July rain: what a difference a month makes

I got what may be my all time favorite reader comment a couple of weeks back when I tried to explain that the summer rains New Mexico has been getting do not mean our drought is over: This article is miserablism at its absolute worst. How about looking at important progress in reservoirs like Conchas …

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Mike Taugher, a journalist’s journalist

Amid some tears today over the tragic death of my former colleague Mike Taugher, I found a couple of stories he wrote about California water worth sharing. Mike was the Albuquerque Journal’s environment beat reporter back in the 1990s, and a nicer colleague you couldn’t have found, a talent, a joy to work with, a …

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what newspapers do

Newspaper people don’t become newspaper people because they want to get rich, or because they want to be famous, they do so because they believe in what newspapers do. TJ Sullivan, in his explanation of why he went to Roger Ebert’s funeral

Ebert

The reaction at the office today to the death of newspaperman Roger Ebert was striking. I cannot think of another writer of American English with the same broad, beloved appeal. One friend, a younger-generation journalist who’s from Chicago, sent around a collection of particularly delicious fragments from Ebert movie reviews, and I was struck by …

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A half-hearted defense of the New York Times decision to kill the green blog

I’ve been a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists for a number of years, but every year when my renewal notice comes up I wrestle anew with the membership and the label it entails.* I’m a journalist who covers topics that are sometimes labeled “environmental”, but I’m not sure how to define the subject …

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The risks of risk communication

[A]n informed and properly motivated risk communicator would proceed deliberately and cautiously. In particular, because efforts to quiet public fears about vaccines will predictably create some level of exactly that fear, such a communicator will not engage in a high-profile, sustained campaign to “reassure” the general public that vaccines are safe without reason to believe …

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