At Yale University’s environment360 web-based site one finds a story with the sort of lede that makes one envious – an account from an exotic locale where few tourists go, and a quote right off the bat letting the reader know the reporter got to go there and see things for him or herself.
In this case the enterprising writer is Ed Struzik, a veteran outdoors writer and photographer, and the opening setting is the shore of an island in the archipelago of arctic Canada. There he visits a few Inuit hunters and quickly gets around to listing a whole lot of other traditional arctic peoples – Eskimos, Komi, Evenks – who share their predicament. Caribou, a significant contributor to their cultures and larders, are having a tough time as temperatures rise and the rhythms of snow, ice, and rain change.
No sense capsulizing it. Just read it for all that.
But I can tell you it is a heavily-reported, smoothly-written, not overly long dispatch on events that, reported from afar, would lack immediacy and muscle. Such stories have gotten harder to find in old line media but are cropping up regularly in so-called new media outlets, including e360. I
A question is whether this fine piece has much impact or circulation. I’ve dropped a line to e360’s editor to learn what the audience is. If we get the answer this post will get an update. One does notice that one new outlet, the AlaskaDispatch, points out the e360 piece to its audience.
– Charlie Petit
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