The tracker over the years has taken note of innovative, or desperate, measures that science reporters and their close kin in the environmental and medical journalism world have taken to, uh, get paid to do what they do. The collapse of old time print daily media has spawned great and in many ways exciting ferment in journalism. But the regular paychecks are rare these days. One example of new thinking about bottom lines has come from the environmental journalist Stephen Leahy, who not only writes for several scrappy (ie not lavish spending) outlets but put on his website a suggestion that readers send him viaPayPal a bit of cash, offer him housing when he's on the road, etc. The site, by the way, is a little old, but Leahy is soldiering on, often for the Inter Press Service where this list of his stories is.
Here's another. For a few weeks a little buzz has circulated among science journalism organizations and coffee claques and virtual press rooms and the like over something that calls itself, in advance, "Climate Confidential." It would be a subscriber-based news and analysis outfit with its focus on climate and environmental coverage. I was wondering how to round it into a tidy post and find that somebody just did it for you tracker readers. Forthwith:
- Yale forum on Climate Change & The Media – Bud Ward: Six climate Freelancers Seeking Support Base of 800 Subscribers ;
These six reporters, all women, are no tyros. They are seasoned journalists with important mastheads on their resumes. But some stories they love the most are going without takers. So they are seeking for 800 people to provide base funding for the forays against myths about and foes of a clean environment. Subscribers will have intimate access to the writers on their stories for feedback and discussion. The essence of the problem, as interpreted by me, is that established media outlets don't always move fast enough to approve, or just don't approve at all, assignments to cover or analyze issues quickly and that dig deeply into the environmental and conservation (esp. climate-related) issues facing manking.
So far, they are less than half way to their goal and have given themselves only until noon zulu time (ie Greenwich) March 5. As Ward writes, "With less than two weeks remaining …. they climb they face clearly remains a steep one."
Grist for the Mill: Climate Confidential. You'ld find the crowd-enterprising writers bios here and more on the project.
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