How did covering the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 frame the way you approach environmental stories?
It was great training for the environmental beat. I learned that environmental-health stories always have a profound emotional content, and that makes them political and religious stories. As an environmental reporter, you need to cover the emotional impacts, but science is your bottom line. Did the experience help you deal with flacks? From time to time I’ve been tempted to say to government or corporate officials–and even to officials of environmental groups–“You sound like the scientists who had the first press conference on Chernobyl!” Has teaching changed your perspective? It has helped me think through the evolution of environmental journalism. I see four generations. The first was stories that were so clear in their moral valence that they were close to parables. You had villains, you had heroes, you had victims. The second generation was a transition to stories about legal solutions in legislatures and Congress. The third generation was reactive to the first two, like the Sag
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