Unofficial Conference Blog | Society of Environmental Journalists

Reptile Palace Orchestra Rocks!

And folks, funks, jazzes, and klezmers. This eclectic band added a jolt of exuberance to the SEJ conference’s Saturday night party at the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center. When lead singer Anna Purnell described one of their numbers as a combination of bluegrass and klezmer, with a little bit of blues, I thought that this was surely a unique blend of musical styles, but apparently Reptile Palace Orchestra is not the only band playing this, as I found out serendipitously on Monday morning when I read this article.

 

 

(Photo from band’s Web site)

Be warned, though, that the music that accompanies that article is much more bluegrass-y and much less funky than what we heard at the Leopold Center. The band’s own Web site describes their style as Balkan rock or Balkan funk. You can find the Web site here. It includes music and video clips.

Photo Feature: Sunset at Aldo Leopold's iconic Wisconsin River shack

I was a lucky member of a sunset trip to "The Shack" -- the small house and farm where Aldo Leopold was inspired to write his book "A Sand County Almanac" -- on Saturday October 10, final evening of the conference. 

The shack sits close to the Wisconsin River near Baraboo, Wisconsin, near tall-grass prairie and the present-day Leopold Center, which hosted SEJ for the evening.

 The Aldo Leopold shack at dusk.

Robert McClure: Climate security all gloom and doom, no humor

Robert's posted another conference update at Grist, this time recounting Friday afternoon's session "on global warming as a national security issue." 

It was "an even darker affair than usual," says Robert -- an impressive accomplishment for the average SEJ annual confab, where confronting semi-apocalyptic facts about the breakdown of nature and society is something of a tradition:

Leading off was retired Navy Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, who's involved with a group of former generals and admirals known as the CNA Military Advisory Board: "What we're saying very clearly and very directly is 'This is a national security problem. ... Make no mistake, this is going to affect everybody in the world.'"

He continued: "Climate change is going to be a threat multiplier in unstable regions across the world."

Think about it: If you're in, say, Bangladesh and the ocean's rising and you can't grow food, where will you go? You might well try to get into India. The Indians don't want that, so you have a massive conflict there on the border.

Read it all at Grist >

Curtis Brainard at CJR: Critics of SEJ 'shortsighted and wrong'

Over at Columbia Journalism Review, Curtis Brainard offers his take on Friday's theatrics by filmmaker Philim McAleer.

The SEJ member's attempt to hog the mic at Al Gore's keynote speech, and his spin on the incident afterwards, demonstrate his healthy degree of self-interest, as well as skill with slicing and dicing the facts to suit his ends:

Conservative blogs are already trying to cast the event as proof that environmental journalists are nothing but "homers" and treehuggers who won't challenge their sources or report critically on environmental issues. Those assessments are shortsighted and wrong. (Full disclosure: I'm a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, but so is McAleer.)

...Such egotistical stunts are, of course, not uncommon during Q&A sessions at conferences, panels, and speeches. Given McAleer's upcoming film, however, this seems like an especially obvious ploy to gain publicity. In a video documenting the event, he claimed that he was asking Gore "tough" questions that environmental journalists wouldn't.

But the fact that "An Inconvenient Truth" contains inaccuracies is nothing new. The errors are minor and the film is broadly accurate; well-respected scientists and other critics have been saying as much since it debuted. The British High Court was absolutely right that teachers should present additional information to provide context, especially where political matters are concerned. That should be true of any subject.

Read the rest at Columbia Journalism Review >

Not with a Bang: Badger Ammunition Plant Mini-Tour

(Photo: Tour-goers take notes and photos at an overlook of the plant)

In 1941 – months before Pearl Harbor -- the federal government seized 10,000 acres of prairie farmland in Sauk County Wisconsin (northwest of Madison) to build an ammunition plant. The Badger Army Ammunition Plant first produced sulfuric acid and then gunpowder and rocket propellant during World War II. The complex geared up again during the Viet Nam War, but in 1975 it was put “on standby status,” all but shut down.

The Army will soon turn over those 10,000 acres to other federal agencies, but first it must clean up an alphabet soup of toxic substances left behind by the manufacturing process. On the Saturday afternoon mini-tour, Army representative Joan Kenney said that the site is one of 25 Superfund-level sites owned by the Army across the United States. However, these sites are not Superfund sites, she explained, because the federal government was already responsible for their clean-up.

Laura Olah, a neighbor of the plant and executive director of Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger, said that the group recently has been meeting with other grassroots groups near some of these other sites.

Complicating the clean-up is the fact that it was explosives that were manufactured at the site. The residues mean that it is quite possible that in knocking down a building, you will also blow it up. In the past burning these types of buildings has been the safest way to remove them. This, however, releases toxics into the air, so Citizens for Safe Water pressed the Army to find another way to remove the buildings. The buildings are now being carefully deconstructed instead of demolished, and appropriate materials are being decontaminated and recycled.

Whooping Cranes in Action & Sandhills near the Leopold Shack

Here are the whooping cranes we saw at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. Listen carefully and you should be able to hear them along the with the sandhill cranes.

Yesterday, October 10th, those of us who were on the Baraboo River dam removal tour got to the Aldo Leopold "Shack" in time to walk down to the river as the sun was beginning to set. Sandhill cranes were coming in. As we stood watching the skeins of cranes come in from across the water, two bluebirds took off from a snag a few yards down the beach.

Hope for Breakfast: Saturday morning plenary

Is the non-profit journalism model viable? The four panelists at Saturday’s early morning session say yes. The four organizations the panelists represent, Voice of San Diego, Capitol News Connection, Huffington Post Investigative Fund, and ProPublica, have different funding profiles that mix the expected foundation grants, and add (depending on the organization) private funding, fee-for-service payments, or individual donations.

Capitol News Connection provides a sort of outsourced Capitol bureau for National Public Radio stations nationwide. Capitol News Connection executive director Melinda Wittstock said that she has noticed that similar organizations have hit their stride when they hired a dedicated development, or fundraising, staffer. She noted that Capitol News Connection is caught in a funding Catch-22 in that they can’t get the funding to pay a development staffer’s salary.

Nick Penniman, executive director of the Huffington Posts Investigative Fund, said that while major foundations have not traditionally funded journalism, the crisis in the newspaper industry has woken them up to the need. The Fund’s Creative Commons license, which allows any news organization to use the work produced by the organization the moment it becomes available, provides the mechanism so the foundation is funding work for the public good, and not a particular (for-profit) news organization.

Dave Poulson on Reporting While the Money's Being Spent

On his own blog Cover the Planet, SEJ member Dave Poulson wonders if "success in environmental journalism [can] be measured by the absence of environmental reporting awards" for unearthing fraud, or simple waste, after a project's budget has been spent.

"A nice plaque for unearthing a fiasco may be a sign of quality journalism. But where’s the plaque for doing the reporting that kept a disaster from happening? Is that not also watchdog journalism in the public interest?"

The Obama Administration has proposed nearly a half billion dollars this year as a downpayment on what could be a multi-year, multi-billion dollar restoration effort.

This bonanza has cash-starved agencies and interest groups scrambling with a new problem: How do you responsibly spend such a huge environmental investment?

It should also have Great Lakes journalists scrambling with a big question: How do you responsibly report the spending of such an investment as it unfolds?

It’s a question that I asked a panel which examined the new effort at the SEJ conference.

Read more at Cover the Planet >

Taking a Break at the Madison Farmers Market

Credit: Emily Gertz

Saturday is a great day to come up for air during the conference, since the Saturday farmers market is just one block away, ringing the Capitol Square.

More photos at my Flickr feed:

www.flickr.com More of emilyg's stuff tagged with sej2009

Character Sketches: Francesca Lyman's drawings of Al Gore, other guests

One SEJ member has eschewed a digital camera to record 2009 conference moments, in favor of a small Moleskine notebook and colored pencils. 

Francesca Lyman put her leads to good work yesterday, capturing former Vice President Al Gore, White House staffer Nancy Sutley, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, and the other guests (including moderator Andrew Revkin) at the Friday morning plenary, in these wonderful sketches.

Former Vice President Al Gore

See Tim Wheeler's post about "the brief 'town hall' moment during the Q&A."

Jane Lubchenco, Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, and Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration