges.

The researchers contacted members of environmental journalism organizations, such as the Society of Environmental Journalists and the International Environmental Communication Association, to conduct interviews. The authors did not state how or why the organizations were selected. Additionally, they contacted a few professional references they knew personally via email. Although the research focused on environmental journalism educators, the authors elected to include science journalism educators because science and environment topics often overlap. A total of 11 participants volunteered—10 from the U.S. and 1 from Mexico—each of which filled out a pre-interview questionnaire consisting of questions about their teaching background and environmental journalism courses they have taught. Following this questionnaire, each respondent participated in an interview with the researchers. The researchers transcribed the interviews and sorted the answers into common themes to determine primary challenges and consider possible solutions.

Overall findings demonstrated that many of the challenges faced in environmental journalism are comparable to those found in other journalism branches. The four categories of challenges identified were 1) technology; 2) student interest; 3) advocacy among students; and 4) availability of potential careers.

Many of the respondents highlighted the difficulty of keeping up with new technology and incorporating new software into the curriculum. Not only does it pose a challenge to educators who need to familiarize themselves with new technologies, but it often burdens universities because it requires funding to install the latest software. Additionally, one respondent mentioned how social media, such as Twitter, changed how students write by enforcing word limits.

A second challenge mentioned by many respondents was that some of the classes contained students from environmental science, not journalism, backgrounds. Educators are confronted with students of varying education levels in terms of science and journalism, making it difficult to develop lesson plans that pertain to the whole classroom.

Since journalism educators are seeing an increasing number of students from a science or environmental discipline, respondents also commented on the challenge of advocacy among students. Best practices of journalism and news coverage are that articles should strive to not include any sort of bias from the author. However, because many of these students have substantial knowledge on environmental topics and strong opinions, participants reported that students often use persuasive writing. One respondent highlighted that students may be primarily concerned with how to effectively communicate scientific data to policy makers and the public, rather than focused on learning journalism itself.

Lastly, educators expressed the challenge of encouraging students to pursue a journalism career when jobs are often difficult to obtain, especially at an entry-level position. This lack of a secure job market may prevent students from enrolling in journalism programs.

The researchers acknowledge that the small size of this study may limit the results and therefore caution against assuming all environmental journalism educators or university programs have the same challenges. Additionally, some of the participants in this study have a personal relationship with the authors. This may have impacted the results because due to the personal relationship, respondents may have provided answers that they thought interviewers preferred to hear. As a result, the responses may be invalid or misrepresentative.

Based on the four challenges determined in their study, the authors highlight the importance of combining journalism, science, and policy disciplines. The authors suggest using an interdisciplinary approach to journalism education and including students from varying backgrounds. Using a multi-disciplinary approach will grant students the ability to effectively communicate scientific data through story-writing and media outlets. While educators may struggle to develop curricula for classes with varying disciplines, the authors recommend that universities establish pre-requisites for journalism courses to ensure that students have similar background knowledge. If universities and colleges consider these challenges, educators can collaborate to consider possible solutions and improve environmental journalism education.