ABSTRACT
 Title of Dissertation: IN THE LION?S MOUTH: ADVOCACY AND 
INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING 
ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE 
EARLY 21ST CENTURY
 Degree candidate: Debra A. Schwartz
 Degree and year: Doctor of Philosophy, 2004
 Dissertation directed by: Professor Steve Barkin
 Philip Merrill College of Journalism
 This study explores what might qualify investigative reporting about the 
environment as advocacy. It applies a phenomenological approach to gathering and 
sorting data, which resulted in the identification of several essences of investigative 
reporting about the environment. This study further analyzes data using grounded 
theory. According to grounded theory, categories emerge from interview data and, 
through a process of reduction, produce a mid-range theory. Adhering to method and 
theory, this work identifies a new kind of investigative reporting the author terms 
integrated investigative reporting.  It appears environment reporters are leading the way 
on this emerging form.  
Some investigative reporters writing about the environment go two steps beyond 
the approach endorsed by Investigative Reporters & Editors, known as The Paul 
Williams Way. A pioneering finding, those steps have roots deep in phenomenology, a 
process of meaning making dating back to Aristotle. In that respect, the use of 
phenomenological process seems to point to a constructivist approach taking hold in 
news reporting today. 
This dissertation also reveals that personal narrative is fast becoming a 
component of investigative reporting, particularly in the form of online diaries. Several 
more bridges also surfaced in this study. One connects professional and academic 
research approaches. Another demonstrates an innovative approach to a literature 
review, which the author calls a literature synthesis. Another shows how to combine 
objectivist grounded theory with Charmaz?s interactionist approach to grounded theory, 
which study participants described doing in their investigations. 
This writing refutes the professional idea that training investigative reporters in 
how to work an environment story requires that more attention be paid to the scope of 
the story than the process of story collection. Rather, this study reveals that the study 
participants tease out scope by going two steps beyond standard investigative reporting 
practice. 
Challenges to some tenets of journalism appear in this study as well, including 
Lippmann?s notion that ?there is but one kind of writing possible in a world as diverse 
as ours. It is a unity of method?? and Kovach and Rosenstiel?s notion that journalism 
of assertion is weakening the methodology of verification journalists have developed. 
IN THE LION?S MOUTH:
 ADVOCACY AND INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING 
ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY 
by
 Debra A. Schwartz
 Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the 
University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment
 of the requirements for the degree of
 Doctor of Philosophy
 2004
 Advisory Committee:
 Professor Steve Barkin, Chair
 Professor Katherine McAdams
 Professor Judith Paterson
 Professor William Starosta
 Professor Andrew Wolvin
?Copyright by
 Debra A. Schwartz
 2004
ii
 for Daniel Cohen
 who convinced me 
between the Illinois-Indiana border
 and the Ohio-Pennsylvania border
 that I could do this now
iii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
 Rolling between states on Highway 80/90 in daylight on the way to 
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in August of 1999, Daniel Cohen gave me the kind of talk 
he said he would give to his son and daughter if they would only give him the chance. 
Daniel, recently divorced, was moving from Chicago to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania in 
the lush Delaware Water Gap to live in the family?s house, which his father was 
leaving to move West. I was living in Chicago, my home town, and thinking about 
moving to Washington, D.C., where it was easier to find work as a reporter. There for 
two weeks, I had returned to Chicago only to decide three days later to go back and 
look for a staff job rather than freelance work in the nation?s capital. Daniel, whom I 
had known for a while, was going my way and offered me a lift as far as Harrisburg. 
Somewhere just past the Illinois-Indiana border he asked where I would like 
my career to take me, or something like that. We were silent while I dug for an honest 
answer, then broke the silence with, ?I want to teach at a university or college.? The 
long-time independent businessman asked me why I did not do it now. I listed all the 
reasons why. ?You?re not thinking like an entrepreneur!? he said, which really got to 
me because he knew I?d been self-employed pretty much since age 23 ? about 17 
years at that point. That is when I began to listen to Daniel with my heart. Shortly 
thereafter he pulled over on the side of the road, went around to the back of the car, 
retrieved a legal pad, and shoved it in my hands along with a pen. Back in the car he 
asked me question after question. I wrote them down, discussing them and making 
lists as the answers came. By dark I had the equivalent of a five page business plan 
charting my next move: to get my doctoral degree in journalism now and move my 
iv
 career along. It was my first business plan ever. From the moment I arrived in 
Washington, D.C., that August, I began working it. I even visited the College of 
Journalism at the University of Maryland in College Park to see what I thought. I 
thought the rooms there were too dark, but I accepted an assistantship there anyway 
when it was offered the following April, thinking: location, location, location. As of 
March 2004, I am in the final stages of that business plan, hoping to get hired by a 
school matching the profile I set in writing while rolling down Highway 80/90. That 
school and I have found each other, but I have not yet been hired.  
All of this makes me wonder where I?d be now if I had followed my father?s 
urging to write a business plan for myself when I began freelancing. Many times he 
sat down with me to help me think things through, just like Daniel did. We would sit 
at the kitchen table, one or the other of us with a legal pad and pen, and we would try 
to work something up. But I could never commit to the plans we had outlined. They 
never felt whole. I now know they lacked an appeal to my soul. I would slip them in a 
drawer or put them on my bulletin board and that?s where they would stay ? inactive. 
That this one had come together so spontaneously and neatly I took as an omen. This 
one spoke to me from somewhere deep within, and I knew, somehow, that if I just 
kept listening to that still small voice I would get where I needed to go. I am where I 
need to be because of the talk Daniel Cohen gave to me instead of his children that 
day. 
I am also there because from an early age my father told me success is failure 
turned inside out, my mother listened to me with her heart instead of her head, and my 
sister taught me to try another way whenever something didn?t work the way I thought 
v
 it should. Also in that landscape is my Aunt Phylis, who gave me counsel when I 
asked, and not when I did not ask; Aunt Libbie, age 97 as of this writing, who lifts my 
soul with her amazing good cheer; and my academic guru, JoAnn Valenti, who 
bugged me for years to get my doctoral degree because, she said, the academy needs 
me. A pillar to lean on since I started at the University of Maryland, JoAnn, who 
retired last year from Brigham Young University as professor of mass 
communications, one day called me a high-maintenance student, a quality I said I had 
picked up from students I had taught at Columbia College in Chicago and DeVry 
University in the Chicago suburbs. JoAnn carries a whip in her back pocket and has 
used it on me when necessary. 
In the company of angels is Todd Steven Burroughs for his wisdom, 
encouragement, and willingness to read the first drafts of every piece this effort (the 
first chapter took about 12 passes) and lay a ruler down on each page to check the 
margins for conformity to publication standards; Kathy McAdams, who has stood by 
me since the beginning, for her tolerance, flexibility, and the gift of her time ? which 
she gave unselfishly in the way of a dedicated mentor; Sol Bernstein for helping me 
come up with the label integrated investigative reporting, and Kent Silberman, from 
whom I am sure I have learned more than I realize.
 There are parts of this dissertation that Judith Paterson will recognize as the 
fruits of her labors as much as mine. They are in the stories I tell about myself. Judith 
has helped me be brave, helped me face myself without fear of what I might discover, 
and put it in writing. She is a hearty talent, professor, and example to follow, as is Bill 
Starosta, a gentle giant who instead of taking offense when I said to him, matter-of-
vi
 factly, ?Why would anyone study intercultural communication?? set out to open my 
mind with his parables, questions, and challenges, and succeeded. He also spent time 
talking with me about how one might make a difference in this cockeyed world, as did 
Andrew Wolvin, who gave me the opportunity to investigate and play a part in 
developing the emerging conversation about intercultural listening. Some of the 
thinking produced from that effort and humor-packed heightening of awareness 
sessions with Bill in his popular office at Howard University appears in the conclusion 
to this research effort. 
Also helping me live my questions is Steve Barkin, my eclectic advisor for 
comprehensive exams and this effort. Recently, he took his light out from under a 
bushel basket, where it had been for a while during illness. Steve, it is good to see you 
again. Your voice lends much to the fray. There is so much work to be done. So much 
to discover. I am looking forward to exploring the theories presented here with you.
 My dissertation victims, Dale Willman, Charles Pekow, David Helvarg, Tom 
Bayles, Tom Meersman, and Paul Rogers, could be characters in a Firesign Theatre 
comedy routine. Along with their willingness to be forthcoming, they showed me the 
patience, tolerance, and self control required of mavericks. The myriad of other people 
who contributed to this work helped me see what was right there in front of me.   
Thank you, thank you, thank you all, for sharing your richness with me. 
Finally, all quotes from the Society of Environmental Journalists listserv were
 used with permission.
vii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
 Prelude: Sterling Forest..............................................................................................2
 Congress to Consider Funds for Sterling Forest
 Sprawling Shutdown
 Chapter 1 ? Introduction...........................................................................................16
 Journalism in the U.S. Today
 What is Journalism?
 Beyond the Inverted Pyramid and Ping-Pong Journalism
 Framing, or Point of View
 Muckraking as Advocacy
 Investigative Reporting and Advocacy
 Investigative Reporting and Advocacy in Environment News
 Fact and Consensus of Opinion in Environment News
 Scientific Terminology, Fact, and Environment News
 Beyond the Parade
 Chapter Summaries
 Chapter 2 ? Literature Synthesis...............................................................................36
 Orientation to the Literature
 Is the Environment Beat Here to Stay?
 Pictures and News About the Environment
 Television and Environment News
 Seiches on the Environment Beat
 Historical Perspective
 1969
 The 1970s
 The 1980s
 The 1990s
 The New Century
 Reporting Risk
 After SEJ
 Attraction to Environment Reporting: Advocacy?
 Perceptions of Advocacy on the Environment Beat
 Greenies or SPRIDJ?
 Going Native
 Investigative Reporting and Environment News
 Of People, Politics, Power and Events
 A New Arrow in the Quiver
 A Technical Look
 Original and Interpretative Investigative Reporting
 Reporting on Investigations
viii
 Journalism of Assertion 
Exposure Journalism
 Immersion Journalism
 Coalition Journalism 
Cost, Length, and Funding for Investigative Reporting
 For Good Measure
 Degrees of Risk
 Summary: An Innovation
 Looking Ahead
 Chapter 3 ? Research Method and Methodology?????????????..113
 Rationale for Selecting Phenomenology
 Phenomenology as a Method
 Phenomenology as Methodology
 Background of Phenomenology and Basic Terminology
 Essence Defined
 Locating Essence
 Phenomenon Defined
 The Process
 The Epoche
 Imaginative Variation
 Phenomenological Statements
 Sorting the Data
 Phenomenological Interviewing
 Reflections on the Interview Process
 Limitations of the Method
 Case Study
 Chapter 4 ? Theory?????????????????????????140
 Grounded Theory Defined
 Components of Grounded Theory
 Approaches to Grounded Theory
 Chapter 5 ? Findings..????????????????????????149
 View of Investigative Reporting
 Criteria for Moving the Public
 Investigative Reporting Technique
 Investigative Reporting Procedure
 Discoveries About Process
 Why Environment Reporting?
 Advocacy and Environment Reporting
 Investigative Reporting and Advocacy Journalism
 Personal Lessons from Environment Reporting
 Personal Lessons from Investigative Reporting About the Environment
 Realities of the Environment Beat
ix
 What Makes Environment Reporting Meaningful for You?
 What Makes Investigative Reporting Meaningful for You?
 The Future of Environment Reporting
 Chapter 6 ? Conclusions.............................................................................................181
 Paul Williams Way
 Advocacy
 Constructing Meaning, and Related Essences
 Bridges
 Opposing Viewpoints
 Integrated Investigative Reporting
 Essences
 Metaphysical Element
 Future Research
 Appendix A.................................................................................................................193
 Appendix B.................................................................................................................194
 Appendix C.................................................................................................................300
 Glossary......................................................................................................................307
 References...................................................................................................................308
x
 LIST OF CHARTS
 Chart 1: Timeline of People and Events 
Shaping Environmental Consciousness
 in the United States: 1845-1991....................................................................................51
 Chart 2: Pulitzer Prize Winners for Reporting
 About the Environment.................................................................................................73
 Chart 3: Pulitzer Prize Finalists for Reporting
 About the Environment.................................................................................................74
 Chart 4: Selected Demographics 
of Study Participants...................................................................................................149
1
 One of the reasons this [environment] beat is perpetually interesting is that it?s 
the grandest train wreck of ideological, scientific, and financial interests imaginable.
 Peter Dykstra
 Society of Environmental Journalists
 listserv, December 8, 1998
 Half of environmental journalism is having the story, half is having the 
credibility.
 Len Reed
 Science and Environment Editor
 The Oregonian (Portland)
2
 PRELUDE
 I hung up the phone and decided I had to see the place. On this story, one of 
my first efforts as an environment reporter, my government, resident, and activist 
sources spoke with so much love in their hearts and tears in their voices about Sterling 
Forest that I spent part of my rent money to fly to New York State from the Chicago 
area to meet them. Many lived in homes nestled at the base of the forested foothill that 
charmed them. I went for the butterfly watch, an area phenomenon resulting from the 
diurnal butterfly hatch. Led by a resident naturalist in his 80s, the gathering of children 
and parents and men and women and teenagers was held in one of the forest?s 
meadows, about two-and-a-half hours (60 miles) away from the Big Apple?s growling 
traffic. Afterward the tall, gentle, rugged John Yrizarry led us up giant boulders to a 
mountain ledge that rounded a rocky foothill for a walk in the woods I would never 
forget. I was on the Appalachian Trail, a place I had never heard of before.
 For accommodations I had borrowed an old, heavy canvas scout tent. As 
directed by two of my sources, I camped on part of the trail sheltered by tall, narrow-
 trunked trees at the top of Fitzgerald Falls. I was 36, staying in a tent for the second 
time in my life, and had only a vague idea of what it meant to be that close to nature. I 
had planned to stay alone, but my sources wouldn?t let me, warning of bear and 
bobcat. That weekend people literally were dying from the heat in New York City. But 
in the woods, the night chill forced long sleeves and made for good sleeping weather. 
The source camping across the log from me reminded me to check for ticks as we 
3
 retired. I asked what they were, how to do it, and why. That weekend I heard a tree fall 
in the forest. All in all, it was the kind of exposure to another world I had hoped 
environment reporting would provide.
 The story I was gathering revolved around this debate: Carve another city into 
the wilderness? If so, why there? If not, why not there? Let a wedge of lush meadows, 
lakes, bogs, and rocky ridges remain a haven from the traffic, pollution, and 
congestion? Or not. That is the way I saw it. From the interviews, I could not tell if 
any of my sources were exaggerating. So I went to take a look for myself.
 At issue was a tract of 17,500 acres surrounding 660 acres of the Appalachian 
Trail, a federally protected scenic hiking path running from Georgia to Maine and 
through that particular forest. In 1993 when I wrote the first of what would be more 
than a dozen and a half stories about Sterling Forest, Trygg-Hansa, a Swedish multi-
 national insurance conglomerate, owned those acres in New York?s Orange County, 
which accounted for most of the forest. In 25 percent of that space the company 
planned to develop a model city for 35,000 residents and 20,000 employees of light 
industry proposed as part of the project.
 There, tucked in the speed traps along Route 17, songbirds in Sterling Forest 
hold choir practice for 62 of the state?s 130 species of butterflies, as well as the 
endangered timber rattlesnake, bog turtle, cricket frog, barred owl, and Cooper?s 
hawk. Prized for its rhododendron bogs, spring-fed lakes, and hardwood trees, its 
22,000 steep mountainside acres in the Hudson Highlands mostly in New York but 
also in New Jersey shelter at least 15 threatened species as well as some listed as a 
special concern by either or both states. The forest also serves as a rest stop and 
4
 breeding ground for songbirds migrating between the Northeast and the rain forests of 
Central America and South America.
 Sterling Forest was among 75 sites New York had designated for conservation, 
but funds were not available for its purchase. At the time Joseph Martens, Energy and 
Environment Deputy Secretary to then-Gov. Mario Cuomo, told me the state had been 
negotiating with Trygg-Hansa?s Sterling Forest Corporation, a holding company for 
the forest, to negotiate a compromise. The state favored some development, he said, 
because it could not afford to buy the entire parcel for a state park.
 Local conservation groups and some government officials began working 
against the project, including Sterling Forest Coalition, a workforce formed 
specifically to raise funds for purchase and to lobby the federal government for a 
financial commitment. It consisted of people from the towns of Warwick, Tuxedo, and 
Monroe, each of which governs part of Sterling Forest. National activist organizations 
later joined their effort. The Coalition was renamed Sterling Forest Resources. Among 
other things, it established a forest stewardship program that would include data 
collection on wildlife in the woodland, which was added to the group?s agenda. Still, 
this was a case of neighbor against neighbor: village leaders in all three towns had 
approved the development, eyeing the increased tax base.
 Opponents argued that hundreds of less sensitive sites in the surrounding 
region were already primed for development, that punching holes in Sterling Forest 
would destroy flyways for migrating songbirds, and that it also would open the forest 
up to domestic animals that could prey on the natural inhabitants. Once the land is 
cleared, they argued, the deer and raccoon populations would increase, and the forest 
5
 would lose its shyer creatures: bears and bobcats. A broken forest does not sustain 
wildlife, they argued, citing scientific studies and case examples.
 Another conservation concern also hung in a dark, ominous way over the 
proposed development. About two million residents and businesses in the adjacent 
New Jersey counties of Passaic, Morris, and Bergen depend on the forest?s watershed 
as a natural purification system for their drinking water. The proposed development 
was expected to dump ? or ?channel,? as corporation executives preferred to say ? five 
million gallons of treated sewage daily into the North New Jersey District Water 
Supply Commission?s two reservoirs, which get 20 percent of their water from the 
forest?s streams.
 Proponents of the project called it the most environmentally sensitive use that 
could be made of the forest because it permanently protected 76 percent of the 
property while absorbing a portion of the 50,000 households projected for Orange 
County over the coming 25 years. They also argued that Sterling Forest is not pristine. 
In fact, in the 1950s a nuclear power plant, now closed, was sited there. Later, several 
low-polluting companies established themselves there, and some of their employees 
bought property and built houses in the woods. A small ski resort also was developed 
there.
 Construction of the model city was proposed along the banks of the heart of 
the forest: the bogs and lakes that are breeding grounds for frogs, salamanders and 
insects, and that other wildlife also depend on for water. Roads would be built to 
provide easy access to the development for humans, but would make it more difficult 
for wildlife to reach the bogs and lakes to reproduce, for instance, as traffic increased.
6
 A young, gray-suited public relations official for Sterling Forest Corporation 
met me at the Red Apple Rest, a cafeteria-style truck stop at the bottom of a hill on the 
outskirts of the forest. He asked me how I could walk in the woods barefoot, wearing 
shorts and a sleeveless shirt. ?Aren?t you concerned about ticks and ringworms?? he 
asked in a menacing, citified tone. I said no, and asked him why I should be. It was my 
third meeting with one of the corporation?s representatives.
 Seeing that forest and meeting the people who populated the story made all the 
difference for me when it came to writing future articles about the woodland and the 
politics involved. It changed my writing and news judgment. As a freelance reporter I 
wrote that first story for Environment & Development, a newsletter published by the 
American Planning Association, from the comfort of my small home office in a 
suburb of Chicago called Highland Park. All the facts were there, all the stakeholders 
were represented, but the writing lacked color. The reporting was unquestionably 
neutral. I didn?t care one way or the other; I just wanted to help everyone have their 
say, have a voice in the debate. I wanted to make a living reporting about the 
environment and couldn?t afford to take a position and lose potential outlets for my 
stories due to lack of objectivity, the kiss of death in the journalism business. In 
writing that first story I labored dramatically over word choice and perspective, 
struggling to tell the story fully but in the limited space provided. In the end, the 
article I developed displayed a detached case study of urban sprawl. It was journalism 
as it should be, by early 20th century iconoclastic news media critic and journalist 
Walter Lippmann?s definition; but it was not what environment reporting seemingly 
has helped journalism mature into at the turn of the 21st century.
7
 Lippmann, an influential political journalist beginning in the early 1900s until 
his death, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University and went on to 
introduce the idea of establishing an objective research method for gathering news 
stories, one similar to that practiced by scientists. The approach aimed to get at more 
of the truth. It was an era of faith in science. The cornerstone of journalism ought to be 
the study of evidence and verification, he said. The idea caught on, and much of 
journalism in the United States thereafter became known as ?objective journalism.?
 I came back from Sterling Forest to find a letter from an editor at Wildlife 
Conservation magazine saying I would make back the rent money I had spent to meet 
my sources. They wanted to run 800 words. The magazine is published by the Wildlife 
Conservation Society, a nonprofit group based at the Bronx Zoo in New York City.
 As mentioned, after seeing the forest my reporting of the story changed. It 
improved, in my opinion, and seemingly in the opinion of the magazine editors to 
whom I was pitching. One version or another of that first story sold 12 times. My 
query letters had become more vivid, had more blush, and were laced with possibility. 
I attribute this to the shift in tone, voice, and attitude infused into my writing by the 
emotional impact of spending some time in the wildness that is Sterling Forest.
 The resulting stories, some of which are excerpted here to assure clear context 
rather than in an appendix, sometimes appeared as ?he said, she said? reporting, the 
sort that presents opposing viewpoints through quotes alone and avoids description, 
voice, characterization, setting, and other literary devices providing unspoken context. 
Gradually the stories I wrote started getting more space ? possibly due to increasing 
8
 acceptance of environment reporting, possible due to the change in presentation to 
include stronger voice. The first story went something like this:
 The controversy continues: Carve another city into the wilderness, or...
 At issue is...
 The proposed development would...
 Quote
 International Paper, International Nickel, New York University, and 
IBM all have offices in a big complex developed in the forest...
 Trygg-Hansa, a Swedish multinational insurance conglomerate, owns 
the unsplintered chunk of forest...
 Quote
 Quote
 Quote
 [etc.] (Schwartz, July 1993)
 Subsequent stories I wrote included more numbers and more description to go 
with them, which seemed to add clarity and intensity to their implications as well as 
depth to the controversy. I wanted to make people feel for this forest, make them think 
about the long-term changes resulting from proposed development there. I wanted to 
encourage them not to take the open space for granted, and I wanted them to make 
themselves heard ? whatever their position ? at public hearings. At that point, though, 
I had fallen in love with the forest.
 I could no longer write dispassionately about the forest. And that helped me 
tell the story. Perhaps it was seeing the woodland. Perhaps it was the impact of what 
12-year-old Jennifer Lengares of Hewitt, New York, said to me on the record: 
?Everyone?s talking about saving the economy,? she said. ?Well, you?re not going to 
have an economy if you don?t save the ecological system first.? This experience made 
me stop and think about the essence of environment reporting, and what it gave me as 
a person. What it gave me was a gift I could not keep to myself. I had to find more 
9
 environment stories to tell because somehow they made me feel connected to a 
community, a need I wanted to fill. I was sure there were more people like Jennifer 
Lengares out there who wanted to be heard.
 As sales of my freelance articles increased, I began to look at them and try to 
figure out what was capturing editors. Some of the stories set a scene, described the 
characters minimally, quoted stakeholders, and got out of the way. That?s what 
seemed acceptable, non-advocacy journalism. Others, like the first one, adhered 
strictly to hard-news style, or the journalistic formula writing known as the inverted 
pyramid, which puts information in a sequence descending from the most important or 
timely bit of news to the oldest or least significant detail. For example, this excerpt 
from the August 1994 issue of Planning magazine, published by the American 
Planning Association, bearing my byline and providing an update on the Sterling 
Forest story a year after the first one was assigned:
 CONGRESS TO CONSIDER FUNDS FOR STERLING FOREST
 Congress this month will consider a $35 million authorization for the 
purchase of the 17,500-acre Sterling Forest, a privately owned woodland tract 
on the New York-New Jersey border. If the land is acquired by the Palisades 
Interstate Park Commission, as planned, it would create the largest public park 
established in the Northeast since World War II.
 Months of stalemate were broken in May when...(Schwartz, 1994, 
August)
 The following excerpt from E The Environmental Magazine published in the 
September/October 1996 issue offered yet another update on the story and also 
appeared as hard news.
10
 SPRAWLING SHUTDOWN
 Three years ago, New York State?s Sterling Forest was set to be 
bulldozed in favor of sprawling urban development. Some of the 17,500 acres 
of pristine woodlands would be turned into a model city ? the largest between 
New York City and Buffalo, New York...
 But conservation efforts have led to an agreement by the land?s owners, 
Zurich Insurance Corporation of Switzerland, to sell 15,280 acres of the forest 
for $55 million... (Schwartz, 1996a)
 I still wince at the word ?bulldozed,? a loaded word added by the editor of the 
story in E. In my opinion, that is a slant that shuns some readers who might otherwise 
be receptive to the news. In my opinion, this article screams: I am against 
development of this forest! Even though it is true I would rather woods were not cut to 
make way for housing and economic development, I would always write with an open 
mind. I would always write as an observer of the parade, not as part of the parade, to 
paraphrase New York University sociologist and journalism watchdog Jay Rosen 
(1999). This story, as edited, presents a clear position suggesting a closed mind on the 
issue. Consequently, it qualifies, for me, as advocacy journalism. It does not directly 
state its position but makes the magazine?s point of view known by bending and 
twisting and distorting the news to fit the publication?s agenda. 
By Kovach and Rosenstiel?s (2001) methodological definition, the loaded 
word ?bulldozed? in the E article, although inaccurate in describing the action that 
would result if development plans did not go through, would qualify as adding 
something that was not there because it provides an inaccurate description of what is 
actually occurring. What was really happening was two factions with opposing 
viewpoints and special interests were attempting to agree on a price for the woodland. 
The owners of Sterling Forest Corporation wanted to divest themselves of most of the 
11
 woodland from the point of acquisition. What was at stake was the heart of the forest, 
the 25 percent marked for development. The story in E leaves out that important point 
of reference, thereby deceiving its audience into thinking the entire 17,500 acres 
would be destroyed by development. Not so, even if the development had gone 
through as initially proposed.
 Another story about Sterling Forest published under my byline in the 
September/October 1996 issue of Appalachian Trailway News moves away from a 
political focus to a grassroots one. This story, about a community effort to literally 
take stock of the forest, describes several naturalists in the area and their neighbors, all 
volunteers with Sterling Forest Resources, who took it upon themselves to count the 
birds, frogs, salamanders, and other reptiles in the 25-acre swath of forest just above 
Fitzgerald Falls and along the Appalachian Trail to Mombasha High Point. They 
planned to compare them with findings from a similar patch of terrain 30 miles north 
in Black Rock Forest, about eight miles off the trail. After a five paragraph lead that 
set the scene and included dialogue, the reader learns that ?the two surveys will help 
researchers reasonably extrapolate upon parts of Sterling Forest currently off-limits 
except by permit from Home Insurance Company, the woodland?s owner.?
 Before I continue, a note is required to clarify who owns Sterling Forest. Many 
reporters covering the story, myself included, could not keep straight the structure and 
interests of the owners of Sterling Forest Corporation. Eventually, in 1996, Louis 
Heimbach, then chairman, president and chief executive officer of Sterling Forest 
Corporation, took five minutes to explain it to me in a personal interview. He said,
12
 Trygg [Hansa] has a controlling interest in the stock of the Home 
Insurance Company. Home Holdings is the holding company. Trygg has a 
controlling interest in Home Holdings, and the Home Insurance Company is a 
wholly-owned subsidiary of Home Holdings. Sterling Forest is owned by the 
Home Insurance Company. Zurich Insurance holds the run-off company that 
has assumed effective control of Home Holdings. Zurich is a minority 
shareholder. Home Insurance Company is no longer writing insurance; they are 
just paying their claims. Zurich also is not writing ay new policies. Zurich is 
controlling Home Holdings right now. It?s not ownership. It?s a little different. 
Ownership hasn?t changed, but the control of the company changed. Zurich 
owns the company. The deal that Zurich struck with Trygg allows them to buy 
the stock that Trygg holds in Home Holdings at a certain point in time. The 
Home Insurance Company owns Sterling Forest Corporation. (Heimbach, 
1996)
 Such is an example of how complicated it can be on the environment beat to clearly 
report what seems a simple and obvious detail.
 I continued to sell stories about the forest. A new client I hooked on the story, 
Urban Land magazine, taught me another lesson in environment reporting ? one I later 
heard was more common than not. On that leg of my journey as an environment 
reporter, I learned that some environment stories get spiked ? that is, editors decide 
not to run them ? when a source complains that the article advocates a position. The 
complaint is sometimes less than honest, stemming from ulterior motives, as this next 
section reveals. 
In this case, the editor did not mind cutting context and balance ? that is, had 
no reluctance about removing the story?s spine. It was safer. The update I wrote for the 
magazine, a publication of the Urban Land Institute, which favors development in 
most cases, was sent to an Institute member for fact-checking. That member, Louis 
Heimbach of Sterling Forest Corporation, declared the article an example of advocacy 
journalism. The article, like the others, gave a sense of what was at stake and what 
13
 might change if the development went ahead as planned. It seemed appropriate and 
necessary context to include. Yet the article I provided, Heimbach told my editor (who 
later told me), did not describe Sterling Forest Corporation?s conservation efforts or 
sustainable building practices that were included in the development plans for the part 
of the forest it still owned. Instead the article leaned toward opposing the 
development, he declared, contending an article appearing in Urban Land should focus 
solely on the kind of development proposed, and exclude political controversy.
 My editor concurred with his argument, although had assigned a different 
story. In the end, that editor decided not to run the story in any form. According to my 
file for that assignment, the feature focus was almost entirely on the development 
proposed and political controversy surrounding it. In addition, I had been given room 
to write by my editor, meaning if I wanted to I could turn in a piece of literary 
journalism ? the name given to reporting applying storytelling techniques used in 
fiction to journalistic articles. Although technology compatibility prevents me from 
providing the final draft of the spiked story (it is stored on early format Macintosh 
disks and I can no longer retrieve the file), an early version, provided here in part but 
at length because it is a primary source, went like this:
 With John Humbach as my passenger, I am driving the speed limit 
along a winding road with an occasional mildly steep incline. There is a double 
yellow line separating the two lanes of opposite traffic. A large, black, 4-
 wheel-drive truck with fine racing lines painted along its length just below its 
windows begins to tailgate the electric blue plastic Mitsubishi Eclipse sports 
car I have rented. It threatens to pass, but a string of cars rounds the bend from 
the other direction. The driver begins to honk and gesture in my rear view 
mirror to encourage me to accelerate. He honks again, but doesn?t swear at me. 
Again, he threatens to pass, but changes his mind. He is almost on my bumper. 
I slow my speed by 10 miles per hour. This really steams the driver. We 
continue along the curling road with the big, black 4-wheel-drive on our tail, 
14
 and finally pull over on the gravel shoulder because John and I can no longer 
carry on a conversation with the distraction. The driver of Big Blackie rushes 
by, with two other cars accelerating behind him.
 John and I look at each other. He says, ?You should see this road 
during rush hour. That?s what it?s like. Bumper to bumper for miles. Most 
people take the train or the bus. It?s an hour to New York City; but lots of 
people drive, especially on the weekends. Getting through here is...? he 
gestures palm up to a string of cars heading in the opposite direction and 
collecting in bumper-to-bumper formation, though it is Saturday afternoon. 
Traffic in the direction we are traveling is almost nonexistent, except for Big 
Blackie and the two cars behind him.
 I look down the hilly road we are descending and try to peek around the 
iron-soaked cliffs we are passing. There is another car coming at us in the 
adjacent lane. It is somewhat challenging to stay on my side of the road ? I 
sometimes cross the double yellow line and have to correct my steering. The 
road tilts in toward one cliff from another and gently wraps around the foothill. 
The sky is beyond plain blue to azure, with a hint of light purple. The colors in 
the sky are perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the northern Appalachian 
Mountain area. I know this, though I?ve seen them only once before. A few 
white cloud puffs linger wistfully above.
 John is the attorney for Sterling Forest Resources, and a professor of 
property and land use law at Pace University in New York. We are driving 
along Route 17 through Clinton Woods development in Sterling Forest, and 
past industrial development including a closed nuclear reactor built in the 
1950s but now sitting idle like an iron maiden out of commission. We drive 
around Greenwood Lake development and Indian Kill Reservoir, which serves 
as the drinking water source for existing development in Sterling Forest. It was 
contaminated only once, by human waste dumped in the reservoir and causing 
disease, John says. There have been no reports of contamination since, he tells 
me, but poses this question: ?If Sterling Forest Corporation was having 
problems keeping coloform out of the drinking water supply for a few hundred 
people, I mean, think of the magnification of the management issues and the 
cost issues that are entailed in protecting the drinking water of 2 million people 
in northern New Jersey when 6 million gallons per day of sewage effluent is 
put into their supply.?
 Greatly scaled-down development plans for the hard rock, heavily 
wooded, steeply sloping mountainsides known as Sterling Forest is the 
consequence of a recent deal that will set aside 90 percent of 17,500 privately-
 owned acres of the forest for conservation purposes. 
That means Sterling Forest will not become the suburban enclave 
within an hour?s train commute to New York City its owners envisioned three 
years ago. It will also make the woodland the largest tract of forest in the 
Northeast.
 Fears that massive development would contaminate the run-off from its 
mountain slopes ? one in New York and the other in New Jersey ? which flow 
15
 into two reservoirs providing drinking water to about two million people in 
New Jersey, put Sterling Forest in the national limelight. The woodland also is 
home to 62 of New York State?s 130 species of butterflies, as well as 
endangered timber rattle snakes, bog turtles, salamanders, and 15 other 
threatened species of wildlife.
 The states are contributing $10 million each to the purchase, and $5 
million from the Wallace Fund will serve as the downstroke. Congress is 
expected to contribute $17.5 million, but some representatives from states in 
the West have tied the forest?s sale to legislation that could open Utah 
wilderness for development. That?s not the sort of trade conservationists 
pulling for Sterling Forest say they will consider.
 Brokered by two private non-profit organizations, the Trust for Public 
Land and the Open Space Institute, the agreement sells 15,280 acres of the 
privately-held section of the forest to them for $55 million, considerably less 
than the $150 million price tag reportedly sought by the owners, Zurich 
Insurance Corporation of Switzerland, for the full property in 1993.
 The remaining 2,220 acres were held back ?because the government 
couldn?t afford the whole thing,? said Louis Heimbach, chairman, president 
and chief executive officer of Sterling Forest Corporation.
 The corporation has agreed to put 3,000 units and 3.3 million square 
feet of commercial/light industrial space on its parcel, which is in an already-
 developed area. The corporation originally planned to develop a model city for 
35,000 inhabitants and 20,000 workers on 25 percent of the full 17,500 acres...
 In looking at this example from my printed file so many years later, I still 
cannot locate what Heimbach is labeling advocacy. A story with only one perspective 
does not adhere to journalistic standards to provide fair and balanced reporting. 
Therefore, I reason, I was being asked to revise the article into a piece of advocacy 
journalism. 
While I was reporting about Sterling Forest, no development occurred there. 
With the federal government eventually providing a healthy chunk of money for the 
conservation effort, Sterling Forest Resources continued to negotiate for the remainder 
of the forest. 
16
 CHAPTER 1 
INTRODUCTION
 The prelude just offered is the story behind this dissertation. It shows the 
dimensions of my particular interest in seeking an answer to the central question posed 
for this work: What might qualify investigative reporting on the environment beat as 
advocacy? This effort is an attempt to further my understanding of what might 
determine a piece of writing as advocacy journalism on the environment beat. Relying 
on primary sources, I attempt to get at the essence of how investigative reporters on 
the environment beat do what they do, what they get out of it, what covering the 
environment means to them, and what makes it important to them to not only cover 
the environment as reporters, but do it as investigators.
 Journalism in these times, and as I perceive I practice it, is characterized by an 
information collection process aimed at providing a fair and balanced news report. 
Accuracy and truth also are aims. This style was first seen in the penny press, started 
by James Gordon Bennett?s New York Sun, and which owed its nickname to the fact 
that penny papers sold for one or two cents daily instead of several dollars per year. 
The penny press also relied on advertising for funding rather than subscriptions, an 
original concept of the time that gave it independence from political support and 
therefore viewpoint.
 With publication of Public Opinion in 1922, Lippmann forwarded the concept 
of fair and balanced news reporting by suggesting that journalists follow the scientist?s 
17
 lead to produce objective research on which to build their stories. This idea was 
intended to raise the character of both the journalist and the stories provided, elevating 
them above articles that were based in rumor more than fact. As such, he attempted to 
locate a method for journalists to use for approaching the truth, and reporting it. 
Lippmann (1931) described journalism as practiced by ?untrained accidental 
witnesses.? His effort in part sought to improve the quality of journalism in the United 
States and also prevent a resurgence of yellow journalism, a type of gaudy reporting 
dominant in the late 1800s revolving first around sin, sex, and violence, and second 
around accuracy. Paneth (1983) further defines yellow journalism:
 To the familiar exaggerations of sensationalism, yellow journalism added the 
elements of misrepresentation and falsehood ? scareheads printed in huge 
black or red types, faked pictures and stories, reckless editorials, the 
superficiality of the Sunday supplement. (p. 527)
 Lippmann decided that academic training in journalism would improve the 
quality of reporting and editing, news selection, and of the stories themselves. The 
scientific process he advocated involved basing reports on direct observation rather 
than hearsay, for instance. In Liberty and the News, he wrote, ?There is but one kind 
of unity possible in a world as diverse as ours. It is unity of method, rather than aim; 
the unity of disciplined experiment.? The field of journalism, he wrote, ought to make 
its cornerstone the study of evidence and verification (in Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2001, 
p. 73).
 Journalism in the United States Today
 Every journalist today operates by relying on some highly personalized method
18
 of testing and providing information ? an individual discipline of verification. This 
method is intended to sift through the rumor, the gossip, the failed memory, and the 
manipulative agendas to try to capture something as accurately as possible, subject to 
revision in light of new information and perspective. Journalism alone is focused first 
on getting what happened down right (pp. 70-71).
 Kovach and Rosenstiel (2001) forward Lippmann?s thinking by further asking  
how journalists can convey their particular reporting method to their audiences. Rather 
than spending time looking for something to add to the existing news, usually 
interpretation, Kovach and Rosenstiel suggest reporters use their time to independently 
discover and verify new facts. Through their research with working journalists the 
research team identified five qualities that define what they call the intellectual 
principles of a science of reporting, or journalism. They are:
 1) Never add anything that was not there.
 2) Never deceive the audience.
 3) Be as transparent as possible about your methods and motives.
 4) Rely on your own original reporting.
 5) Exercise humility. (p. 78)
 One example of transparency comes from the August 22, 2003, edition of The 
New York Times. In it, reporter Katherine Seelye delivers news about a new 
government rule that, if adopted, would allow many older electric power plants and oil 
refineries, for instance, to bypass existing laws requiring them to install anti-air 
pollution devices when upgrading facilities. In telling the story, Seelye says up front ?
 in the second paragraph ? that a draft of the new rule was made available to the paper 
by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. It wasn?t until the 
ninth paragraph that readers learn the rule and its details have been ?a closely held 
19
 secret within the administration.? The last paragraph of the story also reveals who did 
the investigating to find details of influence peddling high up in the Bush 
Administration. The article provides that:
 During the preparation of its report on energy policy, Mr. Cheney?s [energy] 
task force was visited often by officials from several industry groups and 
companies seeking to alter the new source provisions.
 According to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information 
Act by the Natural Resources Defense Council, those visitors included officials 
from the Edison Electric Institute, the North American Electric Reliability 
Council, the National Mining Association, the American Petroleum Institute, 
and the Southern Company.
 By including these paragraphs late in the story, Seelye shows she is adhering to the 
method of journalism described by Kovach and Rosenstiel. 
What is Journalism?
 Journalism derives its name from the French word jour, meaning ?day? (Cates, 
1997). As defined by Columbia University mass communication sociologist James 
Carey, ?journalism is a diary, a daybook, a record of the significant happenings, 
occurrences, events, and sayings during the life of a community.? As such, journalism 
preserves not only the exotic, rare and sacred but also the common, ordinary, and 
repetitive events of life, he writes (p. vii). Benjamin Bradlee, while executive editor of 
The Washington Post, formally described journalism as a profession where reporters 
and editors are ?pledged to approach every assignment with the fairness of open minds 
and without prior judgment. The search for opposing views must be routine. Comment 
from persons accused or challenged in stories must be included. The motives of those 
20
 who press their views upon us must routinely be examined, and it must be recognized 
that these motives can be noble and ignoble, obvious and ulterior? (Webb, 1978).
 The New Webster?s Dictionary of the English Language (1981) defines 
journalism as an occupation involving reporting of the news and typified by ?a type of 
writing ideally characterized by objectivity, but sometimes written to appeal to current 
public taste? (p. 520). The Random House Dictionary (1978) specifies journalism as 
?the profession of gathering, writing, editing, or publishing news, as for a newspaper.?
 Beyond the Inverted Pyramid and Ping-Pong Journalism
 Lippmann?s notion that a journalist?s method of collecting information can be 
done in an objective manner to make the article itself as objective as possible (the 
notion of objectivity for Lippmann held that the process was objective, not the 
reporter). Within Kovach and Rosenstiel?s description of an objective process for 
reporting news, which is in keeping with Lippmann?s notion, there seems to be room 
for stories that go beyond the inverted pyramid or ping-pong style of journalism (also 
called ?he said, she said? reporting) to journalistic storytelling containing a plot, point 
of view, characterization, theme and setting. These elements frame a story for the 
reader, listener, and viewer. 
Framing refers to the part of the story the writer chooses to tell, and the 
perspective from which it is told. Frame analysis theory, as established by Erving 
Goffman (1974), holds that when we cannot explain something, we try to force it into 
a frame we do understand, such as race, cultural deviance, or religion. Goffman 
contends that our choices of frames help us hear certain aspects of talk while not 
21
 helping us to hear other parts of a conversation. Within this system, frame is 
synonymous with context: that which leads up to and follows and often specifies the 
meaning of an expression.
 Meaning is dependent on context. Meaning occurs only when the ingredients 
are mixed together and baked, so to speak. For instance, there may be flour, yeast, 
sugar, and salt in a kitchen as well as water, and milk in the refrigerator, but they do 
not become dough simply because they are in the same room together. Only by mixing 
the contents and kneading them together ? creating active relationships between them 
? does the meaning of the ingredients become clear. In other words, the meaning of 
the ingredients in relationship to each other is the dough, or context. This is the way 
meaning is produced, according to Goffman?s frame analysis. 
Framing, or Point of View
 According to Schultz (1990), in literary language, framing specifically refers to 
point-of-view, the ?basic element of storytelling that lets readers know the writer is 
taking responsibility for what he or she has to say.? It is the writer?s explanation. As a  
storytelling element, when point-of-view is applied in fiction writing, much of what 
writers have to say is discovered through that writer?s explanation of the teller taking 
the vantage point or internal point of view of certain characters, and the ?you? and the 
?we? of the reader implicitly or explicitly (p. 147). Without a point-of-view, Schultz 
writes, ?much important perception, voice and knowledge gets excluded from the 
story.? He contends that when writers exclude point-of-view they censor and suppress 
22
 what they have to say. In other words, when frames of reference are left out, context 
gets lost and ambiguity prevails. The result is unstable meaning.
 Point-of-view decisions force the writer to answer this crucial question: Whose 
story will I tell? Each perspective is worth telling. To decide what point of view to 
use, writers are taught to ask themselves which ?character? interests them the most, 
and which story is close enough to his or her own experience so the writer can 
empathize more directly, can draw on details, information, and relationships from that 
experience in order to write with conviction. The writer?s temperament and character 
and needs are critical to those choices. Armed with some of the demands of the story, 
the writer will pick the viewpoint that feels right for the story, and [comfortable] for 
the writer (Rule and Wheeler, 1993, pp. 181-182). Further, a perceptive perspective 
will sell a story (see Bugeja, 1998; Hay, 1990; Garrison, 1999; Fredette, 1988; and 
Graham, 1993). All these points are crucial to credible journalism. When used 
responsibly, framing of a story enhances its value to readers, viewers, and listeners by 
adding context.
 My experience, described in the prelude, has led me to think that there is a 
place for grounded writing with a point of view in journalism. As in the case cited 
from E magazine earlier, the tone of the article appearing in that general circulation 
publication, a tone inserted by management, necessarily marks the entire publication 
as an outlet for special interest or advocacy journalism. In the case of E, nothing is 
hidden. The editors are honest about their agenda. In that respect they are transparent, 
one of Kovach and Rosentiel?s markers for journalism of verification. The publication 
clearly favors conservation of large tracts of habitat based on the quality of protection 
23
 contiguous acreage affords certain species. It is directing its articles towards activists, 
aiming to mobilize them around issues of special interest. In contrast, the American 
Planning Association, although a lobbying organization, did not slant its articles. 
Yet reporters for E can be voting members of the Society of Environmental 
Journalists (SEJ) while reporters for Planning magazine cannot because the publisher 
of the magazine, the American Planning Association, is a lobbying organization. In 
this respect, SEJ?s membership rules mirror those for obtaining a press pass to cover 
the nation?s capitol. There, anyone working for a lobbying organization cannot hold a 
press pass.
 Muckraking as Advocacy
 Like a good muckraker, I have carefully constructed a strategy for my 
investigation into the question of whether all investigative reporting on the 
environment beat is destined to be labeled as advocacy. ?Muckraking,? as defined by 
Serrin and Serrin (2002), sought to do journalism as well as do good. The term 
especially applies to an era in reporting when a group of authors and magazine 
journalists exposed American political and business evils (Paneth, 1983). Its origins 
may be traced to the social disasters of the Reconstruction Era and the Gilded Age, to 
their political corruption and financial crises, to the magnate who was indifferent to 
the law and to the citizen who cried, ?I simply demand justice! Where is she?? (p. 
306).
 There is nothing objective about the way muckrakers gathered their 
information or presented it. It was the sort of reporting Lippmann was responding to 
24
 with his notion of practicing journalism with a unity of method that produced a more 
objective report than the type some muckrakers provided. Muckrakers in general 
showed their enthusiasm for a course of action and supported it outwardly, often to the 
edge of financial breakdown. Whether in the case of conservation where the cause was 
to establish a system of national parks, protect birds from the demands of fashion 
especially for hats, or crusade against species extinction1, muckrakers carried the 
advocacy torch like Olympic champions. The term ?investigative reporting? 
technically applies to all such reporting after the muckraking era, but many journalists 
today are sentimental about the term and feel honored when it is applied to them. 
Muckraking didn?t last long, in part due to declines in support for publications 
due to the points of view appearing in their pages. The muckraking period in 
journalism generally occurred between 1890 and 1920 and was carried out by a group 
of journalists who shared a general desire for social reform, a faith in the ability of 
government and society to overcome problems, and a belief that their expos?s would 
result in action (Quick, 2003, p. 1026). In what became known as the circulation wars 
of the 1890s, muckrakers worked against the spread of yellow journalism ? that form 
of extreme sensationalism based more on gossip and ulterior motives than fact, and 
initiated by newspaper moguls William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. No clear 
reasons can be delineated to explain why muckraking came to an end, but speculation 
at the time had some saying it lost its support or that its energy went into the 
Progressive movement, while others recorded that the muckraking magazines had 
1
  Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. The species was hunted to 
extinction within 50 years. Martha?s death marks the only time a precise date is known for when a 
species disappeared from the earth.
25
 encountered increasing difficulties in operation due to a loss of financial support 
(Paneth, p. 307). 
Another factor likely contributing to its decline was the establishment of the 
Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel and created in 1917 by 
President Woodrow Wilson just after the United States entered World War I. The 
committee used the newly passed Espionage Act to limit publication of materials that 
questioned the war effort, mainly by revoking newspapers? mailing privileges. 
Consequently, the effort put forth by the government to control the news media led 
many editors to question the veracity of news told in support of a single point of view. 
This trend, combined with a general postwar disillusionment towards extreme political 
and social ideas, accelerated an existing trend towards the objective model of 
newsgathering (Quick, 2003, p. 1027) first articulated by Lippmann in 1922.
 Investigative Reporting and Advocacy
 Investigative reporting differs from muckraking in that the investigative report 
brings an intellectual process to the effort, according to Paul Williams, the former 
investigative reporter and Ohio State University professor who authored the first book 
attempting to explore and chart the world of investigative reporting, presenting it ?as it 
had been and as it could be? (Williams, 1978). Williams describes investigative 
reporters as on a mission, meaning they go into a story looking for something in 
particular. He writes, ?You are here to tell how things really work, not how the civics 
books say they work? (p. 6). The investigative reporter, he continues, goes on the trail 
to find a predator. The quarry does not sit waiting; it tries to escape. But the reporter 
26
 finds and follows its footprints, watching the trees and rocks for claw marks or tufts of 
fur. The reporter stays on the hunt day and night, trying to anticipate the quarry?s next 
move. Eventually the reporter bags it and hangs up its hide in public. Much of the 
thrill is in the chase, and the hunter is honored as a hero for outwitting and capturing 
the cruel individual beast (p. 6). It is the predator hunting the predator. But what 
investigative reporters hunt is based on a certain set of values that describe the culture 
in which we live.
 There is a down side to such righteousness. Williams explains it this way:
 The investigative reporter consciously chooses to get in harm?s way, and his 
reward is about equal parts of pain and pleasure. He is practicing... ?high risk? 
journalism. He is raising moral issues. He is pointing out conflicts and 
contradictions.,
 ...The reporter for the hometown newspaper must live with the 
knowledge that his big story will bring opprobrium and grief to the family of 
his subjects; that it may close an industrial plant and wipe out hundreds of 
jobs; that it can queer a deal for a proposed new factory whose payrolls, it will 
be argued vehemently, will far outweigh a few thousand dollars of insiders? 
profit for a few city officials. The aggressive hometown reporter of business 
news or consumer interests will also find himself at odds with the newspaper?s 
business manger ? and perhaps with its publisher.
 To cope with these dilemmas requires a certain amount of missionary 
zeal, or... ?a low threshold of indignation?...(p. xii-xiii)
 Investigative reporters today developed as legacies to muckrakers, who 
typically took strong positions on issues when they brought them to the public. As 
evidenced by letters to the editor, the public gives good reception to investigative 
reports, sometimes lured by fascination and intrigue. Just like activists or doctors, 
investigative reporters have been described as responding to a calling: for them, it is to 
try to expose wrongdoing, in the words of legendary investigative reporter Stanley 
Penn, who joined The Wall Street Journal in 1952 and retired from there at the end of 
1990 (Penn, p. v).
27
 Harry (1984) wrote that the soul of his line of work ? investigative reporting ?
 is finding the ?dirt? ? something some one or some organization does not want other 
people to know about (p. 11). In describing investigative reporting, he writes, ?Its 
motto is ?expose, expose, expose? ? a direct contradiction of so- called journalistic 
?objectivity? because it is based on the presumption that there is something to expose 
along with the judgment that it is in the public interest to expose the conditions 
reported.? Harry describes the investigative reporting process as beginning with the 
presumption that there is something fishy about the subject. Then the reporter 
develops a hypothesis about what kind of criminal or other illegal and unethical acts 
the subject might be involved in, carefully constructs a strategy of investigation, and 
sets out to prove or disprove the hypothesis. He writes,
 This is hardly the kind of ?objectivity? that J-school grads espouse on their first 
months on the job. If the investigator can prove his or her hypothesis about the 
subject of investigation, the job is done. By contrast, the so-called ?objective? 
reporter is usually limited to simply reporting allegations about a person along 
with that person?s denials and explanations. (p. 15)
 That has been the problem, some say, with reporting about the environment. 
Like investigative reports, news stories about the environment do not lend themselves 
to the kind of ?he said, she said? reporting ? or ping-pong reporting ? that works on 
political beats. Investigative reporting is rarely this kind. It consistently includes the 
reporter?s point of view, somehow.
 Investigative Reporting and Advocacy in Environment News
 LaMay and Dennis (1991) reprint in Media and the Environment an article by 
Teya Ryan first published in the Gannett Center Journal?s 1990 issue focusing on 
28
 environment reporting. Ryan says the term advocacy journalism appropriately 
describes the product she delivered as senior producer for Turner Broadcasting?s 
Network Earth program. She writes, ?There is an argument that all environmental 
reporting, balanced or not, is advocacy, just because it raises awareness of these 
issues? (p. 95). Advocacy journalism, she writes, 
is most responsible and works best if not everyone does it (and certainly many 
news media do not want to do it). Some organization ? a CNN, Washington 
Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times ? has to provide what would be 
considered a more balanced perspective, the kind that, in the midst of the 
Exxon oil spill, for example, provides the oil company?s perspective as well as 
the fisherman?s.
 Other programs do that, and they do it extremely well.  ...Without this 
kind of counterbalance, advocacy may not have a place. But once it exists, then 
I think the environment may be the one area where you can say advocacy 
journalism is appropriate, indeed, vital. (pp. 84-85)
 Jim Detjen offers a different perspective, one from journalism?s print medium. 
As environment reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Detjen helped establish SEJ 
before becoming Knight chair of environmental journalism at Michigan State 
University. He contends that environment journalists are not necessarily advocates, 
but that they can ?perform a valuable educational role.? Detjen writes that he makes an 
effort to tell readers about concrete steps they can take to solve environmental 
problems (p. 100). Doing so is not advocacy, he reasons:
 I am simply presenting readers, who have a hunger to take concrete actions, 
with practical tips of ?news they can use.? When I have written stories about 
scientific research on lightning or tornados, I have also included practical tips 
on how to avoid injury from these severe weather phenomena. Some might call 
this advocacy; I prefer to think of it as public service. (p. 101).
 Although ?he said, she said? reporting is widely seen in all journalistic 
mediums and was the only style provided by wire services until recently when the 
29
 Associated Press began offering stories in the literary journalism genre, it remains 
problematic on the environment beat. Simply, the technique does not convey the 
essence of the experience of, for example, living in Anniston, Alabama, where a 2001 
lawsuit marked one of the biggest yet completely under-reported environment stories 
since contamination was discovered in Love Canal, New York, in 1978. On August 
21, 2003, Monsanto Corporation and its chemical products company, Solutia, settled 
the polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) pollution cases of 17,000 residents in Anniston for 
$700 million. The agreement designates money will go to PCB health research, local 
education, personal damages, and much else that is needed in the community, 
according to Elizabeth Bluemink, who reported the story for the Anniston Star. 
Although the story has the magnitude of some of the early stories on the beat 
that made careers, the fact that it did not gain national attention may indicate how 
numb the public has become to such stories, seeking to expect them, and expect the 
worst. Few outside of Anniston seem to know of the monumental case, a possible 
indication that environmental protection seems to have become a mainstream value. 
The in-and-out reporting style common to mainstream news outlets also gives 
short shrift to the complexity of environment stories, which usually draw fibers from 
several beats into each story. In addition to political and policy issues, environment 
reporting tends to regularly involve chemistry, statistical analysis, meteorology, 
weather patterns, migration patterns, knowledge of habitat needs for everything from 
insects to birds to mammals to amphibians, ethical discussions about what constitutes 
acceptable levels of risk from pollution and contamination in our water, air, and soil, 
and more.
30
 Fact and Consensus of Opinion in Environment News
 Since a reporter is not in a position to verify scientific studies, consensus of 
opinion tends to become part of the report, although fact rather than opinion is what is 
called for in the kind of journalism advocated by Lippmann, Kovach and Rosenstiel, 
journalism schools throughout the country, and many news outlets. Creating balance 
in a news report or feature about the environment does not necessarily reflect truth, 
and can be perceived as slanted reporting because the consensus is not always aligned 
with fact. For instance, if the consensus of opinion is that global climate change 
(warming and cooling of the planet) does not exist, and 10 experts say that is true but 
two say it is not, is the reporter doing the public a service or disservice by providing 
two experts who say global warming does exist, and two who say it does not?
 In this respect, advocacy in environment news is not always obvious. With 
science a staple of news stories about the environment, if a reporter relies on scientific 
consensus as the basis for a story, truth may not be served. Some reporters on the 
environment beat claim weighing a story in the direction of scientific consensus is the 
only way to report about the parade, so to speak. Reporting about global climate 
change brought ping-pong reporting to the surface for discussion among environment 
reporters more than any other story in the history of the beat, partly because so little 
was known about the concept when it initially hit the news. Remember when everyone 
called the notion ?global warming?? It was the news media that educated audiences 
about this concern, and gradually people began to understand that it is not just 
warming that is worth attention, it is cooling, too.
31
 Continuing with this example, those contending that the best way to tell a 
scientific story ? on the environment beat or otherwise ? is to find where the 
consensus lies can be considered advocacy journalists. Those favoring this argument 
say it is the reporter?s responsibility to put in context the percentage of scientists who 
do not believe in global climate change, but that it is not the reporter?s responsibility 
to determine which viewpoint is correct. To remove the advocacy, the reporter must 
emphasize that only a tiny percentage of the whole, an almost indiscernible minority, 
hold that the notion of global climate change is a falsehood. Sometimes in reporting 
there are not necessarily two equally reasonable points of view, and it is not going to 
be resolved with a vote.
 Another view contends that reporting scientific consensus is nothing more than 
reporting opinion as fact. The argument here is that the result is irresponsible 
journalism, since scientific consensus once held that the world is flat. This position 
therefore holds that any article reporting opinion as fact departs from journalism and 
becomes advocacy writing because of its diversion from the tenets and standards of 
journalism as described.
 Yet on the environment beat strictly reporting the facts can be problematic, as 
described with the example about reporting consensus. One obstacle environment 
reporters face all the time is that many important things about the real universe are not 
obvious facts that can be verified on deadline, such as global climate change. 
Therefore, if the notion of objective reporting is limited to reporting the facts, things 
that can be verified in the real universe, it would be impossible for environment 
reporters to tackle some significant stories ? such as what endocrine disruptors are and
32
 how they are causing deformities and other abnormalities in human and other animal 
offspring, for instance. Dioxin and PCBs (see glossary) fall into this category (the 
Why Files). Of course, a reporter who wanted to verify Einstein?s theory of relativity 
could go back and read the research papers and attempt to assimilate the theory and 
experimental data which supports it, but doing so would entail far more work than any 
journalist has time to perform.
 Scientific Terminology, Fact, and Environment News
 A further problem environment reporters have with the science on their beat 
lies in terminology. While journalists tend to think in terms of facts, science is framed 
in terms of hypothesis and theory. There is no such thing as factual proof in science. 
There is only probability. The word ?theory? is scientific parlance for what a journalist 
might regard as fact when reporting about global climate change. Rather than talking 
of factual proof, scientists prefer to talk of probability, that is, based on available 
evidence a particular theory appears to be correct. For example, while there is long-
 standing, wide consensus among scientists about the correctness of Einstein?s 
relativity theory, recent published research reported in The Washington Post has 
brought the notion into question.
 Beyond the Parade
 Seemingly, as Rosen (1999) pointed out, it is the reporter?s job to watch the 
parade, not become part of it. However, some in the environment reporting arena 
contend there is a place for advocacy in news about the environment, a point 
33
 elaborated on in Chapter 2.
 What looks like advocacy on the environment beat often also looks like just 
plain good reporting. In addition to being subtle, what could pass as advocacy could 
also pass as investigative reporting in the finest tradition. For example, like the 
Anniston story, the story about Love Canal and what happened there centered on the 
effects of dioxin contamination. Dioxins are part of a larger class of compounds called 
polycyclic halogenated aromatics, which are emitted into the air from vehicle, factory, 
and even fireplace emissions and that find their way into water and soil, polluting it. 
Research indicates a toxic dose of dioxin ? more commonly known as the poisonous 
ingredient in the Vietnam-era defoliant Agent Orange ? fits on the head of a pin. All 
this had to be explained to audiences.
 On any given day this author, when writing news stories about the environment 
between 1989 and 2001 for various print venues, was required to synthesize chemistry 
and statistical analyses for removing contamination from soil or water, or wildlife 
habitat needs and economic development plans, or some combination of economics, 
policy, law, and science into a given news report between 800 and 1,500 words, on the 
average. Environment stories are complex. Investigative reporting on the environment 
beat helps put it all in perspective. Without a point of view, it has no voice or 
perspective. As pointed out earlier and elaborated on in Chapter 2, journalism without 
a perspective provides unstable meaning.
 Chapter Summaries
 The literature synthesis provided in Chapter 2 orients readers to the conversation to 
34
 which I am contributing, and shows where this study fills gaps in the literature. That 
section goes into detail about what the literature provides concerning environment 
reporting, and also offers some insights about investigative reporting on the 
environment. Departing from tradition, I have seasoned this section with interviews 
with environment reporters to provide everyday examples showing the literature in 
practice, and also where ideas exists in theory only.  
Chapter 3 focuses on research method and methodology. It describes why I 
chose to apply phenomenology as a research approach. In that chapter I explain how I 
attempt to get at the substance of investigative reporting on the environment beat and 
its relationship to advocacy.
 Chapter 4 describes how and why grounded theory was applied to get at the 
essence of investigative reporting about the environment. This approach aims to 
provide mid-range theories. Several epiphanies resulted from combing this theory with 
phenomenology, thereby demonstrating the necessity of connecting theory with 
method. The mid[range theories resulting from this process are contained in my 
conclusions. Those theories appear to be significant and groundbreaking. 
Chapter 5 presents findings from data gleaned from extensive interviews with 
six investigative reporters working the environment beat who are members of the 
Society of Environmental Journalists. All volunteered to participate. Each revealed 
different facets of reporting that distinguish the environment beat from all others. The 
conversations pivoted on what they consider advocacy journalism, how they make that 
determination, and the measures their editors have applied to draw that line, with a 
particular eye on investigative reports. Appendix B provides extensive excerpts from 
35
 the interviews, revealing each participant?s attraction to investigative reporting on the 
environment and how the stories they write affect them on a personal level. Their 
responses tell, among other things, of lifestyle changes, spiritual gratification, and 
emotional satisfaction the work provides, even though five out of six revealed 
themselves as atheists or agnostics, with one declining to disclose. In so doing, 
The categories presented in this section were revealed by the reporters 
interviewed rather than pre-selected. That standpoint is consistent with grounded 
theory. To produce the findings, two layers of reduction were conducted as dictated by 
the theory. In so doing, this chapter provides the roots for describing the essence of 
investigative reporting about the environment. My conclusions are offered in Chapter 
6. 
36
 CHAPTER 2
 LITERATURE SYNTHESIS
 Literature reviews in qualitative research take on three main views, according 
to Field and Morse (1985). From one perspective, the researcher does not consult the 
literature until all the field data has been collected. As a result, when the researcher 
goes to the literature for the first time it may be easier to confirm or deny what is 
located in books, journals, and other materials. The thinking is that a literature review 
done before field work may mislead or distract the researcher. Further concern is that 
the researcher might overlook a new discovery if preoccupied with finding and 
confirming what the literature already provides. The distraction could come in the 
form of seeking to prove or disprove what already is written; and could risk tainting 
any findings by influencing the interpretation based on a bias provided by the 
literature. The point of caution with this approach is that something valuable might be 
missed if one reads the literature before going into the field.
 A second standpoint holds the opposite view. It asserts that the researcher 
begin by locating, reading and using all previous information to find a framework for 
planning observations or devising an interview outline. This is an ?all-at-once? 
approach, or holistic approach to qualitative research.  
In the third position, the researcher scans the literature to identify what is there 
and what is not, using the quick read to help the researcher know when a new 
discovery is made in the field. In this view, once field data are collected, the 
37
 researcher repeats the process to find material shedding light on findings. The 
researcher then selectively uses literature identified in the first read and subsequent 
ones to inform the work.
 In all three cases, the qualitative researcher usually integrates the literature 
during the later phases of the research process (Learn, 1996, p. 13). Initially I had 
planned to follow the first approach. However, between the first and second field 
interviews I became eager to learn more. Unable to control my passion, I decided my 
time would be well spent getting a sense of the literature and what it did and did not 
provide. Consequently, this section reflects the results of the third approach. 
This work seeks to tell a story that has not been told. It is the story of how 
investigative reporters covering the environment display their passion for their work, 
and what leads them to it. It is the story of people who cannot stand idle to injustice, 
who seek to right wrongs. It is the story of people who have given voice to the less 
influential. All from the question: What might qualify investigative reporting about the 
environment as advocacy? 
Orientation to the Literature
 Joseph Campbell, the world-renowned scholar and mythologist, believed he 
could review with an unprejudiced eye the religious traditions of mankind. He claimed 
doing so made him ?aware of certain mythic motifs that are common to all, although 
differently understood and developed in the differing traditions? (Campbell, in 
Eisenberg, et al., 1990, p. 2).
 Campbell?s words stand as a metaphor for what this section attempts to 
38
 deliver: a look at how investigative reporting has been interpreted on the environment 
beat, as well as how advocacy is defined in that quadrant, according to the literature. 
Certainly all disciplines have an approach to investigation because questioning is the 
foundation of learning. Since my subject is journalism, however, I will confine my 
discussion to that field.
 On the environment beat just as in myth there are questions that seem larger 
than life. The question of advocacy, for instance, is one such example. Is every 
reporter on the environment beat an advocate? Each is working the green beat. What 
else could they be? If one does an investigative report on the environment beat, what 
logic defends the story as fair, balanced, and without bias? What persuasive argument 
protects that reporter?s credibility? What shield and sword can that reporter use to 
present the truth as understood, without fear of being labeled an advocate, the kiss of
 death to any news reporter seeking to be taken seriously?
 Some of the risks involved in undertaking any story on the environment beat 
already have been discussed. More are ahead. This section shows the drama that came 
unbidden to some who dared to pioneer investigative reporting on the environment, to 
those who tempted fate. 
In the lion?s mouth are those who came with documents for evidence, direct 
quotes for testimony, and narrative for background and context, but were punished as 
advocates anyway. Like all muckraking and investigative journalism, these stories 
reveal reporters in their noblest moments displaying outrage at injustice ? with the 
injustice aimed at them in the form of being silenced. One of the stories is about a 
reporter whose editors did not stand up for her when special political and advertising  
39
 interests complained she had written a story that was not fair. Another story tells of a 
veteran environment reporter for The New York Times who was transferred to 
covering the Internal Revenue Service when his editors decided he was ?ahead of the 
curve,? or too biased in his reporting about environmental issues in Washington, D.C. 
There are other stories, as well. After being outraged by injustices done to other 
people, some of the environment reporters quoted here became targets of seeming 
injustice themselves from within their own profession. Although they steadfastly 
adhered to the tenets of the journalism of verification described, many were reassigned 
by their mainstream news employers after being accused of producing advocacy 
journalism. They say they did not.
 At base, the following consideration of the literature provides a sense of the 
environment beat and how it came about. It describes what prompted the beat?s 
creation, some of the occupational hazards both in and out of the newsroom2, what 
comprises an investigative report on the environment beat and whether it departs from 
traditional investigative reporting, and a conversation about advocacy journalism and 
the environment beat. Overall, the literature is thin. When it comes to investigative 
reporting about the environment, less than a handful of secondary sources address the 
issue at all. Similarly, some direct discussion exists in print about advocacy and 
investigative reporting in general, but again, there isn?t much.
 2
  In 2003, one star environment reporter innocently picked up a rock while investigating a river site 
suspected of severe contamination and tossed it in his car to take to a lab. He forgot about it, and carried 
it around for a month or so. Gradually, he began to lose his memory. One day he found the rock in his 
car, had it examined, and learned it was radioactive. As a result, he had to be chelated due to exposure.
40
 Is the Environment Beat Here to Stay?
 Some say the environment beat is an endangered species. Some say 
environment news is here to stay even if a reporter isn?t specifically assigned to cover 
it. Others say there will always be a need for a beat reporter to cover the environment, 
arguing that environment stories are complicated, that a beat reporter will more readily 
see how the pieces might fit together in a bigger picture than general assignment, city 
hall, business, or economics reporters write a story involving the environment.
 In the mid-1900s, the labor beat was a staple of most news outlets. Many in the 
United States workforce belonged to labor unions at that point in history. Stories about 
the unions and also corporations were juicy, wrought with corruption, self-interest, 
and injustice, which made for great reading ? much like environment news today. But 
gradually the United States economy shifted to service-based industry from one rooted 
in manufacturing, and fewer people belonged to unions. Eventually the labor beat 
dissolved into business and metro beats. 
Bill Allen, senior fellow with the Institutes for Journalism & Natural 
Resources, said the environment beat itself may disappear, but coverage of the 
environment will not. ?Environment stories are going to continue to grow in 
importance as the various forms of global climate change intensify in the coming 
years. With the biodiversity crisis intensifying, with mounting evidence about over-
 fishing, about pollution run-off, about toxic waste, these are just going to continue to 
demand interest by readers and viewers and listeners and coverage by journalists. 
They have to do with our health, our kids, our families, in a very direct way,? he said 
(Allen, 2003).
41
 Allen?s response reflects the mass media theory that journalists have the ability 
to decide what the public will think about and discuss, known as limited effects theory 
(see Lowery & DeFleur, 1988; Cohen, 1963). Robert McClure, a reporter with the 
Seattle Post-Intelligencier who covers environment stories for the paper, agreed the 
environment beat will not go away. Reporters may get reassigned temporarily, he said, 
but there are no signs in his newsroom at this point of permanently downplaying 
environment stories, he said (McClure, 2003).
 The thing is environment reporting doesn?t have to belong to one beat, said 
Adam Glenn, senior producer for the business, health, science and technology unit at 
ABCnews.com, in a personal interview with the author at the Society of 
Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference in New Orleans in September 2003. 
Reporters from business, health, and municipal beats should be encouraged to 
contribute, he said. The commitment then becomes a policy decision to cover the 
environment, he explained (Glenn, 2003).
 As reported by San Jose Mercury News environment reporter Paul Rogers in 
Neiman Reports (Winter, 2002), The New York Times reassigned its environment 
reporter, Douglas Jehl, to the Middle East following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist 
attacks in New York City. Jehl, the Times? former Cairo bureau chief, has since 
moved back to the environment beat. However, by mid-year 2003 several SEJ 
members who had been transferred to other beats at that time remained focused on 
their new assignments. 
During the first eight months of 2001, environment stories (including coverage 
of pollution, toxic waste, air and water quality, global warming, endangered species, 
42
 energy, and land use) totaled 596 minutes on evening network news programs, 
according to the Tyndall Report, an analysis of network news broadcasts. Top stories 
were the Bush administration?s energy policies, California blackouts, global warming, 
and air pollution. But in the last four months of 2001 ? after the terrorist attacks ? the
 networks broadcast only 21 minutes of environment news. The pace didn?t pick up 
much in 2002. There were 187 minutes of environment news in the first nine months, 
putting the viewers on pace to see less than half the environment coverage in 2002 that 
they saw a year earlier (Rogers, 2002, p. 32).
 In 10 newspaper studies conducted by American Opinion Research in 1992, 
readers identified environmental news as the fastest growing topic of news interest 
(Rogers, 2002). A growth spurt on the beat was expected as a result. Rogers observed 
that, ?by early 2001, network TV news coverage of environment issues reached a 
volume not seen since the days of the Exxon Valdez oil spill a decade earlier. From 
Manhattan to Miami, Seattle to Southern California, newspaper editors wanted the 
environment on Page One? (p. 32). Yet a year later environment news on television 
had fallen to less than one-third of what it was a year earlier. 
The beat that some considered a fad in the early 1990s appears to be sprouting 
a new branch. More recently, environment reporters have followed in the footsteps of 
reporters embedded with the troops. They have been ?embedded? in weather stories, 
for instance, as evidenced by network and CNN coverage of Hurricane Claudette and 
Hurricane Isabel. ?This rain feels like stinging needles!? shouted one CNN reporter in 
gale-force winds on a beachfront. Environment news is beginning to find a new home 
in the newsroom in weather reports. 
43
 Pictures and News About the Environment
 Cracknell (1993) suggested that television was an ideal medium for at least 
some environment stories, calling them ?mediagenic,? or dramatic in visuals. Such 
stories provide, he explains,
 good pictures and easy-to-understand symbols, such as seabirds stuck in an oil 
slick or the menacing shape of a nuclear power plant. Photogenic natural 
disasters, such as the Yellowstone Park fire of 1988 or the eruption of Mount 
St. Helens in 1980, may also be framed as environmental stories. The growth 
of television and the greening of America is a topic waiting to be explored. (in 
Neuzil and Kovarik, 1996, p. xi)
 The role of pictures is particularly important in environment stories, according 
to Shanahan (1993). He argues that because of technology, our actions have much 
broader consequences than before the industrial revolution. Waste products are 
flushed, thrown out, or made to disappear and leave our consciousness immediately, 
leading us to live ?environmentally destructive lives within an otherwise clean 
environment? (p. 183). Pictures, he argued in 1993, can help people understand what 
they are doing and possibly motivate a change in behaviors and lifestyles. To do so, 
they must be taken in the field and brought to viewers (in the case of television) rather 
than bringing the wild indoors and onto a sanitized studio set to spark discussion. 
Bringing viewers outside rather than bringing the outside inside to viewers was key to 
heightening environmental awareness, Shanahan concluded.
 Television and Environment News
 But environment stories never took off in television news the way they did in 
44
 print. One factor determining why environment stories appear less in television news 
has to do with the medium; another concerns trust, said CNN executive editor Peter 
Dykstra, who heads the network?s Science and Technology Unit. In a personal 
interview with the author in 2001, Dykstra, then news editor for CNN?s Network Earth 
program, said that in television, news stories ?cast everything in black and white, good 
and evil, right and wrong. With environment stories rarely that well defined, upper 
management tends to be very wary of environment stories that are potentially loaded 
with hype and obfuscation? (Dykstra, 2001). 
Since much of the science behind environment stories depends on theories, and 
weighing those theories, trusting someone else to decide what science is right or what 
political perspective is wrong is something television news executives rarely are 
comfortable getting into, Dykstra explained. Keeping environmental messages 
sanitized is key to getting those stories into television news, then, which goes against 
all that Shanahan (1993) hoped for the medium. This factor may be key to why 
environment news did not catch on in television. 
Event stories involving the environment seem best suited for television?s short 
quotes (or sound bites), dramatic pictures, and one minute or a little more time slot in 
which to tell a story. As a result, the kind of complex reporting coverage of the 
environment required to provide a framework and clear context for a story appears 
better suited for a news magazine or special report according to the current formula for 
news. With this in mind, it seems environment news with all its diversity and 
complexity could support its own segment on the news, much like sports.
45
 A package of stories about environment reporting in television appearing 
September 8, 2003, in Television Week concurred with Dykstra?s observations, but 
added that stations are beginning to give some of the responsibility to staff 
meteorologists in an effort to provide more reports, asking them to cover weather-
 related environment stories. The effort seems an attempt to rise to the challenge to 
provide environment stories in a slow economy putting pressure on news 
organizations to provide more news with the same or less staff, a factor that could 
cause beat reporting to fall by the wayside (Whitney, 2003a). Not wanting to drop 
environment news from the story list, efforts seemingly are being made to try another 
way to get the news to the public.
 Seiches on the Environment Beat
 Environment reporting has been dwindling, according to Scott Miller, co-
 director of Resource Media in Seattle, a nonprofit resource center aimed at improving 
coverage of the environment (Whitney, 2003a), for reasons paralleling Dykstra?s 
observations. Despite the current decrease, an increase in coverage is expected in 2004 
as election campaigning rises to its usual shriek. 
As reported in the October 2003 issue of Mother Jones magazine, the Bush 
administration has been ?busy dismantling bedrock environmental laws and handing 
out favors to the biggest polluters,? and has ?quietly changed the rules affecting 
wetlands? (p. 2). Some examples: (1) Key sections of the Clean Water Act and Clean 
Air Act have been gutted. (2) The Superfund program, which exists to provide funds 
to clean up toxic industrial waste such as arsenic, lead, mercury, and vinyl chloride in 
46
 48 states and more than 1,000 neighborhoods, with each site cleanup costing at least 
$20 million, has been crippled. (3) The EPA?s enforcement division dropped to its 
lowest level on record ? down by one-fifth as of October 2003. As of that time, fines 
for environmental violations had dropped by nearly two-thirds. Criminal prosecution 
of the worst polluters was down by nearly one-third (Davidson, 2003). Consequently, 
the environment appears as this presidential campaign?s political pivot point.
 In 1996, news managers across mediums were telling their reporters that 
environment stories ?just don?t sell,? according to Detjen?s (1996) informal survey of 
some environment reporters that year. One television reporter Detjen quoted saw the 
attitude as a potentially chilling ?trend? indicating the beat was ?in serious trouble. 
...News consultants say that no one cares about E news, but this contradicts what most 
polls and viewers say.? Concern among environment reporters about the future of the 
beat was high in 1996. Many continue to sing this song.
 Detjen?s informal study fueled that concern by showing a decline in 
environment reporting in all mediums except radio when compared with 1995. Of 
television reporters surveyed, 44 percent said they spent less time in 1996 on 
environment stories than the previous year. By contrast, 41 percent of radio reporters 
said they spent more time on environment stories. Detjen offered no insights about 
why, except to quote a few of the survey participants saying environment reporting 
was not the priority it once was with news managers. He also did not disclose his 
research method or the number of participants in his study. Although it was the first 
study of its kind to provide any sort of baseline for measuring seiches on the 
environment beat, it is not quoted further here due to methodological concerns related 
47
 to the efficacy of the study.  
Several years later, three studies by Sachsman, Simon and Valenti profiled 
newspaper and television environment reporters in New England (2002), the Mountain 
West states (2002) and in the South (2003). Of 33 television stations in New England, 
only four had a reporter who was assigned environment stories. Of 87 stations in the 
Mountain West region, nine had reporters to whom they directed environment stories, 
although 10 were identified in the region. In the South, 184 stations were located. Of 
them, 23 had at least one environment reporter (27 were identified). 
By contrast, of 82 newspapers located in New England, 42 sent environment 
stories to a specific reporter (51 such reporters were identified). Some had more than 
one reporter providing environment stories. Similarly, in the Mountain West region, of 
108 newspapers located, 55 had at least one reporter covering environment issues (81 
reporters were located covering the environment in that region). In the South, of 310 
newspapers, 124 had at least one environment reporter covering the environment (131 
were located). 
Based on current statistics, it would seem the environment beat is not going the 
way of the labor beat, despite some older journalistic reports to the contrary. Current 
polls continue to show audiences rate environment news as a priority, according to 
Willis Duff, a consultant with Audience Research and Development in Dallas, which 
analyzes television news markets (Duff, 2001). However, even though audience 
interest in environment coverage and all the categories around it ? including fuel 
efficiencies, species diversity, and pollution ? consistently ranks in the top 15 to 30 
48
 percent, television news executives place their emphasis on medical reporting, Duff 
explained.
 Making an important observation about environment reporting in the 1980s 
and early 1990s, Donella Meadows (1991), syndicated columnist and former adjunct 
professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth University, wrote that ?the 
environment according to the media is a luxury, something beautiful but trivial, not 
something that supports our lives? (p. 76). Twelve years later in 2003, Tim Wheeler 
said the attitude continues to prevail among news executives. Wheeler, who 
supervised the Baltimore Sun?s environment reporting team for many years, said the 
environment beat is here to stay, but it is ?still seen as a frill in too many newsrooms.? 
He added, ?I think it?s importance to well-rounded coverage of environmental issues is 
inescapable when you really commit to it. An environment reporter has to incorporate 
not just the science but the politics and the legal dimension and the human side, the 
human impact of the story, and the business and economic issues involved? (Wheeler, 
2003). Like Glenn, when environment stories appear on city, business, or other beats, 
Wheeler encourages those reporters to do them. Seemingly, environment news can be 
found on almost every beat. 
Historical Perspective
 It was journalists crusading for conservation who helped create Yosemite 
National Park in California, the Boundary Waters wilderness area in northern 
Minnesota, the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, the Everglades National 
Park in Florida, and the C & O Canal park in the District of Columbia and Maryland 
49
 (Serrin & Serrin, 2002). It was investigative reporting on the environment beat that 
introduced us to the concepts of acid rain and global climate change (warming and 
cooling of the planet), made us think about genetically modified crops and their 
impact on farmers everywhere as well as ourselves, and heightened awareness of 
environmental losses brought by urban sprawl.
 Even before the EPA came into being in 1970, the environment beat as we 
know it today was brewing. In 1948, Congress passed the Federal Water Pollution 
Control Law in response to waste disposal problems ? the first law created in the 
United States in the name of environmental protection. In 1956, the Water Pollution 
Control Act authorized the first federal money for water treatment plants. Seven years 
later in 1963 legislators passed the first law to protect air quality: the Clean Air Act, 
which authorized $95 million to local, state, and national air pollution control efforts. 
Two years later in 1965 lawmakers gave the federal government the power to set 
water standards in the absence of state action when they passed the Water Quality Act. 
In 1970 when the first Earth Day was celebrated, a revised version of the Clean Air 
Act was approved that toughened anti-pollution laws but failed to address acid rain 
and airborne toxic chemicals. Editors knew there would be more news about the 
environment coming, and that it would be controversial. 
Following the first Earth Day, news managers began to recognize the need to 
hire a full-time environment reporter. Before that, coverage of the environment mostly 
consisted of conservation writing, that which focused on habitat and open land 
preservation and all the reasons to do so. Newsrooms didn?t have a clear place to 
categorize stories about pollution. Complex, they touched on health, business, politics, 
50
 and later public affairs under a new concept called environmental justice, which 
concerned, for instance, citing hazardous waste-producing technology in low-
 income areas with less clout. The term itself ? environmental justice ? shows the 
influence of activists on the environment beat. Coined by activists, the term identified 
a particular cause, such as an effort to prevent citing new incinerators in high-poverty 
areas rather than wealthier ones.
 1969
 The mass media and the public until the late 1960s accepted pollution as part 
of industrial society. This was no accident. Professional public relations specialists 
working for corporate America actively promoted this viewpoint. They supplied the 
press with plenty of good-news press releases concerning the successful efforts of 
corporations that were taking care of pollution problems (Sachsman, 1973, p. 3).
 By the late 1960s, the picture had changed. News reporters were getting press 
releases not only from industry and related sources, but also from government 
agencies and officials, citizen-action pressure groups, and other institutions, including 
universities. Richard W. Darrow, president of the Hill and Knowlton public relations 
company in 1971 called it the Great Ecological Communications War, the war
 between conflicting public relations sources (Sachsman, 1996, p. 242).
 As public officials began to talk about the environment, the mass media began 
to treat it as a serious government story, and the general public became increasingly
 aware that important issues were involved. Since the 1960s, government officials and
51
 Chart 1: ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS TIMELINE IN THE UNITED 
STATES: 1845-1991
 Year Milestone
 1845
 To avoid the waste and destruction of modern life, Henry David 
Thoreau withdraws to a cabin in the woods, later publishes 
Walden, a record of his thoughts and observations.
 1849
 U.S. Department of the Interior is established.
 1857
 Frederick Law Olmsted commissioned to develop the first great 
city park, New York?s Central Park, introducing landscape 
architecture in the United States. 
1864
 George Perkins Marsh publishes Man and nature.
 1869
 John Wesley Powell leads first party to navigate the Colorado 
River through the Grand Canyon.
 1872
 First national park is established in Yellowstone, Wyoming.
 1878
 Report on the lands of the arid regions of the west by John Wesley 
Powell is released.
 1879
 U.S. Geological Survey is formed.
 1882
 The first hydroelectric plant opens on the Fox River in Wisconsin.
 1890
 The Census department announces the Frontier boundary, beyond 
which there were no more than two settlers per square mile.
 1891
 Yosemite National Park is established; Forest Reserve Act permits 
federal government to set aside public land as forest preserve 
(precursor of the national forests). 
1892
 Sierra Club is founded by John Muir, pioneer in ?aesthetic? 
conservation movement; Animal rights considered in relation to 
social progress by Henry S. Salt is released.
52
 ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS TIMELINE IN THE UNITED STATES
 Year Milestone
 1895
 American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society is founded in 
response to speed at which industrialization is destroying our natural 
heritage.
 1897
 Rise of Progressive Environmentalism, which espouses government 
intervention in the public interest to offset exploitation of natural 
resources by private developers.
 1898
 Cornell offers first college program in forestry; Rivers and Harbors 
Act bans pollution of navigable waters.
 1900
 Lacey Act makes it a federal crime to transport illegally killed game 
animals across state lines.
 1902
 Bureau of Reclamation is formed, propelling the Federal Land 
Reclamation program.
 1905
 National Audubon Society is founded.
 1907
 Gifford Pinchot is appointed first chief of the U.S. Forest Service.
 1908
 Grand Canyon is set aside as a national monument under the 
provisions of the Antiquities Act of 1906; chlorination is first used 
extensively at United States water treatment plants, producing water 
10 times purer than when filtered; President Theodore Roosevelt 
hosts first Governors? Conference on Conservation.
 1913
 Hetch Hetchy Valley Dam, to provide water for San Francisco, wins 
congressional approval after a five-year battle over flooding an area 
of scenic beauty in Yosemite. 
1914
 Martha, the last passenger pigeon, dies in the Cincinnati zoo and 
later becomes a symbol for crusades against species extinction.
 1916
 National Park Service is established.
 1918
 Save-the-Redwoods League is created; hunting of migratory birds is 
restricted by treaty between the United States and Canada.
53
 ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS TIMELINE IN THE UNITED STATES
 Year Milestone
 1920
 Mineral Leasing Act regulates mining on federal lands.
 1922
 Izaak Walton League is organized.
 1924
 Environmentalist Aldo Leopold wins designation of Gila National 
Forest, New Mexico, as first extensive wilderness area; shift in goals 
of American conservation movement occurs with First National 
Conference on Outdoor Recreation.
 1928
 Boulder Canyon Project (Hoover Dam) is authorized to provide 
combined irrigation, electric power, and flood control system for the 
Arizona-Nevada border.
 1930
 Chloroflurocarbons are hailed as safe refrigerants because of their 
non-toxic and non-combustible properties.
 1933
 Tennessee Valley Authority is formed to analyze the environmental 
impact of hydropower projects before developing plans to harness 
the resources of the Tennessee River; Civilian Conservation Corps 
employs more than 2 million Americans in forestry, flood control, 
soil erosion, and beautification projects in an attempt to boost the 
economy while addressing the needs of the land.
 1934
 Greatest drought in United States history is recorded; Taylor Grazing 
Act regulates grazing on federal lands.
 1935
 Soil Conservation Service is established. Extends federal 
involvement with erosion control; Wilderness Society is founded to 
expand and protect the nation?s wilderness areas.
 1936
 National Wildlife Federation is formed; national flood prevention 
policy is established by Omnibus Flood Control Act.
 1940
 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service consolidates federal activities in 
wildlife management.
54
 ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS TIMELINE IN THE UNITED STATES
 Year Milestone
 1946
 Creation of U.S. Bureau of Land Management centralizes 
administration of lands in the public domain; Atomic Energy 
Commission is created to oversee the development of peaceful and 
military uses of nuclear power.
 1948
 Air pollution incident in Donora, Pennsylvania, kills 20 people, and 
14,000 become ill.
 1959
 The St. Lawrence Seaway, a joint Canadian and United States 
project, is completed, connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the western 
Great Lakes and providing 9,500 miles of navigable waters.
 1961
 Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall articulates emerging ideas of 
humanity?s ethical responsibility to preserve the environment as 
opposed to merely regulating the use of its resources. 
1962
 Silent Spring, an investigation of the dangers of unchecked pesticide 
use to the balance of nature, is published by Rachel Carson.
 1963
 First Clean Air Act authorizes $95 million to local, state, and 
national air pollution control efforts; Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 
between the United States and U.S.S.R. stops atmospheric testing of 
nuclear weapons.
 1964
 Wilderness Act creates National Wilderness Preservation System.
 1965
 Water Quality Act gives the federal government power to set water 
standards in absence of state action; National Conference on Natural 
Beauty attacks the ?uglification? of urban America and promotes 
aesthetic rather than economic values.
 1966
 Eighty die in New York City from air pollution-related causes during 
a four-day atmospheric inversion.
55
 ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS TIMELINE IN THE UNITED STATES
 Year Milestone
 1967
 Environmental Defense Fund is formed to lead effort to save the 
osprey from DDT.
 1969
 Oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, fouls beaches and focuses 
nation on pollution issues; lease sale in Alaska oil fields yields 
$900,220,590 in a one-day sale; Greenpeace is created, as Americans 
and Canadians join forces to protest nuclear bomb testing by the 
United States; Design with nature by Ian McHarg advocates letting 
nature set design constraints on human decisions.
 1970
 The first Earth Day is celebrated on April 22; National 
Environmental Policy Act passes, requiring every Federal agency to 
issue an environmental impact statement for any dam, highway, or 
other large construction project undertaken, regulated, or funded by 
the Federal government; the Environmental Protection Agency is 
established to research, monitor, and enforce environmental laws and 
issues; the Clean Air Act Amends 1963 measure, toughens anti-
 pollution laws but fails to address acid rain and airborne toxic 
chemicals; the Natural Resources Defense Council is established as a
 combination of lawyers and scientists to develop policies of natural 
resource management. 
1972
 Use of DDT is phased out in U.S; Federal Water Pollution Control 
Act (Clean Water Act) is passed, with the goal of restoring polluted 
waters for recreational use and eliminating discharges of pollutants 
into navigable waters; representatives of 113 nations gather at the 
U.N. Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm to 
develop a plan for international action to protect the world 
environment; Oregon passes the first bottle-recycling law; U.S. 
Supreme Court decision supports Sierra Club over Walt Disney 
Enterprises in legal battle over use of Mineral King Valley, 
California; Coastal Zone management Act, Federal Environmental 
Pesticide Control Act, and Ocean Dumping Act pass; The Club of 
Rome issues The limits of growth, provoking heated debate 
worldwide.
56
 ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS TIMELINE IN THE UNITED STATES
 Year Milestone
 1973
 E.F. Schumacher publishes Small is beautiful; called the ?Magna 
Carta for Wildlife,? the Convention on International Trade in 
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is signed by 
more than 80 nations; in response to CITES, the United States passes 
broad-based Endangered Species Act, which applies to habitats as 
well as living things; controversy erupts over protection of 
threatened snail darter during construction of Tellico Dam in 
Tennessee, resulting in changes that weaken the Endangered Species 
Act; Congress approves licensing of 789-mile pipeline from Alaska 
North Slope oil field to Port of Valdez; Arab oil embargo creates 
energy crisis in United States.
 1974
 Safe Drinking Water Act requires EPA to set standards and policies 
to protect nation?s drinking water.
 1975
 The last undammed river in Tennessee is dammed; after a 100-year 
absence, Atlantic salmon return to the Connecticut River to spawn.
 1976
 National Academy of Sciences reports that chlorofluorocarbon gases 
from spray cans are damaging the ozone layer; Resource 
Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) empowers EPA to regulate 
the disposal and treatment of municipal solid and hazardous wastes.
 1977
 Department of Energy is created as a cabinet level office.
 1978
 Love Canal, New York, is evacuated after discovery that it sits on 
top of a chemical waste dump; rainfall in Wheeling, West Virginia, 
is measured at a pH of 2, the most acidic yet recorded and 5,000 
times more acidic than normal.
 1979
 Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania experiences 
near-meltdown; Gaia: A new look at life on Earth is published by 
James E. Lovelock, who proposes that the Earth is a self-regulating 
entity, unconsciously maintaining the optimal conditions for life.
57
 ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS TIMELINE IN THE UNITED STATES
 Year Milestone
 1980
 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and 
Liability Act (Superfund) legislation is passed, requiring EPA to 
supervise and regulate abandoned toxic waste site cleanups; debt-for-
 nature swap idea is proposed by Thomas E. Lovejoy, whereby 
nations could convert debt to cash that would then be used to 
purchase parcels of tropical rainforest to be managed by local 
conservation groups; Global 2000 report to the President addresses 
world trends in population growth, natural resource use, and the 
environment by the end of the century, and calls for international 
cooperation in solving problems.
 1981
 Quebec Ministry of the Environment notifies EPA that 60 percent of 
the sulfur dioxide pollution damaging its air and waters comes from 
industrial sources in the United States; radical environmental action 
group EarthFirst! resorts to ?ecotage? to gain objectives.
 1982
 World Resources Institute is founded as an independent research and 
policy organization to help public and private groups pursue 
sustainable development.
 1983
 Interior Secretary James Watt resigns after overseeing an era of 
increased development of public lands and reduced concern for 
environmental consequences.
 1986
 Catastrophic failure of Soviet nuclear power plant in Chernobyl 
contaminates large areas of northern Europe, mobilizes antinuclear 
forces, and stimulates the United States to undertake study of its 
federal nuclear facilities; levels of dioxin 100 times the emergency 
level are found in town of Times Beach, Missouri, leading to 
evacuation and buy-out by EPA to allow decontamination.
 1987
 The Mobro, a Long Island garbage barge, travels 6,000 miles in 
search of a place to dump its trash, becoming a symbol of the 
nation?s waste problems; the Montreal Protocol is signed by 24 
countries pledging to halve chlorofluorocarbon production and use 
by 1999, and later amended to require phasing out of CFCs by 1999.
58
 ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS TIMELINE IN THE UNITED STATES
 Year Milestone
 1988
 Plastic Pollution Research and Control Act bans ocean dumping of
 plastic materials; NASA scientist James Hansen warns Congress of 
global warming problem, says that ?greenhouse effect? may increase 
drought, melt polar ice, and raise sea levels; in response to discovery 
of widespread radon gas contamination of homes in the United 
States, EPA study finds that indoor air can be 100 times as polluted 
as outdoor air; beaches along the East Coast of the United States, 
Lake Michigan, and lake Erie are closed due to contamination by 
medical waste washed ashore; Ocean Dumping Ban sets 
international legislation on dumping of wastes in oceans.
 1989
 New York Department of Environmental Conservation announces 
that 25 percent of the lakes and ponds in the Adirondacks are too 
acidic to support fish; Congress votes to halt timber sales in Alaska?s 
Tongass National Forest, the last undisturbed rain forest in the 
United States; Exxon oil tanker Valdez runs aground in Prince 
William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of oil in one of 
the world?s most fragile ecosystems.
 1990
 Congress extends ban on offshore oil drilling to cover 84 million 
acres off California, Alaska, and the East Coast; United Nations 
report forecasts that world temperatures could rise 2 degrees 
Farenheit within 35 years because of greenhouse gas emissions, 
warns that offending emissions must be reduced by 60 percent just to 
stabilize atmosphere at current level; Clean Air Act amendments 
include requirements to control the emission of sulfur dioxide and 
nitrogen oxides into the air.
 1991
 War in Kuwait emphasizes the United States? dependence on 
imported oil and underscores the environmental damages of war; the 
United States accepts an agreement on Antarctica that prohibits 
activities relating to mineral resources there, protects native species 
of flora and fauna, and limits tourism and marine pollution; despite 
an espoused ?no net loss? of wetlands, the Bush administration 
redefines the degree of standing water necessary for such 
designation, with a possible result that 10 percent of the 100 million 
acres could be opened for development.
 Source: World Resources Institute 1992 Environmental Almanac
59
 agencies have been directly involved in environmental decision-making, and they have 
churned out enormous amounts of paper in the form of press releases about the 
environment (Sachsman, 1973, p. 7). More and more, government officials realized 
that the environment was more than a fad and that they would have to add actions to 
their words. As Walter J. Hickel explained: ?When I took office in 1969 as Secretary 
of the Interior, pollution was no longer a joke; this fact was made clear by the nature 
of my confirmation hearings. The subject was aggravating millions of Americans; 
frustration and hostility were growing. The nation was desperately looking for 
leadership, and I decided that we should take the lead? (in Sachsman, 1996, p. 243).
 The environment exploded onto the front pages and the airwaves in 1969. 
Among the stories was the dramatic Santa Barbara Channel-Union Oil leak. That and 
the flood of conflicting press releases about the environment caused print and 
broadcast editors to take seriously their own local air and water pollution problems. 
The environment in 1969 found its way onto the front-page agenda of the mass media 
for the first time (Sachsman, 1973, p. 2). 
In 1969 The New York Times followed other news outlets in creating an 
environment beat. Following the move were major newspapers across the country. In 
1969, Time magazine and the Saturday Review began regular sections about the 
environment, Look magazine devoted almost an entire issue to what was perceived as 
the environmental crisis, Life magazine greatly increased its coverage of the topic, and 
National Geographic offered a 9,000-word article on environmental problems. Author 
Paul Ehrlich?s book Population Bomb was a best- seller, and the CBS Evening News 
with Walter Cronkite was presenting an irregular feature called ?Can the World be 
60
 Saved?? (Rubin and Sachs, 1971, p. 1). 
The 1970s
 Some newspapers had reporters assigned to cover the environment a couple of 
days a week at that point. But when the EPA was created in 1970 to research, monitor, 
and enforce new environmental laws and issues, it needed a full-time watchdog, just as 
the newly created Department of Homeland Security does now. In this respect, it can 
be said that the government is indirectly responsible for motivating the creation of the 
environment beat. 
As Chart 1 shows, early laws designed to protect air quality, water quality, 
prevent pollution, and preserve a certain kind of quality of life needed stronger 
enforcement, prompting creation of the EPA. With the shadowy background 
bureaucratic oversight enjoys in this and other countries, it could be deduced that a 
human factor convincing management to create the environment beat may be that  
many editors and news managers simply cannot resist a good story. Environment news 
promised juicy stories filled with intrigue, wrong-doing, and underdogs, the stuff that 
sells newspapers.
 In 1971, the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel won the first Pulitzer prize 
for environment reporting. The story focused on environmental problems associated 
with block strip mining that would have caused irreparable damage to the hill country 
of northwest North Carolina. 
Research conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970s found 
that public relations efforts significantly influenced coverage of the environment. The 
61
 sheer number of press releases was impressive ? 11 reporters received 1,347 releases 
in eight weeks ? although what looked like a flood in 1971 appeared quite normal in 
the 1980s. In 1971, something like 42 percent of press releases about the environment 
came from government agencies and officials, 23 percent from corporations and 
industry-related organizations, 17 percent from institutions, including universities, and 
17 percent from activist groups (Sachsman, 1996). 
In a 12-day content analysis of environmental coverage in 25 of the Bay Area 
media, government sources were the bases of information most often identified within 
the stories. Sources from institutions like universities, corporations, and activist 
groups also were regularly identified, while industry-related groups were rarely named 
(Sachsman, 1976). With more than 40 percent of the press releases in that study 
coming from the government, environment stories were viewed as government stories 
also (Sachsman, 1996). 
By 1974 about half a dozen reporters were assigned full-time to the 
environment beat, said Tom Horton, one of the first. In a personal interview with the 
author (Horton, 2003), he explained that he initially covered the environment three 
days a week and consumer news the other two for the Baltimore Sun before becoming 
its first full-time environment reporter that year. He remembers having few 
counterparts. At The New York Times was Gladwin Hill. At the Houston Post was 
Harold Scarlett  (Palen, 1999, p. 157). The Los Angeles Times and the Pittsburgh 
Press also had full-time reporters. Speculation is that the Pittsburgh Press had the first 
full-time environment reporter in the country because of abundant industrial pollution 
in Allegheny County, where the city is located. The EPA ranked the county number 20 
62
 in its 1990 list of regions where the most cancer-causing chemicals could be found in 
soil and water in the United States (World Resources Institute, 1991).
 Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974 to require the EPA to set 
standards and policies to protect the nation?s drinking water. In 1976 the Resource 
Conservation and Recovery Act empowered the EPA to regulate the disposal and 
treatment of municipal solid and hazardous wastes, such as petroleum leaking from 
fuel storage tanks under gas stations.
 Reporters working environment stories were busy. In 1978 reputations were 
made when a couple of general assignment reporters in the United States and Canada 
working around Niagara Falls told the world plainly about something called dioxin, a 
deadly chemical with a half-life longer than recorded civilization, and a chemical that 
since has become a household word. Those reporters said dioxin was suspected of 
causing cancer and other ailments in school children and their families in Love Canal, 
New York. It was the first time the notion of a cancer cluster was articulated to the 
public. The story broke nationally. Investigative reporters got perhaps their first taste 
of the environment beat. The new kid in town came of age when it was discovered that 
the town of Love Canal was built on a toxic waste dump.
 The 1980s
 In the end, Love Canal was evacuated and became a modern-day ghost town. 
The case prompted creation of the Comprehensive Response, Compensation, and 
Liability Act (Superfund) in 1980 to give the EPA the authority to supervise and 
regulate abandoned toxic waste site cleanups and force big polluters to pay a high tax 
63
 for contaminating the land, water, and air, money that would be used to later clean up 
the toxic mess created. In 1979, a second Pulitzer prize was granted for environment 
reporting.
 Once the concept of an environment reporter caught on, pollution stories began 
to relate science and business and health and public policy and lifestyles to each other 
in a way never before conceived. Environment reporters put them together to provide 
context for the public, to help them think about their changing communities and the 
evolving world. In so doing they put before the public a new conversation, and opened 
it for discussion.
 Stories began to break about damage to the environment from farming; 
chemicals in soil, water, the air; and environmental problems in Florida. In 1986 
environment reporters explained the impact of irradiation after a Soviet nuclear power 
plant in Chernobyl failed and consequently contaminated large sections of Northern 
Europe for many lifetimes. That same year, Times Beach, Missouri was evacuated and 
turned into another modern-day ghost town after dioxin was sprayed on dirt roads 
there to keep the dust down.
 In 1989 the Exxon oil tanker Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, 
Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of oil in one of the world?s most fragile 
ecosystems. The incident became a marker for the few environment reporters working 
in television at that point: for the first time, the world saw what an environmental 
holocaust looked like.
64
 The 1990s
 The environment beat remained subordinate to priorities of economic growth
 and performance nonetheless, and news organizations were not inclined to do anything 
to challenge that order (see Anderson, 1997; Chapman et al., 1997; Hansen, 1993b; 
Howenstine, 1987; and Linn?, 1991). Cutlip?s assertion in 1962 that public relations 
practitioners are responsible for a significant number of the stories carried by the 
media appeared to be true during the 1990s, in particular for complex stories such as 
those about the environment (Sachsman, 1996, p. 253). 
The literature provides that something resembling an ?ecological conscience? 
began penetrating newsrooms in the United States in the early 1980s (Allan, Adam, 
and Carter, 2000, p. 5). Quoting one environment reporter without disclosing the 
medium in which the person is working, Schoenfield (1980) reveals one dilemma of 
the beat at the time, one that continued to surface on the SEJ listserv in the mid-1990s:
 Do you give readers what they should know or something they will read? The 
challenge of the environmental beat is to convey a sense of immediacy and 
pertinence, usually by telling the story in human terms. ...I try to find the 
human element while writing about an increasingly complex world of 
bewildering facts and figures. Every beat needs that, but this beat demands it. 
(p. 462)
 This prioritizing of the human element at the time shaped what got reported 
and how, placing emphasis on the extraordinary at the expense of the ordinary. By 
1990, however, environment stories had become predictable, wrote Tom Meersman 
(1990), environment reporter for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and a volunteer for this 
study. ?Editors assign the same old follow-up anniversary stories about Three-Mile 
Island (with the requisite local angle, of course), but who is reporting about the costs 
65
 of decommissioning all of those local nuclear power plants within the next decade or 
two, to say nothing of the long-term disposal problems? It?s not so much what we are 
covering, but what we are not reporting, that needs attention,? he wrote.
 The New Century
 The deeper journalism got into the new century, the more a business model 
emerged allowing news outlets to get financial returns from their Internet Web sites 
created in the 1990s. In addition to sending press releases to the news media, 
corporations like General Electric (GE), which owns the most expensive Superfund 
site in the country ? on the Hudson River ? put up its own Web site that to the 
untrained eye looks like it belongs to an activist group with a special interest in how to 
clean-up the Hudson River in New York State. Indeed, GE does have a special interest 
in that cleanup project as it is responsible for most if not all of the pollution there. 
In news and feature stories tailored for the Web, environment reporters have 
been able to combine elements of television, radio, and print reporting as well as 
literary journalism into a single report. Glenn, senior producer for the business, health, 
science and technology unit at ABCnews.com, stressed that telling the story using 
links, polls, photos, and an Internet journal ? the latest component of investigative 
reporting, one that makes the literary journalism style of personal narrative a new 
component of investigative reporting ? enhances the telling thereby giving the story 
more impact. A more detailed description of personal narrative as a component of 
investigative reporting and the role it can play is provided by Sarasota Herald-Tribune
 reporter Tom Bayles in Appendix B under his name.  
66
 In The environment reporters of New England, the academic research team of 
Sachsman, Simon, and Valenti (2001) indicated a shift away from Detjen?s 1996 
findings. The research team?s study revealed that environment reporters in New 
England were satisfied with their jobs even though they admitted to having less 
freedom than ever before in deciding which aspects of their news stories should be 
emphasized. The report also brought into view a previously undocumented trend: 
editors were becoming more assertive about generating environment stories 
themselves. Responding to the finding, Wheeler said, ?The hope and the future lies 
with editors playing a bigger role in dictating environmental coverage as well as other 
coverage? (Wheeler, 2001).
 Lack of autonomy was not unique to coverage of the environment in 2000, 
however. It was the midst of an era of downsizing, when editors were required to do 
more with less. Consequently, editors had become much more assertive in dictating 
the stories that reporters would work on, how those stories would be written, and when 
those stories would run. To get more out of the existing people, Wheeler explained, 
editors pushed them harder, and programmed them more. In defense, one environment 
reporter, MariAn Brown Milchman, an investigative reporter for the Connecticut Post
 who was interviewed for the New England study, bombarded her editors with story 
ideas ?so the editors don?t have a chance to do any of their own (stories),? she said as 
a panel member during a session at the Association of Educators in Journalism and 
Mass Communication conference in Washington, D.C. in 2001. Milchman saw it as a 
way of protecting her territory. 
The Sachsman, et al. studies found that environment reporters today are 
67
 newsroom elders, or veteran journalists. In New England they have an average of 15 
years in journalism compared to 13 years in the Mountain West. The median age for 
environment reporters in both regions is 45, compared with 36 for all journalists in the 
United States in 1992 (Weaver and Wilhoit, 1996). The studies found that 46 percent 
of New England environment reporters and 28 percent of environment reporters in the 
Mountain West region, say their peers are ?too green,? indicating a struggle among 
environment reporters themselves to come to terms with what constitutes balance, 
objectivity, and advocacy. In New England, only 18 percent of environment reporters 
compared with 31 percent of their counterparts in the Mountain West region spend 
between 67 percent and 100 percent of their time covering the environment.
 Indicating that the environment beat offers reporters more than just a job in 
journalism, Valenti contends that environment reporters ?tend to be happier than other 
reporters,? according to Rogers (2002). She told Rogers, ?I am astonished at how 
satisfied these reporters are with their beat, with what they do, in spite of all the 
pressure that is out there, the low salaries, the corporate pressures, the shrinking 
autonomy. These are people who believe that their editors and readers value what they 
do. They know in their gut these are important stories that need to be told. The 
challenge is so compelling. And things change because of their writing.?
 Reporting Risk
 In the early 1970s, ?environmental communication? was about environmental 
news sources and their links to environment reporters. It was about activists and 
government officials, corporations and scientific studies, and how stories about the 
68
 environment were presented to reporters and how they were subsequently conveyed 
through the mass media to the general public. But in the 1980s a new concept known 
as risk communication became important as environment stories began to become 
linked to health concerns (Sachsman, 1996, p. 248). 
The term ?risk communication? refers to the notion of explaining risk and 
people?s perceptions of risk in a certain way, one that may perhaps reduce or avoid 
panic. Many environment reporters bristle at the term, believing it smacks of corporate 
spin. Risk communication research provides that one in 10 million can seem like a big 
number and that people tend to want absolute protection from an explosion at a 
nuclear power facility and from getting cancer from toxic waste dumps. But it also 
says that many of us are willing to take the chance of exposing ourselves to pesticides 
in order to have a perfect lawn (Sachsman, 1996, p. 249).
 Mass media research about environment stories in the early 1980s centered on 
the news media?s priority for providing spectacular and sensational reports about 
natural disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, drought or floods. Such stories 
consistently were preferred by news organizations over everyday hazards such as 
pesticide-dependent farming, exposure to asbestos dust, lead in gasoline, or sunbathing 
(Allan, Adam, and Carter, 2000, p. 6). Greenberg et al. (1989a) concluded that in 
network television in the United States,
 the disproportionate coverage ? from the scientific perspective on risk ? of 
chemical incidents, earthquakes, and aeroplane accidents probably reinforced 
the public?s well-documented tendency to overestimate sudden and violent 
risks and underestimate chronic ones. (p. 276)
 Those deficiencies in environment news at the time can be attributed to the journalistic 
69
 search for the novel and the unusual, for dramatically compelling ?news pegs? 
confinable within episodic narratives (Allan, Adam, and Carter, 2000, p. 7). As such, 
the approach to reporting accidental leaks or spills does not offer a thorough 
accounting of the risk to the public over time. Consequently, news stories focusing 
solely on environmental crises showed reporters on the beat that even though they 
were getting news out to their audiences about a specific event-oriented environmental 
catastrophe, there was much more the public needed to know to understand what it 
meant to them. Wilkins and Patterson (1990) documented how event-driven 
environment reporting undermines and destroys meaning for news audiences:
 While risk analysis indicates that not all risks are alike, news media coverage 
of a variety of hazards and disasters tends to follow predictable patterns. 
Neither the unpredictability nor the high degree of complexity of hazards fits 
neatly into a newsgathering process that places a high priority on meeting 
deadlines. Therefore, news about hazards often is molded to the medium. A 
day-long debate about the location of a toxic dump is reduced to 30-second 
?sound bites? from each side and footage about angry demonstrators staging 
?pseudo-events? for the benefit of the cameras. In the end, the audience is 
entertained by the hazard without being informed about it. (p. 13)
 In the 1980s, the need for specialized environment reporters remained clear, 
but it no longer appeared that the problems in environmental risk coverage would be 
solved if the number of specialists was doubled or even quadrupled. The environment 
had become a story for virtually every local beat and general assignment reporter, and 
nothing short of training all of them to be environmental specialists would do the trick. 
Further, many editors also needed environmental training, as evidenced by 
McGeachy?s 1989 study of three general audience magazines. Her study found that 
only 0.9 percent of their pages addressed the environment in 1986 (Sachsman, 1996, p. 
252).
70
 After SEJ
 In 1989, the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) was formed to 
improve the quality of environment reporting. As Palen (1999) writes, its development 
was 
situated at the intersection of two areas of scholarly research: (1) the rise of 
environmental journalism as a specialty field, and (2) the development of the 
ideal of objectivity in American journalism. ...Because environmentalism itself 
was considered by some to be a concern of ?activists,? coverage of it raised 
questions about the professionalism of reporters. Indeed, as Lewenstein (1990, 
p. 3) has argued in an unpublished paper, it is in the specialty areas like sports 
and science journalism that independence of sources, conflict of interest, 
commitment to journalistic ideals, and other similar issues come under the 
most pressure. (p. 157)
 Following the creation of SEJ, an increase can be seen in the number of 
Pulitzer Prizes awarded for reporting about the environment, as evidenced in Chart 2. 
Chart 3 shows a list of Pulitzer Prize finalists for reporting about the environment.
 Attraction to Environment Reporting: Advocacy?
 As explained in Chapter 1, independence from vested interests was not always 
considered a journalistic virtue in the United States. The 1830s saw a rise in 
newspapers supported by advertising as a means to mass circulate and become 
independent from political party sponsorship. That stirring reinforced the ideal of 
objectivity, which was supported by new developments in technology, including the 
introduction of the telegraph and the rise of press associations. A rise in confidence in 
science spread throughout the culture in the United States, causing social change. The 
ideal sparked a movement toward professionalism of journalists, as discussed.
71
 By the 1920s, the press in the United States had institutionalized the ideal of 
the journalist as an independent reporter of facts kept separate from values and 
uninfluenced by vested interests and by the reporter?s own beliefs and attitudes (Palen, 
1999, p. 158).
 But beginning in the 1960s, the ideal of objectivity was increasingly 
questioned by scholars and journalists. Within SEJ, the debate about objectivity is 
perennial. Do most environmental journalists get into the field because they are 
environmentalists? If so, to what extent does that affect their work? Should they be 
advocates because of the seriousness of the threat of environmental degradation? Are 
they advocates, regardless of personal belief, simply by virtue of placing 
environmental issues on the agenda? These questions were debated repeatedly in 
SEJournal (SEJ?s newsletter), at conventions, and online. However, after an early false 
start toward evaluating the objectivity of members? reporting, SEJ backed away from 
trying to use membership policy to police advocacy arising from journalists? personal 
beliefs. As far as SEJ was concerned, its members were free to engage in ? or not 
engage in ? advocacy journalism. What the members could not do was accept payment 
for advocacy from any party except their media employers (Palen, 1999, p. 158). SEJ 
defined objectivity by its ideal: separation of work from personal beliefs, and 
independence from vested interests. 
All along, the Pulitzer prizes kept coming. For public service reporting. For 
national reporting. For editorial writing. For investigative reporting. For explanatory 
journalism.
72
 Perceptions of Advocacy on the Environment Beat
 The New Webster?s Dictionary of the English Language defines an advocate as 
one who pleads the cause of another, one who defends, vindicates or espouses a cause 
by argument, an intercessor. Frome (1998) defines advocacy journalism as ?open, 
honest journalism, without closed doors. It serves the interest of God-given nature and 
humanity rather than those who exploit and profit from them. It centers on the 
integrity and creativity of the writer? (p. xii).
 As the beat evolved, conservation and environment reporters were grouped 
together. However, they were sometimes treated differently. My personal story is a 
case in point.  
In 1998 I joined Pioneer Press, a chain of weekly newspapers in Chicago?s 
Northern suburbs with a circulation of about 250,000. Although I had been reporting 
about the environment for almost 10 years at that point, I was hired as the education 
reporter for 16 school districts in Lake County, Illinois. Once there I sought 
environment stories involving pollution in my spare time, only to learn the bureau 
chief didn?t think I was qualified to cover the environment because I did not have a
 background in science. The chain already had one environment reporter, who wrote 
exclusively about conservation.  
That reporter and I worked in the same bureau. She had recently served as 
president of the Chicago chapter of the Audubon Society while covering conservation 
issues for the newspaper chain. Her knowledge of birds is admirable, and her grasp of 
habitat needs for birds and other wild creatures more than competent. She has 
authored a book about birds, and is a veteran conservation reporter. Rarely, if ever, 
73
 Chart 2: 
PULITZER PRIZE WINNERS FOR REPORTING ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT
 Year Category Description
 1971 Public Service
 Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal and Sentinel.
 For coverage of environmental problems, as 
exemplified by a successful campaign to block 
strip mining operation that would have caused 
irreparable damage to the hill country of 
Northwest North Carolina.
 1979 National Reporting
 James Risser of Des Moines Register. For a 
series on farming damage to the environment.
 1992 Public Service
 Explanatory 
Journalism
 Sacramento (Calif.) Bee. For ?The Sierra in 
Peril,? reporting by Tom Knudson that 
examined environmental threats and damage 
to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in 
California.
 James O?Byrne, Mark Schleifstein, and G. 
Andrew Boyd of The Times-Picayune, New 
Orleans, La. For ?Louisiana in Peril,? articles 
about the toxic waste and pollution that 
threaten the future of the state.
 1996 Public Service
 Editorial Writing
 News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C. For the work 
of Melanie Sill, Pat Stith, and Joby Warrick 
on the environmental and health risks of waste 
disposal systems used in North Carolina?s 
growing hog industry. 
Robert B. Semple, Jr. of The New York 
Times. For his editorials on environmental 
issues.
 1998 Investigative 
Reporting Gary Cohn and Will Englund of The 
Baltimore Sun. For their compelling series on 
the international shipbreaking industry, that 
revealed the dangers posed to workers and the 
environment when discarded ships are 
dismantled.
 Source: The Pulitzer Prizes (online)
74
 Chart 3: 
PULITZER PRIZE FINALISTS FOR REPORTING ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT
 Year Category Description
 1980 National Reporting
 Staff of the Los Angeles Times for its series 
on chemicals in the environment, ?Poisoning 
of America.?
 1985 Editorial Writing
 Jane Healy of The Orlando Sentinel for her 
editorials on Florida?s environmental 
problems.
 1994 Explanatory 
Journalism
 Feature 
Photography
 Staff of Newsday, Long Island, NY for its 
exhaustive investigation of breast cancer in 
the community, which included a probe of the 
environmental factors that may contribute to 
its spread.
 Stan Grossfeld of Boston Globe for ?The 
Exhausted Earth,? a year-long series depicting 
the social, medical, and environmental crises 
caused by the depletion of natural resources. 
1998 Beat Reporting
 Keith Bradshaw of The New York Times for 
his reporting that disclosed safety and 
environmental problems posed by sport utility 
vehicles and other light trucks.
 1999 National Reporting
 Staff of The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, 
LA for a revealing series on the destruction of 
housing and the threat to the environment 
posed by the Formosan termite.
 2000 Breaking News 
Reporting Staff of The Oregonian. For its comprehensive 
coverage of an environmental disaster created 
when a cargo ship carrying heavy fuels ran 
aground and broke apart, and how official 
agencies failed to contain the damage.
 2004 Investigative 
Reporting David Ottaway and Joe Stephens of The 
Washington Post for their detailed stories 
revealing dubious practices by The Nature 
Conservancy that produced sweeping reforms. 
Source: The Pulitzer Prizes (online) 
75
 does she report about pollution matters, except as they impact conservation efforts. 
Although news management at all levels throughout the chain was aware of her 
association with an organization on which she reports, that journalist was never asked 
to sever her relations with the group nor was she reassigned to a different beat. Her 
association and status with the Audubon Society was viewed by management as an 
asset rather than a conflict of interest. This case makes me wonder whether a different 
standard of tolerance for advocacy on the environment beat exists when the subject is 
conservation. While a worthwhile question, I have left it for future research.
 Journalists and activists and former journalists, laypeople and bloggers all 
voice their opinions about advocacy in journalism, and what counts as advocacy. 
Among environment reporters, it has been a pet topic.  The first airing in print of the 
debate about advocacy and environment news appeared in the Gannett Center Journal
 in the summer of 1990. SEJ was barely a year old. Its first issue of SEJournal came out 
that December with two articles on the subject, one by Meersman and the other 
promoting LaMay and Dennis (1991), which largely reprinted the Gannett Center 
Journal articles.
 Meersman lauded contributions the alternative press and advocacy journalists 
made to discussions about environmental issues. They provide a major service 
because, he said, quoting Rolling Stone contributing editor Mark Hertsgaard, ?they 
ventilate issues in ways that force the major press to consider them,? (Meersman, 
1990), much like Ryan?s view of the value of advocacy journalism to society, and its 
place in mass media. The debate about advocacy in journalism at that point centered 
on one point, Meersman said: ?When should a reporter simply present opposing 
76
 arguments, and when should he or she feel confident enough to take the story a step 
further to suggest which of the claims seems to have more merit?? 
At the time, the debate about advocacy journalism focused on how stories were 
presented. Meersman argued that some stories warrant conclusions while others do 
not. A more important element, he said, is what stories are chosen. In taking a stand, 
the Minneapolis Star-Tribune environment reporter said,
 I don?t believe that polluters should have the right to pollute until proven 
guilty, but I don?t think they should be tried in the media either ? challenged, 
yes, but not convicted. I don?t believe that pollution control officials or health 
experts or natural resource managers always know enough or have the time to 
protect the environment adequately, but I don?t think the alternatives are to fire 
them all or to shut down the industries and businesses they are charged with 
regulating. (p. 6)
 Hamilton (1991) argues in favor of letting reporters advocate for the 
environment because, ?environmental issues are too important for journalists not to 
live up to their pesky skepticism. They have to ask ?so what? questions, even when 
doing so seems rank heresy,? said the senior World Bank public affairs official and 
former correspondent.
 Meadows writes that as a columnist she does her best to remember that the 
purpose of her writing is to ?search for truth and to empower others to do the same. It 
is not to judge, accuse or rob anyone of dignity or self-respect? (Meadows, 1991). 
Coordinator for International Network of Resource Information in 1991 but speaking 
as a columnist, Meadows said,
 I go out of my way to present opposing views, I don?t confuse willful 
ignorance with real uncertainty, and I don?t equate the viewpoint of a 
perpetrator with that of a victim. The voice of the Plum Creek Timber 
Company just is not credible when it comes to old-growth forest harvesting 
rates. The nuclear power industry has earned no points for accuracy and many 
77
 for deliberate deception. The pesticide industry is not an unbiased observer on 
pesticide safety. The people who defend the spotted owls, the safety of their 
neighborhoods and the health of their children are being selfish, too, in a way, 
but theirs is a broader selfishness, speaking for much larger community 
interests than profit-making. They deserve more than equal media respect, 
space and time. (p. 78)
 Gottlieb (1991) criticized environment reporters for turning to environmental 
groups for the ?environmental? point of view, which he said ignores the growing, 
more populist undercurrent of the environmental movement. In so doing, reporters 
covering the environment do not distinguish differences among the professional 
?environmental? groups, he wrote. Consequently, they do not see how the ?dynamism 
of the less visible movements has affected these groups? (p. 53).
 Dennis (1991) writes that the debate among environment reporters about 
advocacy and objectivity fuels news executives? suspicions, ?who are always on the 
lookout for self-serving special interests and for reporters who have lost their 
objectivity.? He writes,
 As one who believes that objectivity is more an ideological icon in our media 
than an operational reality, I still recognize how deep the passions on this topic 
go. In earlier decades, reporters argued that human rights were so important 
that they could not and should not be impartial about the civil rights struggle. 
More recently, some newspapers and television stations have fashioned 
themselves as warriors in the war on drugs and have not only covered the 
story, but helped develop information campaigns to promote drug-free schools, 
for example.
 However worthy the issue or cause, the goal of marshalling and 
shaping public opinion causes nervousness among journalists and media 
owners who think such advocacy could compromise the essential 
independence and integrity of the press. ...The environment is such a 
compelling concern that it is hard to imagine that there isn?t...nearly universal 
support for it. (p. 64)
 Once again, Teya Ryan brought this simple question to the debate: ?Let me 
first submit to you that, with respect to the environment, advocacy journalism is a 
78
 misnomer. Think a minute: Who do you know who is against the environment?? 
(Ryan, 1991). William Coughlin (1991), editor of the Washington Daily News in 
North Carolina, opposed Ryan. ?Leave the crusading to the Knights Templar. You?d 
be better off if you keep in mind that your job is reporting, not crusading. As 
Newsweek said recently in regard to the savings and loan crisis, ?In the end, voters 
have their own responsibility. The press can lead the horse to water. The horse has to 
decide whether to drink.?? (Coughlin, 1991)
 Technology and environmental issue writer for the Wall Street Journal, Amal 
Jumar Naj, in 1991 said, ?Another problem with advocacy journalism is that it 
assumes the media?s ability to judge scientific evidence. We as journalists simply 
aren?t in a position to know with certainty whether the scientific evidence that forms 
the basis of many environmental concerns is valid. The scientists themselves don?t 
know.?
 Greenies or SPRIDJ?
 In January of 1998, I was encouraging my editor at The Brownfields Report, 
Steve Kidney, to become a member of SEJ. But he did not want to join. Looking at the 
Spring 1997 issue of SEJournal, he said, ?These articles look like they were written by 
a bunch of greenies. I don?t want to be associated with environmental advocates.? He 
specifically cited a section in SEJournal titled ?The Green Beat.? I took his remark to 
the SEJ listserv that spring and learned that several members were annoyed by co-
 workers who labeled them as environmentalists no matter what they wrote, just 
because they cover the beat. 
79
 One daily newspaper reporter covering the environment for the Kansas City 
Star, Mike Mansur, said at the time he carried two business cards because he feared 
industry representatives would think he sided with environmental groups if he was 
identified as an environmental reporter. So one card read, ?staff writer? while another 
read, ?environmental reporter.? Mansur, in a personal interview in September 2003, 
said things have changed since then, that he hasn?t carried two cards for a while, 
seeming to indicate a maturing of acceptance for reporting about the environment. 
Another member, Randy Edwards, who in 1998 was covering the environment 
for the Columbus Dispatch, reported that when he took over the environment beat 
many of his colleagues greeted him with comments like, ?Saving the environment 
today?? Edwards wrote on the listserv, ?Apparently it?s acceptable to advocate on 
behalf of good government or against corruption, but if the stories with impact lead to 
tougher environmental laws or protection of a valuable natural resource, suddenly the 
reporter is a ?flannel-clad tree-hugger,? (an editor?s phrase, not mine),? (Edwards, 
1998). Perhaps all the teasing is merely a rite of passage, another reporter posted. 
Since environment reporters are ?the new kids on the block, they?re just not allowed 
certain givens afforded established beats,? wrote David Newport, editor and publisher 
of Environment 21 magazine and EnviroWorld Daily News Service at the time.
 By December of 1998, a decision was made to change the SEJournal section 
name to ?The Beat? from ?The Green Beat.? An announcement was made on the 
listserv, and the discussion of advocacy came up again. Several saw the change as 
unwarranted while others, like veteran multimedia reporter David Helvarg, who 
volunteered to participate in this study, saw it as small but mighty. He commented on 
80
 the listserv,
 ...[S]ince I also know several editors and executive producers who confuse the 
term environment with environmentalist (also analysis with advocacy, and 
?thanks for doing a good job? with ?I?m going to have to pay him more?), I 
suggest we ease their troubled souls and make ourselves more accessible by 
changing the name Society of Environmental Journalists to Society of 
Pollution, Resources and Industrial Development Journalists. Admittedly 
SPRIDJ (pronounced ?Spridge?) may not be as eloquent sounding as SEJ 
(pronounced S-E-J), but if it means even one more editor instead of saying, 
?that sounds biased, I don?t want to run it,? says, ?that seems fair and balanced, 
but I don?t have room to run it, ?cause it?s Monica?s birthday,? it will have been 
worth it. (Helvarg, 1998)
 Going Native
 Among the environment reporters moved off the beat for ?going native,? that 
is, seeming to show a leaning toward one position over another, are three investigative 
reporters with admirable reputations who were referred to at the beginning of this 
chapter. All three were reassigned under circumstances seeming to indicate that 
newsroom management feared costly lawsuits and cuts in advertising revenues in 
retaliation for the stories published. The charge used to justify the reassignments was 
alleged advocacy on the part of the reporters.
 Detailed in Green Ink, author Frome (1998) tells of Phillip Shabecoff, Kathie 
Durbin, and Richard Manning, among others. Shabecoff?s story is legend among early 
members of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). What gives it impact is 
that his is not an isolated case. I have heard many others like it, and read similar 
accounts during the early years of the SEJ listserv, an online forum where members 
discuss environment reporting, tap each other for sources, and alert each other to 
news, reports, and programs about the environment to help them do a better job.
81
 Shabecoff told Frome he was taken off the beat not because he was accused 
of advocacy, but because his coverage was considered biased in favor of the 
environment. He argued that what environment reporters do is cover the debate about 
how to protect the environment. The overriding concern is to get below the surface. 
After working 32 years as a reporter for The New York Times, the last 14 
covering environment stories from Washington, D.C. where he turned up major 
stories, Shabecoff got a surprise. As a foreign correspondent in Southeast Asia for the 
paper, Shabecoff was accustomed to having to determine what was true and what was 
false based on his research and interviews. One day in the nation?s capitol his editors 
told him he was ?ahead of the curve,? stale, biased, too close to environmentalists.
 They transferred him to covering the Internal Revenue Service. He quit (Frome, 1998, 
p. 31), and established Greenwire, a newsletter acting as a kind of clipping service of 
environment stories published and aired throughout the country by news outlets. It 
quickly became a popular tipsheet among reporters covering the environment. 
Eventually Shabecoff began authoring books about the environment. Free to be an 
activist, he explicitly charts a new course for the environmental movement in his 
current book. 
In 1989, Durbin was covering drugs, gangs, and minority affairs for The
 Oregonian in Portland. When asked to team on an investigative report about the 
environment with Paul Koberstein, she welcomed the opportunity. According to 
Frome (1996), the two studied forests along the West Coast and interviewed many 
people for a six-part series to run in 1990. After it did, an angry 80-page letter arrived 
from a group of timber corporations specifically complaining about Durbin. She 
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 explained to Frome,
 I was attacked by the Oregon Lands Coalition, a wise-use group, which urged 
its members to call the Oregonian and tell the editors they were sick of Kathie 
Durbin?s lies. My editors were nervous, but our report was accurate and 
overdue. ...In the process of this trial by fire I learned to be discreet about my 
own passionate feelings for the forest. Of course I belong to no environmental 
groups. I don?t go to environmentalists? parties. My job is too important to me 
to take any chances. And I take seriously my responsibility to chronicle the 
struggle from all sides. I?m a professional journalist. I cannot be a causist. (pp. 
30-31)
 Ultimately, Durbin was relieved of covering stories about the environment and 
assigned elsewhere.
 Frome also tells the story of Richard Manning, an investigative reporter for 
Missoula, Montana?s daily newspaper The Missoulian, who researched and wrote a 
compelling series on the exploitation of Montana forests. The timber industry 
complained. Manning heard about it from his editor, who called to reassign him. As 
quoted in Frome (1998), Manning was told he had lost his objectivity. ?They alleged I 
was too inclined to write what the environmentalists had to say and not inclined to 
write what the loggers had to say. They were wrong, but they and the system that has 
molded them are managed within the corporate system, groomed, pruned, and thinned 
just like corporate trees? (p. 30).
 All three of the reporters ? Manning, Durbin, and Shabecoff ? wrote 
investigative stories about the environment that followed the strict rules of a 
journalism of verification. Still they were accused of advocacy. Therefore, the 
literature makes it seem impossible to produce an investigative story on the 
environment that could not be accused of advocacy on some level.
 At a plenary session in New Orleans at the SEJ conference in September 2003, 
83
 CNN executive producer Peter Dykstra, a pioneer in environment reporting on 
television, described environment reporting and the journalist?s responsibility to it in 
very serious terms. He said, ?It can be done right, it can be done wrong. It can be done 
theatrically. But we?re in the business, when it comes to reporting, of saving lives. It?s 
not an issue of advocacy. It?s an issue of humanity.?
 One never hears charges that police reporters are advocates because it is 
universally accepted that crime is bad. Police are accepted as part of the ruling 
structure because they protect society against chaos, which generally is perceived as 
good. Similarly, it is true that school board reporting is allowed to reflect the implicit 
assumption that education is good. Business writers presume that business and jobs 
serve the public interest, and down the line.
 Above all others, environment reporters have been perceived as advocates ? by 
their editors, other reporters, and some of their sources. But not often by their 
audiences. Really, most environment reporters are just trying to get answers to 
questions like, ?How clean is clean??
 In early environment reports, it was a matter of showing how murky or clear 
the water was, for instance. But environment reports today are rarely that simple. 
Water, researchers now know, may be opaque or clear due to chemical contamination. 
In my experience, while rafting down a river in Virginia I saw part of the river 
suddenly become so clear I could see to the bottom. It was under a bridge where a pipe 
was channeling run-off from somewhere into the river. When I came home I asked 
some of my sources at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, National Wildlife Federation, 
and elsewhere why the water was so clear at that point, why there were not any weeds 
84
 or algae, and why the fish avoided that spot. I was told the contaminants in the run-off 
prevented plants and the usual aquatic organisms from growing there, that the 
clearness of the water made it too hot for fish and frogs and such to go in there, and 
that they also avoided it because there was no place for them to hide from predators in 
the clear water. There may be other reasons as well.  
In 1966 when reporters Casey Bukro and Bill Jones of the Chicago Tribune set 
out to show that lakes across the country once alive with fish and other creatures 
?were becoming cesspools of household sewage and factory slop,? (Bowman, 1996) 
they didn?t need a chemist to verify the contamination. After deciding words alone 
would not suffice to show how bad the water was, Jones scooped up a handful of the 
hideous oily scum in the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal floating at the entry to Lake 
Michigan, and Bukro snapped a picture (p. 5). What people saw in the newspaper was 
black slime and grime coating Jones? flesh. That became their test for clean water, 
Bukro told Bowman. The two were doing what they were paid to do: be skeptical. 
They were told something and questioned it. They found a problem, and revealed it to 
their readers. Showing the problem is a reporter?s duty. That is not advocacy.
 Investigative Reporting and Environment News
 Editors Greenwald and Bernt (2000) address environment reporting only 
generally and very briefly in The Big Chill: Reporting in the Current Media 
Environment, devoting only one paragraph to investigative reporting about the 
environment. Landers (1996) writes that in every investigative news story about the 
environment there are underlying issues to understand, such as risk assessment, 
85
 statistics and scientific research. Landers notes the need to navigate the EPA 
electronically, by phone and in person, and also highlights ?two fruitful but often 
overlooked avenues of investigation in environmental journalism: following the 
money and following the science? (p. 2). 
In journalistic parlance, ?follow the money? refers to tracking a paper trail that 
may lead to money collected by someone with an ulterior motive. For instance, ?soft 
money? in political campaigns, which has been suspected of influencing decision-
 making toward a special interest. ?Follow the science? is a turn of that phrase and 
refers to the tracking of changes in scientific thought about a given concern, such as 
air pollution or genetic modification of seeds and crops, and reporting those changes 
in context. 
For instance, a story about pollution?s toll on disease immunity, gathered and 
written by Marla Cone of the Los Angeles Times, tracks an unfolding tale of 
ecological problems affecting everything from beluga whales to Arizonians. It is an 
example of what ?following the science? yields for an investigative reporter on a story 
concerning the environment. Similarly, Jim Lynch and Karen Dorn Steele of The 
Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, gathered and wrote an investigative 
story in the ?follow the money? category. The series, entitled, ?Wasteland,? follows 
budgets and audits to reveal what is happening to taxpayer dollars in the nation?s 
largest nuclear waste cleanup as of 1996: the lethal brew of nuclear wastes dumped at 
the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (See Appendix A).
86
 Of People, Politics, Power and Events
 Is air quality improving? Is air pollution still a major problem? Is America?s 
drinking water safe? Is it unsafe? Is ocean pollution manageable? Is ocean pollution a
 serious problem? How serious are air and water pollution?
 Stories on the environment beat are broad and far-reaching. That is why 
Houston, Brussese, and Weinberg (2002) suggest singling out one aspect of a larger 
issue when searching for something to investigate when it comes to the environment. 
For instance when considering air pollution, think in terms of acid rain, depletion of 
the ozone layer, endangered airborne species, etc., they recommend. 
While good suggestions, I expected more from the backbone of Investigative 
Reporters and Editors (IRE), the profession?s premiere organization for improving this 
genre in journalism. The effort from Houston, Brussese, and Weinberg, all leaders of 
IRE who through their efforts have brought up some of the most revered investigative 
reporters and editors in the business today, had little to add six years after Landers 
published the only handbook for investigative environmental reporting in existence 
today, the copyright of which is held by IRE. They offered that ?investigating 
environmental issues requires an understanding of technical and scientific matters that 
most journalists lack? (p. 488). At this point in environment reporting, they are stating 
something that was true in the past, but just a sliver of what is true in the present.
 As noted in Kriz (2002), several transformations have occurred in the 30 years 
since the environment beat surfaced. She writes, ?Sure, editors are still interested in 
media investigations proving that corporations are dumping toxic chemicals into 
rivers. But thanks to state and national laws, many of the most acute environmental 
87
 problems...have been alleviated? (p. 47). As progress was made against the highest 
profile environmental problems, however, reporters on the beat found themselves in 
mire well beyond scientific matters. Kriz explains,
 [S]cientists have unmasked more complex environmental headaches that are 
far harder to solve ? and to write about. Some of today?s worst water quality 
problems, for example, are caused by polluted runoff from farms and cities and 
require extensive education and financial assistance to solve.
 To understand such complexities, environment beat reporters need to 
become experts on ? or at least willing to be students of ? science, government 
policy, economics, business practices, health impacts, and civil rights issues. 
Writers must analyze the tradeoffs between a community?s economic and 
environmental needs, examine regional planning issues that impact suburban 
sprawl, and delve into the racial and cultural problems that result when 
polluting facilities locate in low-income neighborhoods. 
Environment reporters also end up being arbiters of competing science, 
a difficult dilemma at a time when the Bush administration?s scientific 
statements and policies are at odds with most of the other industrialized nations 
on such things as global warming and genetically modified foods. Since Sept. 
11, I?ve also had to become an instant expert on the national security problems 
facing nuclear power plants and chemical manufacturing facilities. (pp. 47-48)
 In considering Kriz?s perspective, she seems to say that training investigative reporters 
in how to work an environment story does not seem to involve process as much as it 
does scope, a point not mentioned in the literature. However, the research contained 
herein demonstrates the need to focus on process as well. The IRE team does offer a 
review of the kinds of sources all environment reporters use at one time or another, 
which may also be viewed as a list of places to begin digging for documents when 
attempting an investigative report involving the environment. 
Investigative stories involving the environment tend to involve several types of 
investigative reporting all mixed together. There is much need for investigative stories 
showing how pieces of the puzzle fit together ? an investigative effort dedicated to 
making sense out of something as there is for those exposing wrongdoing. Muckrakers 
88
 of the past, such as George Seldes and I.F. Stone, did not produce analysis or stories 
that merely provided context. Their work contained strong viewpoint. In their day, 
analysis was something found on the editorial and opinion pages. Also, global context 
was not a necessary component of their reports because people generally did not have 
a concept of global environmental impacts. Today, however, a story about global 
warming may involve fish farming and habitat preservation as much as politics and 
science.  
To date, no one has documented or seemingly observed environment 
reporting?s contribution to investigative reporting. It seems, however, that a new form 
of investigative reporting may be seen emerging from the environment beat. I call that 
integrated investigative reporting. Environment stories can be covered as events when 
something occurs, or as enterprise stories when they surface through other means. But 
they become investigative stories when the report goes beyond opposing viewpoints to 
reveal not just a secret or wrongdoing, but also the complexity of the web of people, 
politics, power and events in which they are entrenched. 
Based on my reading of the literature and interviews sought to show the 
current debates heard in barrooms, my synthesis of the literature reveals that 
investigative reporting on the environment beat could apply any one of six well-
 defined types of investigative reporting: (1) original investigative reporting, (2) 
interpretative investigative reporting, (3) reporting on investigations, (4) exposure 
journalism, (5) immersion journalism, and (6) journalism of assertion. Hence, 
integrated investigative reporting.
89
 A New Arrow in the Quiver
 A combination style of investigative reporting can be seen in reporter Mark 
Schapiro?s story about genetically modified (GM) crops, appearing in The Nation on 
Oct. 28, 2002, under the headline, ?Sowing Disaster?? Schapiro, deputy director for 
the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), in a personal interview with this author 
in mid-2003 explained that the traditional model of investigative reporting involves 
piecing together one?s own reporting and interviews and a paper trail indicating 
evidence leading back to ?whoever it was who made the decision to make the bad 
thing happen? (Schapiro, 2003). But investigative reports involving the environment 
tend to get behind the complexities of a particular situation, which makes the story 
more and more interesting and intriguing, he said. ?It?s a different form of 
investigative reporting,? he said.
 Schapiro said, 
Although you may not be identifying one particular bad person, there can be 
great value in an illuminating, gripping story about the complexities of the way 
we live. As a world of things gets more intertwined, the science intertwined 
with the politics, and the politics are intertwined with enormous environmental 
questions of our time, and the nations of the world are more intertwined with 
each other, I?m beginning to think this type of investigative reporting is of 
equal or greater value ? to illuminate the multiple levels of complexity that 
shape a particular problem or situation. (Schapiro, 2003)
 To provide some background on the story, the teaser on the CIR?s Web site 
reads, ?Illegal genetically altered corn has been found growing in Mexico, secret plots 
of bio-engineered corn are being tended in Iowa, and starving people are being refused 
genetically modified corn in Africa. Read the latest on this controversial new 
90
 technology, why it is showing up in places it shouldn?t, and the dangers and hope it 
poses.?
 As Schapiro demonstrates, times have changed and news has changed. 
Investigative reporting, then, seems to be responding to the evolution by evolving 
itself. Investigative reporters working on stories involving the environment have been 
the first to see the need for a new arrow in the quiver. 
A Technical Look
 Schapiro?s story focuses on a particular industry and shows the multiple levels 
of pressure and interests and motivations involved in the development of agricultural 
biotechnology. It is a different form of investigative reporting, he explained, because 
the intention is not necessarily to expose a ?bad guy,? but to reveal what propels, in 
this case, a technology to the public.
 In this case, it was valuable to evoke the issue from the points of view of those 
deeply involved in the developing technology, which Schapiro said helped explain 
why the United States got engulfed in the technology without really knowing what it 
was. He discovered the companies who were the primary forces pushing technology, 
and their reasons for doing so. He learned from American farmers that they were 
balancing on a high wire of uncertainty and great financial instability and insecurity, 
looking for anything to diminish the daily risks of their livelihood: farming. They were 
put in that position, he found, by forces over which the farmers had very little control.
 Schapiro went to the scientists next. Many, he said, are doing research on 
genetically engineered food out of purely scientific fascination, curiosity, and the 
91
 dream of perhaps helping to solve serious questions of environmental degradation, 
particularly in developing worlds. ?Then you have other scientists whose credibility is 
compromised by the support given to universities,? Schapiro explained. ?A huge 
amount of support is given to universities by the biotech industry which is motivated, 
perhaps, by a mixture of scientific curiosity and to be on the safe side of financial 
possibility.?
 In this respect, investigative reporters delving into an environmental issue use 
sensibility as their guide and historical context to help them think about what might be 
the truth, and try to explain what it all seems to mean. Genetic modification, Schapiro 
pointed out, ?is an issue loaded with strongly felt opinions on every side. It?s not hard 
to get a great quote from a critic about the implications of it, and it?s not that hard to 
get a quote from a proponent and write about hysterical fomentations.? But to get 
underneath the surface, Schapiro decided to stay focused on the people who work with 
the technology, who created it, and those who are impacted by it.
 Schapiro?s story about GM seeds does not include a lot of ?he said, she said? 
reporting, although it does include some: a quote from a consumer union 
representative, and a smattering of quotes from people deep in the agriculture world.
 Instead, the story displays rich details based on interviews with people working with 
genetically modified crops. That includes a farmer in Iowa who plants GM seed, and 
how it actually has improved his life. Schapiro also tries to denigrate the use of GM 
seed by showing that American and Mexican farmers, although they are part of 
different agricultural systems, are really on the same tension line when it comes to 
dealing with this technology.
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 Maud Beelman, director of the Washington, D.C.-based International 
Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a division of the Center for Public 
Integrity, a not-for-profit organization protecting the public interest through 
?watchdog journalism,? offered another example of investigative reporting not 
classified by the literature but seeming to incorporate several categories identified in 
books and articles about investigative reporting. She discussed ICIJ?s investigative 
reporting series, The Water Barons: How a Few Powerful Companies are Privatizing 
Your Water (2003), as an analysis of water privatization, one involving database 
searches, searching through Securities and Exchange Commission filings, corporate 
reports and more for a 12-year period to see if there was any statistical basis for 
claiming that large companies around the world were buying up municipal drinking 
water systems and running them for profit. The allegation was that this was an 
increasing trend, that it was happening more and more. 
Although not part of the six types of investigative reporting outlined in this 
chapter, analysis is a kind of investigative reporting, as Helvarg suggested earlier. 
Analysis is found in reports about the environment where investigative approaches are 
applied. Originally, the term ?analysis? had a different meaning in journalism than it 
does today. Beelman explained, ?In the journalistic sense, in the world of journalism 
that I grew up in, an analysis is one shade lighter than an editorial. There were reports, 
there were analyses, and there were editorials.
 ?This [Water Barons report] is not an analysis in that sense. We built a grid 
and a database. Then we had people do in-country reports to give a snapshot of views 
of what the situation was on the ground. This is an analysis in the sense that we 
93
 analyzed information we gathered? (Beelman, 2003). That is the sort of foundation for 
assertion journalism that gives it a credible name.
 In that vein, Nancy Gaarder of the Omaha World-Herald the week of Oct. 7, 
2003, reported that a community near the city had such high levels of DDT (see 
Glossary) in the form of 1,1-dichloroethene and tetrachloroethylene in its well water 
that people were being told not to shower or wash dishes with the water. An 
interpretative report based on one?s own original research, scrutinizing prior 
investigations into water quality in the community, exposing what led to the situation, 
following the money and the science, and perhaps even asserting why the story didn?t 
get recognized until now, seems in order. This is another example of integrated 
investigative reporting. In Appendix B under the entry for Tom Meersman, an 
example of how interpretation and assertion can bring a story to life and still be 
objective journalism can be found.  
Investigative reports about the environment seem make connections for people 
that go deeper than the consuming of information. This quality in journalism, wrote 
Melanie Sill, assistant managing editor for special projects at The News & Observer of 
Raleigh in 1996, becomes even more valuable when it sorts through comments by 
experts, who often have personal interests on the line, or long-standing beliefs that 
color their appraisals. She argues that journalists may not be purely objective, but they 
can certainly be detached while making connections and sense out of the details. 
?Rather than simply reporting accusations, claims, and study results, we can take a 
more active role in helping readers and viewers understand environmental issues as 
part of broader social and governmental trends? (Sill, 1996, p. 20). In this respect, 
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 investigative reporting about the environment follows traditional journalistic practice 
but demands more in the way of process, as explained in the following chapters. It also 
requires greater scope than traditional beats. 
Original and Interpretative Investigative Reporting
 Kovach and Rosentiel (2001) define original investigative reporting as stories 
in which the reporters themselves uncover and document activities previously 
unknown to the public (p. 116). Interpretative investigative reporting, they assert, is 
reporting ?which often involves the same original enterprise skills but takes 
interpretation to a different level.? MacDougall (1982), who first coined the term 
?interpretative reporting? in his book of that title in 1938, justifies that arrow in the 
quiver this way: ?[T]here has been increasing recognition that mere reporting of 
objective facts is not sufficient to serve the informational needs of a self-governing 
people. The result: interpretative reporting? (p. 206).
 This sort goes beyond a reporter?s search for the best opinion available on a 
subject that is not verifiable on deadline, an effort aimed at giving a news report 
substance. Interpretative reporting, Kovach and Rosenstiel write, ?usually involves 
more complex issues or sets of facts than a classic expos?. It reveals a new way of 
looking at something as well as new information about it? (p. 117). Interpretation, as 
defined by the Random House Dictionary (1978), means to provide a concept of 
another?s behavior according to one?s understanding and sensitivity, thereby setting 
forth meaning. 
95
 Reporting on Investigations
 Kovach and Rosenstiel (2001) define reporting on investigations as that which 
?develops from the discovery or leak of information from an official investigation 
already under way or in preparation by others, usually government agencies. It is a 
staple of journalism in Washington, a city where the government often talks to itself 
through the press? (p. 118). The fall 2003 story about a CIA field operative?s name 
appearing in the syndicated column of political pundit Robert Novak is one example 
of this type of investigative reporting. A secret was revealed in the news media, and a 
debate over wrongdoing began. 
This time, however, the reporter disclosing the name of the field agent became 
the center of debate as well as the ?top ranking administration official? who disclosed 
the classified information to Novak. Who passed the information? Is the journalist 
open to a lawsuit for disclosing classified information? A discussion in the news 
media about confidentiality and disclosure of sources in journalism, a sacred cow, also 
ensued. Some called for CIA director George J. Tenet?s resignation, but Novak?s 
resignation was not also requested.  
An investigation into the matter on the government?s side is assured; but the 
Society of Professional Journalists by early October had not yet suggested a 
counterpart to determine whether Novak acted in the public interest, in self-interest, or 
whether a cooperative special interest might be at play. No investigation into whether 
his action constitutes wrongdoing has been planned at this point. However, an 
investigation into the government?s disclosure of classified information already was 
reported to be in the works.
96
 Journalism of Assertion
 Anderson, Dardenne, and Killenberg (1996) look at the notion of assertion 
journalism as a form that assists talk, one that goes beyond ?just performing an 
informational or entertainment function? to serve ?a provocative one as well.? They 
write that journalism
 probably will not be able to maintain its current preoccupation with narrow 
definitions of detachment [and] ...complete objectivity...if it is to take on a 
rejuvenated role in the democratic dialogue. [J]ournalism can, and must, do 
much more to provide an interactive forum in which the relative quality of 
competing public ideas may be tested. (pp. xxi-xxii)
 Kovach and Rosenstiel (2001) reply by codifying the notion of a ?journalism 
of assertion? into the formula for a journalism of verification provided earlier, based 
on their idea that ?a more conscious discipline of verification is the best antidote to the 
old journalism of verification being overrun by a new journalism of assertion, and it 
would provide citizens with a basis for relying on journalistic accounts? (p. 77). That 
formula was intended, in part, to stop a blurring of the genres of journalism and 
creative nonfiction, the latter of which allows blending fact with invention. Journalism 
of assertion, Kovach and Rosenstiel write, is ?weakening the methodology of 
verification journalists have developed? (p. 75). This dissertation reveals some valid 
reasons for that evolution, and demonstrates a process of investigation dating back to 
Aristotle?s time, a process rooted in theories about truth and wrought with integrity 
while at the same time adhering to the tenets of a journalism of verification. 
To provide a foundation for discussion, a basic definition of assertion is in 
order. Simply, assertion, according to the Random House Dictionary (1978), means 
?to state positively but often without support or reason.? Any journalism of assertion, 
97
 then, produces a culture not based on reality but on stereotypes. Sanford (1999) in the 
chapter ?Dan Quayle Meet Hillary Clinton? beautifully considers the ways assertion 
journalism that is not rooted in verifiable reality undermines public confidence in the 
news media.
 John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation, associate editor for 
the Capitol Times in Madison, Wisconsin, and the son of farming parents described 
the personal significance reporting that asserts values holds for him as a reader and 
also a journalist. Using the issue of genetically modified (GM) crops as an example, 
he discussed that value from a public policy standpoint, with a particular focus on 
agriculture applications in the United States. For Nichols, this story and others like it 
require an approach with an attitude. In a personal interview with the author in August 
2003, he said,
 All good investigative reporting has an advocacy to it. That?s what people 
want. They don?t want us to just quote Monsanto (the maker of most GM 
seed). They want us to ask questions and find out what?s going on. Once you 
dig in, the story has a point of view. In the end, it says this is something bad, or 
good. You?re telling people they ought to care. That doesn?t mean journalists 
have the right to be unfair, or can say anything without a sense of 
responsibility. What it does mean is that some of the beat investigative 
journalism has been and continues to be journalism that seeks to accomplish a 
goal. (Nichols, 2003)
 Raising the level of dialogue in the news media on the subject of genetically 
modified crops and seeds necessarily involves investigative reporting because the 
stories are not on the surface. Moreover, they can be life-threatening and otherwise 
dangerous or damaging to one?s health. This author?s experience investigating the 
fibers of biopiracy (the notion of taking a biological item from one country and 
patenting it in another country after making some minor change, as in an enzyme, and 
98
 not giving any benefit to the country where it was found or the indigenous cultures 
cultivating the item) led me to sources within organized crime. That trail led to drug 
importation. My source said it was not in the interests of our health to continue our 
association. 
There are other occupational hazards relating to the biopiracy story. Having 
been to Europe twice, Africa and to 20 different states in the union working on stories 
related to GM crops, and also having covered much of the debate within the World 
Trade Organization regarding free trade and the Americas ? what will and will not be 
allowed, Nichols confirmed that in Third World countries, ?there?s a huge zone of 
illegality going on.? Speaking to one part of that zone, he said, 
There?s a sort of a wink and a nod to the folks who are operating outside of 
legal zones. That?s one of the reasons why the GM crop issue is so intense in 
Africa. The fear is that GM crops aren?t coming through official routes. That?s 
true in India, too. A lot of what I?ve heard from UNESCO folks is that the 
biggest fear is that American companies will experiment on Africa. And that?s 
why GM crops are a huge deal. (Nichols, 2003)
 The sort of complexity and depth required to put this story before the public is one 
reason why the issue of biopiracy is an environment story that has been treated as 
Houston, Brussese, and Weinberg (2002) suggest: by singling out one aspect of a 
larger issue and digging in. The issue simply does not appear in the media in a holistic 
way, although pieces of it are beginning to appear in mainstream newspapers like The 
New York Times.
 In addition to global implications, this story carries a local political spin that 
can be covered in standard form or as an integrated investigative report. In North 
Dakota, an influential incumbent state senator was defeated for re-election in 
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 November 2002 on the issue of GM seed. The challenger contended that much 
stronger protocols were needed on GM seeds or North Dakota agriculture would be 
lost. The challenger prevailed, and the incumbent senator, who was chairman of the 
state?s Joint Agriculture Committee, was sent home. 
Genetic modification also is pulling scientists in North Dakota into a quiet, 
global war. This one is over seed pollution, a concept new to all but a few. Nichols 
spoke of a case where researchers at the University of North Dakota sent regular seeds 
to Africa that came back corrupted, genetically altered, although they were not to have 
genetic organisms introduced to them. It is the sort of thing that makes academics cry, 
Nichols said. Once a seed base is lost, it may never come back. As Nichols pointed 
out, if seeds do not remain uncorrupted, control of entire crops may be lost. It?s the 
kind of story only investigative reporting produces; and one that lends itself to 
integrated investigative reporting. 
Nichols contends the story about GM crops is one that requires journalists to 
take a stand against proliferation, just as Edward R. Murrow did in reporting that a 
United States Air Force pilot accused of being a communist during the McCarthy Era 
was falsely charged (Levy, 1975, pp.74-86). In both cases the reporters? standpoint is 
that the only morally correct position is to side against the perceived iniquity and 
injustice. 
As this example shows, the GM crop story seems to demand using a 
combination of approaches to investigative reporting that together put the essence of 
the issue in a context that has meaning for each and every society touched by the 
technology. As is evident, the GM story goes beyond science, beyond politics, beyond 
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 business. Environment stories surrounding this issue include the unbalancing of 
nature, as in the loss of a seed; the migration of GM seed aided by the wind and birds, 
thereby feeding into the ecosystem a strain of crops resistant to weeds and insects that 
control their growth, which could overtake diverse plant populations and replace them 
with a monoculture; and the potential overtaking of weeds that provide for insects, 
such as the monarch butterfly, which will only lay its eggs on milkweed.  The story is 
also a health story about the world?s systems for distributing medicines, since foods 
can now be altered to include diuretics, immune boosters, hormones, and more. As 
such, investigative efforts that stick only to one type ? for instance, the expos? ? miss 
entire sets of contexts that give stories about the environment their intrigue, substance, 
and appeal to action. 
Exposure Journalism
 Exposure journalism, or expos?, is aimed at disclosing improprieties and in so 
doing making an impact on public opinion. Such stories are wrapped around societal 
values, which are based on beliefs, which shape the way we conceive of ideas about 
right and wrong. Protess et al. (1991) define investigative reporting as ?the journalism 
of outrage...a form of storytelling that probes the boundaries of America?s civic 
conscience,? adding that one of its forms, the expos?, consists of 
...published allegations of wrongdoing ? political corruption, government 
inefficiency, corporate abuses ? [that] help define public morality in the United 
States. Journalistic expos?s that trigger outrage from the public or policy 
makers affirm society?s standards of misconduct. Societal indifference to 
investigative disclosures constitutes evidence of morally tolerable, if not 
ethically acceptable behavior. (p. 5)
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 Immersion Journalism
 Immersion journalism in the investigative reporting genre can be likened to 
undercover investigation. However, an investigative reporter need not be undercover 
to be embedded in a story. For instance, one environment reporter who does nothing 
but investigative reporting, Tom Bayles of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and a 
volunteer for this study, became a certified firefighter to learn about what it means to 
fight raging arsonist-lit forest fires in Florida. He stayed with the squad for months, 
living as they lived, eating as they ate, exposing himself to the chemicals they got 
exposed to at the same rate of frequency and intensity, and feeling his heart pound and 
race with empathy as he lived through, and later described, an episode where a 
firefight was trying to get the dispatch radio out of the dashboard of a truck on fire that 
was so hot the man could see the metal melting. Bayles? experience on this story is 
described in detail by him in the findings section of this writing, a segment pointing to 
personal narrative as an emerging component of investigative reporting due to the 
advent of online diaries.
 Coalition Journalism
 Twelve years ago Protess, et al. perceived that a decline in resources for 
investigative reporting, especially long-term projects, likely would mean an increase 
in collaboration among journalists and policy makers. This prediction has been 
confirmed by many scholars (see Allan, Adam, and Carter, 2000; Neuzil and Kovarik, 
1996; Hansen, 1993; Frome, 1998; and Shanahan and McComas, 1999). The authors 
refer to that collaboration as ?coalition journalism.? They perceived that public 
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 outrage about important social problems, such as issues concerning the environment, 
would take a long time to manifest. Until it did, they wrote, investigative reporting 
would continue to be a catalyst for policy reform without necessarily being a vehicle 
for mass public mobilization or enlightenment (p. 254).
 Cost, Length and Funding for Investigative Reports
 Beelman said ICIJ has not had much success getting funding for deep stories 
with environmental overtones. Quick to say it could be that the funder?s portfolio was 
down because of the current recession in the United States or because the funder did 
not like the Consortium?s approach to the story, ICIJ was, however, successful in 
getting dollars to do a story with a strong business slant about trade in drinking water. 
The investigative reporting series, titled, The Water Barons: How a Few Powerful 
Companies are Privatizing Your Water, was published first online and later as book 
when several people weary of reading the series online asked for a hard copy. About 
length online, Beelman said, ?It became clear that the reading public is not yet ready 
to read beyond a certain number of words on the Web. I don?t know if they will ever 
be willing to read beyond a certain number of words on a screen.?
 ICIJ investigative reports typically run 60,000 to 80,000 words and cost 
between $50,000 and $350,000 to produce, with about $200,000 the average, Beelman 
said. By contrast, Helvarg, a long-time freelance reporter, said he has seen good 
investigative reports done for less than $50,000, some bearing his byline or broadcast 
stamp.
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 For Good Measure
 To reduce the chances of being accused of advocacy, Alexander (1982) touts 
the tried and true approach to journalism: include as part of the body of the story the 
facts that support one?s conclusions and, equally important, those that do not (p. 25). 
But as the examples provided have shown, that is not enough anymore. Environmental 
disasters around the globe have given rise to sustained debate among interested claims 
makers, such as government agencies, industry spokespeople, scientists, citizen action 
pressure groups, consumer organizations and academics, thereby ensuring that a range 
of what were often sharp, harsh or bitter disputes featured prominently on the news 
agenda. 
Critical examinations of the pertinent types of news coverage produced during 
the late 1960s indicate the preferred term, conservation, was gradually being 
supplanted by new, or at least sharply redefined, ecological concepts explicitly 
associated with ?the environment? as a social problem (Neuzil and Kovarik, 1996). 
Further noting the shift, Allan, Adam, and Carter (2000) write,
 Emergent forms of environmental discourse typically stretched notions of 
conservation beyond the earlier emphasis on natural resources so as to 
encompass the human species as an organism in need of protection in the face 
of possible extinction. This shift in the rhetorical strategies of claims-makers 
posed an acute challenge to the seemingly ?commonsensical? division between 
?nature? and ?humanity? that had been a recurrent ? if largely tacit ? feature of 
news reportage and, as a result, much public debate. (p. 3)
 If throughout the 1960s the consequences of industrial pollution, for instance, 
were broadly accepted as an inevitable price to pay for enjoying the benefits of 
modern society, it was largely attributed to concerted public relations efforts (Wilson, 
1992). While ?spin? has been part of journalism since its beginnings, until 
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 environment reporting splintered from conservation writing, there was no concerted 
effort on the part of special interests to make sure risks involved with pollution were 
communicated with precision. Prior to public relations, publicity was the order of the 
day. One wanted good publicity for ego gratification, financial gain and social status. 
Publicists, then, needed to do more than get favorable articles about their clients 
written in the newspapers, and heard on the radio and seen on television. They needed 
to do more than drink at the bar with reporters. They needed to give them information 
that would persuade them to think about the science behind what the reporters were 
writing about. They needed to exploit the reporter?s weakness. That?s what risk 
communication did in its most sinister form. However, by showing reporters a 
weakness and exploiting it, they also heightened awareness among reporters of the 
need to look deeper into sources of information, deeper into context, deeper into the 
science, and deeper into government agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug 
Administration and its approval of genetically modified foods as well as growth 
hormones. Public relations, it appears, was influential in helping investigative 
reporters see the need for a new genre of their craft.
 Degrees of Risk
 How good was the best environment reporting in the mid-1980s? Sandman et 
al. (1987) found it lacked information about degree of risk. When risk was reported, it 
usually came across as more alarming than reassuring. Although articles were 
generally accurate, with few errors of fact, problems involved omission of 
information. The research team found no intentional bias. Flagrant distortions did not 
105
 characterize the articles (p. 99-100), indicating a concerted effort on the part of 
environment reporters to adhere to journalistic ethics and integrity.
 As described by Sachsman (1996), perceived bias in environment reporting 
when no intentional bias exists appears as a reaction by government, industry, and 
other institutional experts to journalism?s tendency toward extremes, its reliance on 
particular extreme sources (one voice from this environmental group, one voice from 
industry, one voice from government, etc.) rather than those expressing moderate 
positions, and its translation of technical jargon into volatile common language. ?In 
short, what scientists and representatives from government, industry, and other groups 
view as bias may just be the normal tendencies of journalism. Journalists tend to cover 
environmental affairs when problems and risks are present,? wrote Sachsman (p. 249). 
In that respect, time and space constraints sometimes prevent reporters from 
including intermediate degrees of risk in their stories, according to Sandman, et al. in 
1987. While the details of intermediate risk may be noteworthy, environment reporters 
must adhere to the same limitations as their counterparts in the newsroom, and will not 
be allowed to crowd out other significant stories on other subjects of interest.
 Prato (1991) suggests the only way to determine how to communicate the risk 
is to train reporters properly and give them enough time to analyze an issue, although 
Sachsman (1996) found otherwise. Prato?s effort, aimed at encouraging more coverage 
of the environment by local television stations, notes that future coverage must be 
more than a reaction to, for instance, an oil spill or nuclear accident, which might 
focus immediate attention on a specific environmental problem, but might also distort 
or exaggerate the problem. TV?s coverage of such crises up to the early 1990s did 
106
 little to enhance understanding of the overall context of economic tradeoffs 
surrounding environmental issues, wrote Prato (1991). To ?get it right,? journalists 
must write about fundamentally difficult trade-offs at stake in any environmental 
controversy, an objective news-gathering approach amounting to ?risk assessment 
management? whereby the scope and potential danger of a problem is measured 
against the cost and time required for a solution. Nowhere is that point more evident 
than in current stories about genetically modified crops and organisms.
 Simply, the extent to which genetically modified crops and organisms are used 
is difficult to know. Similarly, what destruction they could hoist upon the world and  
questions of what the future holds if natural order and balanced are upset as a result of 
this technological achievement remain unknown.
 The artificial insertion of certain DNA traits into seeds ? traits including 
viruses, antibiotics, and pesticides ? chills farmers to the freezing point, especially 
those who have seen their fields intentionally burned to prevent the spread of GM 
seed. Recorded deaths from GM products raise concerns further about genetic 
modification for consumption. As reported by Lianne Casten in SEJournal?s Winter, 
2001 issue, in 1989 dozens of Americans died and several thousands became ill after 
eating impurities in the food supplement L-tryptophan, which was made with 
genetically altered bacteria. 
A story about GMOs and GM crops finds threads in neighbors talking across 
fences, patents on life forms, intellectual property rights, organized crime, global 
economics, health and medicine, and politics as well as the environment beat, where 
its treatment includes the effect of GM crops on wildlife, butterflies and other insects, 
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 soil, and more. It is an environmental business story and a habitat story. Daley and 
O?Neill (1991) consider the consequences of reporting environment news in 
traditional fashion, particularly in the form of a disaster narrative. Such reporting, they 
reason, naturalizes the impact of the story, as in the case of reporting about the Exxon 
Valdez, which ?withdrew from discursive consideration both the marine transport 
system and the prospective pursuit of alternative energy sources? (p. 53). As a result, 
they contend, important environmental issues were directed ?away from the political 
arena and into the politically inaccessible realm of technological inevitability,? thereby 
reproducing ?the political and corporate hegemony of Big Oil? (p. 53).
 With the magnitude of environmental concerns hovering over reporters 
attempting to investigate how such disasters occur, how to report on long-term threats 
due to their non-event-oriented characteristics became a question investigative 
reporters writing about the environment had to fathom. To avoid ignoring, trivializing, 
or marginalizing the larger context, investigative reporters working environment 
stories have necessarily had to speak to issues of mitigation and prevention. In the 
past, such perspectives were routinely displaced from journalistic ?hierarchies of 
credibility? (Becker, 1967), prompting more savvy public relations efforts from all 
sides to adapt their message to the rules of inclusion and exclusion in journalistic 
reports attempting to present a fair and balanced story about the environment. 
The social construction of reality, as explained by Berger and Luckman  in 
1967, theorizes that there is no such thing as a single ?objective? definitive truth; 
instead, there are various and often competing realities, each held by different groups 
or cultures. Because the same set of facts has varying meanings to different groups at 
108
 different times, each group holds its own consensual reality. This work again shows 
the emergence of environmentalism as a social problem dependent on societal 
recognition ? and therefore mass media performance. A ?public? comes into existence, 
according to American philosopher John Dewey (1927), because it becomes 
concerned about a perceived threat to the community. One could say that without a 
social problem there is no public, and without a public there is no social problem. 
Dewey?s student, Park (1941), held that a public will disappear if the news media 
ignore a social problem, and that the news media?s ability to define problems is their 
true power. Therefore, media access is sought by groups concerned with advancing 
their causes (Neuzil and Kovarik, 1996, p. xv), whether that special interest comes 
from industry, environmentalists, or individual stakeholders.
 As such, the conversation about the environment has become one about a 
?crisis of culture,? one which ?suffuses our households, our conversations, our 
economies,? (Wilson, 1992, p. 12). This insight throws into sharp relief a series of 
questions about the extent to which media representations of nature serve to reaffirm 
as ?common sense? references to ?the environment? as a stable, totalized entity 
against which ?the human? is to be measured (Allan, Adam, and Carter, 2000, p. 2). 
Wilkins (1990) holds that many environmental problems are not immediately 
visible, but are the sort that may emerge in the future, introducing a new component to 
traditional journalism. Traditional journalism, she writes, ?has been satisfied with 
reporting on the here and now.? Wilkins argued that democratic ethics require the 
news media to adopt a somewhat more future-oriented perspective because of this 
evolution in journalism. She writes, 
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 What is required is that journalists articulate clearly for both themselves and 
their readers and viewers that one of the responsibilities of the late 20th 
century [news media] democracy is to take news about the future ? the policy 
options that will produce it ? seriously. (p. 100)
 All this seems to suggest that the environment beat has changed journalism in 
other ways, too. Protess, Cook, Coppelt, et al. (1991) observed that investigative 
reporters may be becoming less of an elite breed of journalist. They write,
 The success of Investigative Reporters and Editors? workshops for different 
kinds of journalists suggests that the techniques of investigative reporting are 
being adapted by the professional mainstream. Thus, although separate 
investigative units have been disbanded, investigative practices have become 
more widespread. As we concluded in 1986, the IRE survey findings point to 
the institutionalization of investigative reporting. Rather than bordering on 
extinction, investigative journalists have merely become less visible as their 
efforts become more conventional. Today?s muckrakers may be more akin to 
inveterate watchdogs than starving wolves. (p. 38)
 Summary: An Innovation
 This literature synthesis ties together what has been written about investigative 
reporting, environment reporting, and advocacy with personal interviews with 
environment reporters in an effort to make connections between the current 
conversations in print and on the street, so to speak. In the broadest sense, it looks at 
investigative reporting about the environment and advocacy in journalism. Overall, 
this chapter indicates no one has asked what might qualify investigative reporting 
about the environment as advocacy, a factor giving this work significance. 
The framing of this chapter as a literature synthesis rather than a traditional 
literature review also is significant. It represents an innovation. The approach brought 
out directions investigative reporting about the environment seems to be taking in the 
early 21st century. Had I stayed with the literature along and not included the 
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 interviews, too much insight and knowledge would have been sacrificed. I doubt I 
would have noticed many of the details that have helped give this work substance and 
intrigue. Consequently, I believe the synthesis approach is more valuable than the 
standard. 
This innovation is worth noting as a result. The approach has not been written 
about, and does not appear in any of the dissertations or published research I have 
encountered, nor does it appear in descriptions about how to do a literature review. I 
have to wonder why that is, because in order to contribute to a conversation one has to 
grasp as fully as possible what?s being discussed. Without balancing professional 
discussions with academic conversations, much is lost.
 Looking Ahead
 What has come unbidden from this innovation is a broader picture of what 
investigative reporting about the environment has contributed to journalism as a 
whole. Among other things, it has contributed a new method for doing journalistic 
research. That method mirrors an approach to studying intercultural listening 
qualitatively that was articulated by Chen and Starosta (1998) in a chapter in their 
book Foundations of Intercultural Communication entitled, ?Listening Between Co-
 Cultures.?  To broaden the scope of listening research, they offer a qualitative system 
of investigation for discovering how people constitute their world. The writing team 
coupled grounded theory with phenomenological research practice. Both are discussed 
in detail in the following chapters. To preview, Chen and Starosta?s offering is: 
1) Apply grounded theory.
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 2) Bracket assumptions (the first step in phenomenological research).
 3) Gather rich detail from experience.
 4) Conduct regular checks with sources to assure accuracy.
 5) Constantly do comparisons.
 6) Perform an ongoing audit of the researcher (looks at the research from    
    within).
 7) Perform an ongoing external audit (looks at the research from outside).
 8) Recognize patterns.
 9) Expect the unexpected.
 10) Await epiphanies.
 Chen and Starosta argue that any interpretative research that does not contain 
surprises leads the researcher to ask: Why learn what anyone else is thinking? Once 
answered, the question becomes one of whether the researcher succeeded in accessing 
the other person?s distinctive views. My sense of journalism at this point is that it is 
evolving toward a research approach that seeks to learn the truth about the significance 
between cultures, journalism as a function of community, and what I term 
?intercultural journalism,? a journalism that does not identify voices by race, but by 
what each source has to say. In this respect, this research can contribute to 
conversations about re-presentation of cultures. However, I have left that discussion 
for future research. 
As such, this effort supports my thinking that delving into questions about 
advocacy journalism and investigative reporting about the environment is worth 
talking about. We?re going to need new approaches to reporting because little is black 
and white. The kinds of reporting journalists have done in the past make it hard to say 
anything but ?Get out of Vietnam,? or ?Get out of the West Bank? or ?Get out of 
Iraq.? Similarly, it makes it easy to say, ?Marijuana is bad, even if it has medicinal 
value,? ?Organic food is expensive, even if it is more nutritious and consequently 
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 satisfies with less,? or ?The Superfund law is bad, even though it resulted in cleanup 
of contaminated land by the parties responsible for the pollution.?
 The kind of reporting I?m showcasing here is an example of another way truth 
emerges that complements the Paul Williams Way and the science of verification 
approach described by Kovach and Rosenstiel. It focuses on description as a means for 
bringing truth to the surface, for causing it to emerge and reveal itself. It is a 
commonly held belief that answers aren?t simplistic. This chapter has demonstrated 
that by showing some of the pitfalls of simplistic reporting about the environment. The 
next chapter will discuss phenomenology as a research method, and why it was well-
 suited for this study.
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 CHAPTER 3
 RESEARCH METHOD AND METHODOLOGY 
This chapter describes the research strategy herein and also the methodological 
considerations surrounding that approach. It also points out the strengths and 
limitations of the method. As defined by Harding (1987), research method refers to a 
technique for collecting evidence, whereas methodology encompasses the theories and 
analyses of how research should proceed. To clarify, methodology is concerned with 
how methods are or should be used in the research process (Learn, 1996, p. 37). This 
section offers insights into both the method and methodology of phenomenology 
based on my practice with it in this study.
 Rationale for Selecting Phenomenology
 There are different schools of thought about phenomenology, its use as a 
research method, and its application as a way of life. As a research method, the 
approach was suitable for this effort for four main reasons. First, the method addresses 
questions of meaning thoroughly. Second, it provides rich description of actual 
experience. Third, the method offers views in the context of how the experience came 
about and was lived, or ?experience as given? (Idhe, 1986). Lastly, the approach takes 
into account that self-perceptions are holistic human phenomena. In the jargon of this 
research method, the approach provides a sense of the whole of a set of lived 
experiences.
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 That approach matched my goals in a variety of ways. This study delves into 
the nature of environment reporting, particularly the investigative genre. It is not a 
study of my perceptions of investigative reporting on the environment. Rather, this 
research in part seeks to reveal what drives and motivates those who do investigative 
reporting on environmental subjects even though the participants in this study may not 
know the answers themselves.
 In this dissertation, I aimed to capture with as much authenticity as possible the 
essence of environment reporting for those doing investigative work, what it means to 
them, what they get out of it, and whether advocacy is part of their job description. I 
also sought to discover what boundaries they use to define advocacy journalism, 
journalism, and investigative reporting.
 I asked what this group of reporters experience and how they interpret their 
world. The analysis provided in this writing seeks to grasp and elucidate the meaning, 
structure, and essence of investigative reporting on environmental matters based on 18 
in-depth interviews conducted with six journalists who described their experiences in 
three interviews each for this study. Those interviews were conducted according to the 
standards of rigor described for phenomenological inquiry by Giorgi (1985, 1989), 
Moustakas (1994), Seidman (1998), Marshall and Rossman (1999), and Patton (2002).
 Each interview was conducted in person. Specifically, I interviewed: (1) Paul 
Rogers in conference rooms at the San Jose Mercury News, where Rogers is the 
environment reporter; (2) freelance environment reporter David Helvarg in his cubicle 
in Ralph Nader?s suite of offices in Washington, D.C., where Helvarg is establishing 
the Oceans Awareness Project (in September 2004 at the Society of Environmental 
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 Journalists conference in New Orleans, Helvarg announced he was leaving journalism 
to establish a not-for-profit aimed at heightening awareness of the state of the world?s 
oceans); (3) Tom Bayles, environment editor and investigative projects reporter for the 
Sarasota Herald-Tribune in the newspaper?s lunchroom, at a local coffee shop, and at 
Bayles? kitchen table in Sarasota, Fla.; (4) independent environment reporter Dale 
Willman, president of Field Notes Productions, in his office at Carlton College just 
outside of Minneapolis, and over dinner at two local restaurants; (5) freelance 
investigative reporter Charles Pekow in Haynes Johnson?s office at the Philip Merrill 
College of Journalism at the University of Maryland in College Park, at La Madeline 
in Bethesda, Md., and at his dining room table in Bethesda, Md.; and (6) Tom 
Meersman, natural resources and environment reporter for the Star-Tribune in 
Minneapolis in a local tavern, a local restaurant, and a conference room off the 
newsroom.
 These reporters volunteered to participate in this research after I posted a 
request on the SEJ listserv describing the study. I specifically sought members of SEJ 
because I wanted any findings from this writing to be relatable to the organization. 
Each interview lasted between 45 minutes and two hours depending on the length of 
the interviewee?s response. Audio tape was run for all interviews to help assure 
accuracy on every level. An interview protocol was created, and appears in Appendix 
C of this document. As explained later in this chapter, that protocol was abandoned 
during the research process because it was inhibiting the research. That discovery led 
me to the theory applied in this research: grounded theory. 
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 Phenomenology as a Method
 Phenomenology?s mantra is that we can only know what we experience by 
exploring the perceptions and meanings that make us aware of the experience. 
Consequently, phenomenological research focuses on how we put together what we 
experience in order to find the larger meaning. It documents ways humans make sense 
of the world and, in so doing, develop a world view.
 In general terms, phenomenology asks the question: What is the meaning, 
structure, and essence of this thing for this group of people? Researchers applying this 
method are less interested in whether something happened, how often it tends to 
happen, or how an experience is related to the prevalence of other conditions or
 events.
 Phenomenology as Methodology
 For some, phenomenology is a way of life. Some researchers find it necessary 
to live according to their concept of phenomenology for the sake of understanding and 
purity of application. But it is possible to consider matter from a phenomenological 
viewpoint without adopting the ways of the movement as a lifestyle.
 The term, used since the mid-eighteenth century, was given separate but 
carefully defined technical meanings by Kant and Hegel, who approached its system 
of logic from opposite points on a continuum. Simply, Kant approached a step in the 
logic, known as imaginative variation, through elimination. If something did not 
appeal to his logic about the matter, it was discarded. That is, possibilities would be 
eliminated based on certain criteria derived during the elimination process. Instead, 
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 Husserl increased the number of possibilities through imaginative variation by adding 
to or expanding the number of variations identified, and sorting them by their 
commonalities as a means to locate the essence of the thing, idea, or notion. Therefore, 
the two had different ways of considering the possibilities, but both agreed that 
considering the possibilities was one step in the logic. 
After considering the possible solutions to the query at hand, both would select 
one and test it in application. That test is known in phenomenology as a thought 
experiment, also referred to in the research stage as imaginative variation (described 
more fully in the ?process? section of this chapter). Once tested, the results would be 
evaluated to determine its authenticity as an essence. This process of one-by-one 
selection aimed at decreasing the count of potential essences is a universal step in the 
process of phenomenological reasoning known as reduction.
 As Audi (1999) points out, phenomenology in contemporary philosophy is 
neither a school of thought nor a philosophy clearly defined by a body of teachings. 
Instead it is a movement that over time has been propelled in many distinct directions. 
Consequently, the notion means different things to different people (p. 664). Those 
currents are not homogeneous, though they have a common point of departure, he 
writes.
 As a result, it was difficult to locate a particular standard of phenomenological 
rigor for this research. After the fact, I realized that in my effort to locate standards of 
rigor for this method, in my confusion I drew standards from transcendental 
phenomenology (Moustakas, and also Mohanty) and several other brands I can name 
but whose lines of rigor I cannot specifically delineate. Among them: existential 
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 phenomenology, hermeneutic phenomenology, social phenomenology, and 
phenomenography, a label applying phenomenological investigation ?aimed at a 
descriptive recording of immediate subjective experience as reported? (Sonnemann, 
1954, p. 344, in Patton 2002, p. 482), which seems to me a sophisticated term for a 
photo essay. With this whirlpool of approaches in my head, I drew from those 
structures most clearly articulated and applied them in this study. For the most part, 
then, this research follows the approach for transcendental phenomenology, but its 
standards of rigor are not exclusive to that form. Those standards are, however, 
exclusive to phenomenological practice in that all phenomenologists agree on six 
points, two of which are that the fundamental concern of this process of logic is with 
meaning, and being. The four other universal components are intentionality, reduction 
or epoche, radical differences between the natural and philosophical attitude, and the 
use of intuition to locate principles describing the substance of whatever is under 
investigation.
 To elaborate briefly, all phenomenologists subscribe to the doctrine of 
intentionality, that is, the understanding of the phenomena in question on a conscious 
level. This is described by each school of thought in a different way. For Heidegger, 
who articulated a concept of existential phenomenology, intention refers to that which 
constitutes the reality of being as opposed to that which constitutes reality projected by 
the imagination in, for instance, the act of imaginative variation, according to Audi.
 Also, as mentioned, no phenomenologists doubt the necessity of reduction as a 
step in the process of locating the root of a thing. In all cases, regardless of the 
approach, this process is referred to as the epoche, a Greek word meaning ?to refrain 
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 from judgment, to abstain from the everyday, ordinary way of perceiving things? 
(Moustakas, 1994, in Patton, 2002, p. 484). Further, as explained by Audi, most 
phenomenologists admit a radical difference between the natural and the philosophical 
attitude. In characterizing this difference, some phenomenologists who agree with 
Husserl?s school of thought stress only epistemological issues; whereas others, in 
agreement wit Heidegger?s school of thought, focus their attention exclusively on 
ontological topics (p. 665).
 Lastly, Audi provides that all phenomenologists defend the necessity of using 
intuition in one form or another to locate the principles that may constitute a thing, 
idea, or notion. Husserl calls this the ?principle of all principles.? Intuition is defined 
by Husserl as ?whatever presents itself in primordial form (bodily reality).? He directs 
phenomenological researchers to simply accept what is given in this step.
 As demonstrated here, it is not possible to give a simple definition of what 
phenomenology is. Therefore, what I had attempted to do is faithfully report what I 
have experienced of phenomenology through its practice in this study.
 Background of Phenomenology and Basic Terminology
 Phenomenology, as described by Husserl in Ideen in 1913, referred to the 
study of how people describe things and ideas and experience them through their 
senses. As a research method, phenomenology relies on interviews and impartial 
observation as a means for locating the essence of something.
 The concept of an essence was first articulated by Aristotle in his discussion of 
the notion of essentialism, a metaphysical theory purporting that objects have 
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 identifiable qualities that distinguish them or make them what they are ? in other 
words, essence (Audi, 1999). Aristotle reasoned that there are differences between 
what an object is, and how it is. For instance, using wood as an example, wood is what 
the object is, that it floats is a quality leading to the question how, and then to the 
essence of the object. Based on this logic, Aristotle reasoned there are no individual 
essence, only collective ones. In other words, the world is connected by essences. 
Therefore, to create meaning, one can identify commonalities as a way of determining 
something?s essence.
 Truth emerges slowly. It is both an individual and communal process in that 
one finds truth from internal as well as from external experience. The oldest theory of 
truth, again set forth by Aristotle in an early formulation of Metaphysics and named 
Correspondence Theory, holds that ?to say of what it is that it is, or of what is not that 
is not, is true.? 
It is the same quest participants in this study have spent their lives on in the 
form of writing short stories about the human condition and about problems they 
brought to light. The truth, philosophers have contended, is an attribute of beliefs, 
opinions, theories, doctrines, statements, etc., all of which in one way or another 
involve making decisions that may lead a person to advocate something for a reason.
 The proper contrast to the notion of truth is falsity. While penetrating secrets, 
the investigative reporters interviewed here have located trickery, fabrications, and 
other cockeyed versions of truth. They have stood toe to toe with people who will cut 
a person?s heart out for a nickel, so to speak, a phrase that may characterize how some 
of the study participants feel about individuals who would accuse them of advocating
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 a position but fail to provide evidence substantiating that claim.
 Correspondence Theory essentially says that something is true if it corresponds 
with something when compared. Another theory of truth, Coherence Theory, produced 
by rationalist system-building metaphysicians including Hegel, Spinoza, Leibniz, and 
Bradley as well as positivists Neurath and Hempel (who took mathematics as their 
model) described what the rationalist school of thought viewed as the system 
constituting the whole of reality, while the logical positivist view recognized the 
theory as the system accepted by contemporary scientists. According to Coherence 
Theory, the truth of a proposition hangs on being part of a comprehensive system 
(consistent with certain idealist theories) or, conforming to certain positivist theories, 
is in harmony with every other proposition (Mautner, 1999).
 In the 19th century, American philosophers C.S. Pierce and William James 
articulated Pragmatist Theory, which said an idea ? that is, an opinion, belief, or 
statement ? is true if it works, if it brings success (Mautner, 1999), that is, if it proves
 something. The 20th century was more fruitful, producing three theories as art and 
culture moved from the modern Age to Postmodern times with the term postmodern 
first appearing in architecture in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was taken up by Jean-
 Fran?ois Lyotard, who turned it into an anti-Marxist and poststructuralist critique of 
science and society (Osborne, 2002). That century introduced, first, Logical 
Superfluity Theory. Provided by Frege and Ramsey, it holds that to say such and such 
is true is the same as saying such and such (Mautner, 1999), a minimalist view of 
determining the truth. Using wood again as an example, the section in this chapter 
entitled ?Locating Essence? describes how this approach is used in phenomenology. 
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 Tarski?s Semantic Theory followed, and stressed equivalence by expressing 
that ?P if and only if P,? where the first P is the name of the sentence, and the second 
P is the sentence itself. The third contribution of the 20th century was labeled ?non-
 descriptive? theories, which argue that to say that something is true is not to say 
anything about the something, but to assess, praise, accept or concede it (Mautner, 
1999). Phenomenology?s roots in theories of truth, and its standards of rigor requiring 
detaching from what is believed as true, seemingly helped it take hold as a research 
method that can be applied when the goal is to deconstruct something with the aim of 
locating truth. Consequently, it appears to be a useful approach to journalism, and a 
natural maturing of Lippmann?s ideas.
 Essence Defined
 My working definition of essence in this study considers life a collection of 
experiences that in sequence teach us something. This dissertation offers an example 
of the phenomenological process for locating truth. It also serves as an example of 
integrated investigative reporting applied in academic research. 
I come to this writing with 17 years of experience as a reporter, 12 of them 
including environment reporting either full- or part-time, none of them including 
investigative reporting beyond just good research. Some of my work has appeared in 
The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, ABCnews.com, and on Reuters 
newswire in addition to other news outlets. Before this writing, however, I thought 
that investigative reporting required special training, and preferably a degree from a 
prestigious journalism school. The research contained herein, and that you have 
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 already read at this point, proves that thinking wrong. Therefore, experience with a 
thing lends insight ? in that ?just good research? can be considered investigative 
reporting on some level. As demonstrated in this writing, that insight is testable by 
running it through the processes constituting phenomenological method and 
methodology. 
Locating Essence
 Experience gives people insight into the essence of things (Sokolowski, 2000, 
p. 177). Essence considers what knowledge or information can be expressed by the 
thing itself despite insight from the observer. It differs from existence in that existence 
considers only what can be seen, what comes into reality, and therefore discounts 
insights that might lead to level of essence.
 Esence reveals itself on three levels, according to Sokolowski. The first is 
through typicalness; the second, generalization; and the third, something the thing 
cannot be without. The first, typicalness, is an establishing of identity based in part on 
commonalities. Using wood as an example again, Sokolowski writes that given three 
pieces of wood, a curious individual could set each one by one on the water and 
discover that each floats. Therefore it can be said that wood typically floats, based on 
the correspondence theory of truth. It can then be deduced that floating is an essential 
quality of wood, or an essence of wood based on experience.
 The second level through which essence is revealed is through generalization 
based on experience. On this level, the notion that wood typically floats becomes the 
idea that wood floats, even though the evidence only goes as far as the researcher?s
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 experience has gone. The generalization remains until some evidence proves it wrong.
 The third level comes when the researcher seeks to discover a feature the idea, 
notion, or thing is dependent upon. That is, something it cannot be without. For some 
reporters like myself, that is a tape recorder. For others, it is a video camera, DVD 
recorder, or digital mini-disk recorder that produces radio quality sound. Therefore, it 
can be reasoned that since the days of the hammer and chisel journalism has typically 
involved technology. 
This locating of general qualities is what phenomenologists refer to as eidetic 
intuition, or insight into an essence. It is a level of reasoning that precedes imaginative 
variation. Imaginative variation is the step in the process holding that locating a 
conclusion requires the researcher to imagine what qualities or features or elements of 
journalism might be universal to the thing itself, and therefore components of a 
general definition. Imaginative variation is a standard phenomenological approach to 
teasing out observations, and therefore statements about essence based on eidetic 
intuition. 
Phenomenon Defined
 The experience of eidetic intuition is a phenomenon. A phenomenon is an 
occurrence that brings experience to life. In other words, it provokes a response. 
Intuition in phenomenology is something one nurtures to manifest action out of some 
sort of knowing, some sort of instinct. That knowing could be a sense that something is 
or is not true. The action is based on what the instinct leads the researcher to think. 
This is part of the process of discovery in phenomenology.
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 Instinct and phenomenon are connected. To illustrate, imagine that an arrow 
hits an animal. That phenomenon is based on two factors: (1) the arrow is sprung, and 
(2) the animal is struck. That is a description based on experience. Experience differs 
from instinct. Instinct is knowing. Rater than a teacher, it is a guide. A teacher is a 
person who instructs, whereas a guide is someone or something that shows the way to 
something else (Random House Dictionary, 1978). Further, a teacher may explain an 
experience, but a guide walks with the person, directly experiencing everything at the 
same moment as the person. Instinct is of the moment ? a knowing of context, 
situation, circumstance that motivates action. That action is an outcome. Instinct is a 
guide through experience rather than the experience itself. It is part of the process of 
experience rather than the result of it.
 These two things ? instinct and experience ? provide meaning. Together, they 
constitute the process known as reasoning, which is an attempt to make sense of an 
experience or a collection of experiences. This is the process of learning, one 
conceivably irresistible to all life forms in that even one-celled creatures at least 
appear to rely on instinct and experience to find the place that best suits them to grow 
and live. It can be reasoned, then, that all life forms rely on instinct because it appears 
that all life forms hunt in one way or another.
 What you have just read is an example of eidetic intuition, or insight into an 
essence. To finish my thought: instinct seems to make humans, at least, believe in 
something for which there is no proof. Like faith, instinct can seem like reason 
without foundation, and it can persist like hunger. The motivation to relieve the hunger 
is instinct motivating an experience. Consequently, it can be reasoned that instinct is
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 illuminating, motivation enough to take seriously the notion of phenomenology.
 The Process
 It can easily be said that a popular problem-solution format for reasoning used 
all the time and at every level of education today is based on phenomenological 
thinking. Today, common logic for finding a solution to a problem is simply this: (1) 
identify the problem; (2) consider the possible solutions; (3) select one; (4) implement 
it; (5) evaluate the results. That highly simplified pattern describes the process of logic 
used in phenomenology, and in integrated investigative reporting.
 The Epoche
 The epoche is the first step in the phenomenological research approach. It is an 
emptying of oneself onto the page, so to speak. In this phase, the researcher writes 
down everything that person knows about the field under inquiry before reading any 
literature or gathering experience with the thing in question. This is what Husserl 
called bracketing. It is done as a safeguard to help the researcher identify potential 
points of bias and consequently sensitize the researcher to different cultural practices, 
different mores ? religious, political or otherwise ? and different ways of thinking 
about life, for instance. It is done to help the researcher ?walk around the statue? ? a 
figure of speech in phenomenological literature referring to the consideration of an 
idea or thing from all conceivable directions. As mentioned, the practice aims to bring 
biases and preconceptions to the surface, where they can be scrutinized and used as 
fodder for new questions, and new understanding. In so doing, this phase serves as a
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 way to sort out mental distractions.
 In some respects this phase is much like what is known in schools of education 
as prewriting. Prewriting refers to the act of writing down whatever is on one?s mind 
in an effort to clear one?s head in preparation for writing something focused and 
intentional. Initially the term was coined and the practice applied by elementary school
 English teachers as a technique for helping their students purge themselves of mental 
distractions. This technique is used widely by writers of various strips to help them 
focus on the writing task at hand.
 Prewriting differs from the epoche in that it is not centered on a specific 
subject of inquiry. It can be stream-of-consciousness writing, or it can be focused on a 
single event ? whatever is on the person?s mind. There are no boundaries. By contrast, 
the epoche is highly focused on the subject of inquiry, existing to help the researcher 
get out ideas and shift attitudes so as to look at the experience, that is, the subject of 
inquiry, differently each time. In this case, I began my research by writing down 
everything I knew about investigative reporting, and everything I thought about it. I 
set my preconceived notions in process notes used at the end of my research to help 
me identify specifically, with examples, what I had learned. 
Prewriting yields the best results when done fast, because somehow the speed 
helps tease out fodder for another story, for a mental checkpoint, for a new thread to 
follow in research, according to my experience and Donald Murray, journalist and 
University of New Hampshire English professor, who introduced me to the idea in his 
book, Write to Learn. About the speed of prewriting, Murray writes, ?It is the speed 
that enables the writer to outrun the censor and write what the writer does not expect; 
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 it is the speed that causes the instructive failures essential to effective writing. Each 
failure shows what it may be possible to say and how it may be possible to say it. As 
in scientific discoveries, laboratory errors lead us forward? (1996, p. 118).
 Atwell (1987) describes the value of prewriting as a step in the system of 
discourse. In a writing program she devised at the University of Buffalo in New York 
State, Atwell, a master teacher specializing in the middle grades, drew her theory and 
practice heavily from James Moffett?s hierarchy of discourse (1976, in Atwell, 1987). 
She wrote, ?[I]ts basic tenet was that students learn to write by working systematically 
through an assigned sequence of modes ? drama to narrative to idea writing ? with 
extensive pre-and post-writing activities? (p. 6). It seems, then, that it is in the best 
interests of the researcher to race through the epoche, to write it fast.
 Imaginative Variation
 In research, the phenomenological process is an effort to isolate variables and 
hold them still while studying and conceiving them in different lights and from 
different perspectives. Imaginative variation is one approach to accomplishing this 
goal. For example, the concept of happiness may vary from culture to culture. 
Possessing a bushel of money may constitute happiness for most people in one culture, 
but may carry no emotional weight in a culture that equates happiness with possessing 
uncontaminated water and natural (rather than genetically modified) food. In other 
words, the dictates that provide the desired thing direct a way of life and a societal 
structure. The variable being held still is the value of money. The imaginative 
variation is how money is perceived by this or that culture. In this case, the value a 
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 society places on something, and the tribe?s or reporter?s or culture?s acceptance of 
that value appears to be the essence behind the emotional weight granted to what 
constitutes happiness, and whether that state is of value for that culture and society. 
The supposition behind the holding still of variables and applying imaginative 
variation is that considering something from as many different perspectives as possible 
yields the greatest amount of knowledge and leads to the discovery of essences, or the 
root of the object of inquiry.
 Phenomenological Statements
 The modus operandi of phenomenology is plain language (Denzin & Lincoln, 
2002, p. 488). The system phenomenology outlines relies on a certain kind of 
statement emerging from the process of logic described. As explained by Sokolowski 
(2000), phenomenological statements
 ...tell us what we already know...[E]ven if they do not tell us anything new, 
they can still be important and illuminating, because we often are very 
confused about just such trivialities and necessities. (p. 57)
 Phenomenological statements are so basic, so unavoidable, that the importance of 
stating the obvious becomes obvious itself, according to Sokolowski. They are 
statements describing the things surrounding or constituting the context in which 
experience was articulated or provided. They are statements about the experience 
described. They also are hypotheses about the possible essences of the thing under 
study. Further, and in the end, they are definitions of the thing being researched. 
Overall, they are non-judgmental observations. They are statements conveying 
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 acceptance of the qualities of the thing under investigation. This step helps to further 
open the researcher?s mind, to possibilities, new ways of thinking, and new ideas.
 An adequate phenomenological statement means that the statement is precise, 
that all vagueness has been purged. It means all the dimensions of the subject or thing, 
in this case investigative reporting about the environment, have been brought out, all 
the implications have been drawn (Sokolowski, 2000, p. 58). This comes from 
considering all dimensions of a question or idea or thing, and taking all considerations 
into account. A phenomenological statement further clarifies a notion or concept 
through this process. Consequently, phenomenological statements are necessary 
although apparently obvious.
 An example of non-judgmental observation/phenomenological statements 
comes from my process notes written immediately after my first interview with David 
Helvarg, the first of 18 conducted for this study. It illustrates how I attempted to avoid 
interpreting, explaining, and constructing meaning in my notes ? three qualities the 
literature directs researchers to avoid in their process notes, analyses, and eventually 
their statements about the thing under scrutiny. From my notes,
 David Helvarg?s office in the Carnegie Building just off DuPont Circle 
in Washington, D.C. is a cubical in Ralph Nader?s digs partitioned by weighty 
metal bookshelves and file cabinets. David is ending a strong freelance 
reporting and producing career to become an activist protecting oceans from 
pollution and destruction. As such he has established the Oceans Awareness 
Project, a non-profit organization to educate and inspire legislation that will 
restore and preserve the world?s oceans. In that respect, he is returning to work 
he did before becoming a journalist working in radio, television, and print. As 
a war correspondent, he provided reports about urban warfare in Northern 
Ireland, and later for the Associated Press in Nicaragua during the Sandinista 
uprising.
 The color in his office space comes from covers of the books he?s 
written, articles bearing his byline, and white cardboard storage cases around 
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 black videotapes he has prepared to promote his cause. The one wall, which his 
metal desk is pushed against, is dirty white and displays rugged ocean location 
photos too small for the wall.
 David is proud of his new Macintosh ibook ? a small computer with a 
center ?finger? mouse ? centered on the large desk. The computer is as silver 
as David?s hair, long for these times and cut in a modified shag. He is a short 
man, nimble and toned. My impression is there is nothing flashy about David 
except, perhaps, his memory, ability to integrate details, and storytelling skill. I 
hand David the human subjects release form and leave the cubicle. I return and 
he hands it to me immediately. He begins talking about his new not-for-profit. 
I start the tape and hand it to him to speak into. The first thing he speaks into 
the tape is the date and time of the interview. I later learn he is a private 
investigator on the side. 
In the beginning David provides an introduction by way of his many 
career stories. I notice that even though I have explained that this first 
interview will focus on his experience prior to becoming an investigative 
reporter, he has difficulty thinking in that box. But around the fifth question I 
reiterate the interview?s priority and he divulges that investigative reports were 
not generally discussed in his family when he was growing up in Queens and 
Great Neck, New York, nor did he tend to read them in the newspaper or watch 
them on TV.
 Sorting the Data
 As with all methods and methodologies, phenomenology is a process or system 
designed with a certain aim in mind. Investigative reports, in general, begin the same 
way. The secret of the process is the confidence that there is always something to be 
seen and something to be said (Giorgi, 1989). As explained, the standards of rigor for 
phenomenological inquiry begin with the epoche, followed by the writing of process 
notes. Data are then gathered through interviews and observations, more notes on the 
process are recorded, then the data are analyzed. As with all methods, it is essential to 
keep notes on the process itself throughout the research to learn about the method, 
what and how it yields results, and shortfalls and strengths of the method for providing 
the desired yields or insights from this practice.
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 Prior to analysis, the data are sorted following five steps described by Denzin 
(1989b, pp. 55-56), which I have added specifics to for clarity, to make it easier to see 
how this process relates to the topic under investigation in this writing, and also how it 
applies in the newsroom: (1) locate key statements that speak directly to investigative 
environment reporting; (2) interpret the possible meanings of those statements in and 
out of context after all the research is gathered; (3) for the sake of authenticity, 
confirm the interpretation of the researcher with those interviewed; (4) inspect the 
meanings of statements common to all interviewees for what they reveal about the 
essential, recurring features of investigative reporting about the environment; and (5) 
offer a tentative statement or definition of investigative reporting and advocacy based 
on findings in Step 4. 
Phenomenological Interviewing
 Giorgi (1985, 1989) described a three-step process for phenomenological 
interviewing based on Merleau-Ponty?s articulation of the research method. The three 
steps are: (1) obtain descriptions of the experience (data); (2) sort out the experiences 
by listening actively and impartially (reduction); and (3) search for essences 
(analysis). Giorgi (1989) cautions researchers that to obtain a description does not 
mean to explain or construct (see process notes about David Helvarg under 
?Phenomenological Statements?).
 The interviews in this study were conducted following the approach to 
phenomenological interviewing described by Marshall and Rossman (1999) and 
devised by Seidman (1998, in Marshall and Rossman, p. 112-113). It prescribes that
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 interview questions ask the how and what of the interviewee?s experience. No probing 
questions asking why something occurred are to be used, based on the idea that the 
concern of the study is to describe the thing itself, not explain its cause and effect. In 
particular, Marshall and Rossman describe a set of three interviews to conduct, each 
with a precise focus (specifics added for clarity): (1) past experience with investigative 
reporting and environmental concerns; (2) present experience with investigative 
reporting and concerns about the environment; and (3) the individual?s essential 
experience with investigative reporting about the environment.
 Reflections on the Interview Process
 This formulaic approach proved too constraining to provide verisimilitude. 
And, it broke down communication. First, it created for me an abundance of 
redundancy. The repetitiveness gave participants the impression I had not listened 
actively to their responses. As such, it appeared to undermine communication, even 
with the most patient and tolerant subjects. That resulted in frustration on both ends. 
The formula also turned the interview into a kind of survey, giving some participants 
the mistaken impression I had an agenda and was not open to new or unfamiliar ideas 
and possibilities. The initial interview protocol may be found in Appendix C. 
For these reasons I abandoned the approach mid-way in favor of what I have 
come to understand is a more traditional approach to phenomenological interviewing, 
yet I did not go back and re-interview the subjects using the new approach. In this 
respect, the problems presented by a structured interview led me to apply grounded 
theory in this research, and at this point. That realization showed me the necessity of 
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 connecting the method applied in research to a theory also applied in the research. The 
notion of grounded theory is elaborated upon in the next chapter.
 Returning to interviewing, the older approach has no formula, no prescription, 
instead letting the interviews inform each other as the researcher moves from subject 
to subject, just as in grounded theory. In this approach, why questions may be asked to 
probe for understanding, and the interview centers around a handful of questions ?
 maybe five at the most ? then relies on what comes from listening, just like in 
journalism. That process prompts new ideas, thoughts, connections, and thus 
questions. This is the way subsequent interviews got at the heart of the phenomenon in 
question. This type of interview approach is not controlled through structure and 
categorization, rather it lets categories emerge on their own, through the interviewee 
rather than imposed by the interviewer, the very thing grounded theory was designed 
to do. 
The older approach made the interviewees more comfortable, and me, too. All 
three interviews with Tom Bayles and Paul Rogers were conducted in this traditional 
manner. The last of three interviews with David Helvarg followed this approach as 
well. That occurred because the interviews with Helvarg were scheduled over several 
months due to travel and other constraints. 
When given the latitude to provide their experience as they understood it, using 
the traditional approach to phenomenological inquiry, responses came out in a holistic 
manner, full of essence. They not only provided past and present experience in context 
and their relationship to each other, but also came upon revelations that did not surface 
with the more structured approach. There was more spontaneity in the responses, 
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 which sometimes stimulated the interviewee to make internal connections that person 
had not previously made between the experiences relayed, particularly in Bayles? case. 
Therefore, it can be said that the latitude of the traditional approach allowed the 
interviewer and interviewee to communicate with greater understanding. The result of 
the traditional approach appears to be richer research. 
The richness of the traditional approach compared to the contemporary 
approach provided in Marshall and Rossman (1999) is evident in process notes written 
after my first interview with Paul Rogers:
 Phenomenological structure broke the flow of conversation. Information too 
light. Form too highly structured. Good idea to tap those aspects (past, present, 
and essential experience with phenomenon) but too difficult for interviewee to 
separate types of experience ? past, present. Shifted to traditional approach at 
top of first interview. Result: Better. Holistic approach more natural for both 
parties. More of the essence of the phenomenon under question secured.
 To elaborate, it was shortly after the first minutes of the first of three in-depth 
interviews with Rogers that I shifted gears, seeing how eager he was to speak to the 
question of whether investigative reporting was advocacy, and whether doing it on the 
environment beat necessarily constituted advocacy. I say, ?necessarily constituted 
advocacy? because all of the respondents said we are entitled to clean air, clean land, 
and clean water, which suggests they collectively believe there is no other side to 
environmental issues, just a debate about how clean is clean, which is dictated by 
government, corporate and activist influences and the subject of some news reports 
about the environment.
 It stands to reason, then, that an interview approach that is open, flexible, and 
that relies on active listening works best in the phenomenological paradigm. I learned 
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 from this experience that phenomenological interviews glean essences only when the 
subject has the latitude to express those essences as understood, not in the sequence 
the interviewer might seek to hear them. Also, phenomenological interviewing seems 
to work best when the researcher goes in with only a few questions and an open mind. 
From there it is a matter of listening actively and with the purpose of keeping the 
interview on track and within the agreed upon time limit, just like in journalism. 
Several interviewees? minds wandered far off the subject using the contemporary 
method, which had them delving into childhood experiences as adults.
 For my purposes, I also asked questions about what the person gets out of the 
experience of doing investigative reporting about the environment, and why that 
person would or would not want to repeat the experience. I took as my hypothesis the 
premise that these meanings guide actions and interpretations that lead to answers 
about the meanings the experience has for the individuals participating in the study. 
Limitations of the Method
 Phenomenological process has been used widely in business and by 
government agencies with some success when applied within its limitations. 
Facilitators often rely on the method. Generalizations derived from phenomenology?s 
logic system tend to hold true when confined to the thing itself and/or the group under 
study. Attempts to extend descriptions provided by the method beyond the subject of 
inquiry seem doomed to fail.
 For example, when a government agency in 2003 directed one of its advisory 
committees to use the process to create a standard that would apply to all subsets of a 
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 certain program within the agency, it did not work because each subset operates 
differently. The story follows, minus certain specifics to respect a confidentiality 
agreement.
 Case Study
 A federal government agency sought to identify which factors have the biggest 
impact on the costs and timing of a thing (Step: eidetic intuition). As goals, they 
decided to develop a rating system that could eventually be used to relate the things? 
complexity to cost and timing impacts, and help program personnel project and assess 
costs and productivity, such as how many of the things could be produced within what 
period of time and at what cost.
 The agency decided to develop a list of factors associated with the complexity 
of producing the thing (Step: locate key phrases and statements that speak directly to 
the thing in question). They based those factors on input received during a bi-annual 
meeting of employees involved in the thing, and earlier ?team meeting? summaries, 
related reports, and other relevant documents (Step: interpret the meaning of those 
statements). They then forwarded that list to a subcommittee of industry stakeholders 
for their suggestions (Step: confirm interpretations).
 The subcommittee revised the list in two stages. First, it expanded it to cover 
all the factors they could conceive (Husserl?s approach to imaginative variation). 
Second, they cut it to reduce redundancy (Kant?s way of imaginative variation), and to 
highlight those factors seeming to have the biggest impact. In the end, they came up 
with a list of 19 factors in four categories that describe the thing in all its complexity.
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 That list located areas of greatest complexity, but did not offer ways to simplify them.
 In an attempt to develop a rating system, which was the second goal the agency 
sought to achieve, the subcommittee tried to assess how different factors effect the 
overall complexity of the project, and planned to eventually relate that information to 
specific cost and time impacts (Step: inspect the meanings of the statements for what 
they reveal about the essential, recurring features of the thing). To create a rating 
system, the subcommittee first attempted to develop scales for each of the different 
factors, and based them on a factor?s potential impact on the project?s overall 
complexity (Step: again, imaginative variation).
 The attempt to create the rating system using this logic process failed. Factors 
derived from phenomenological reduction are individualistic and not generalizable 
across categories. For instance, that which is true for investigative reporting about the 
environment may offer clues to where to search for comparisons within environment 
reporting in general, investigative reporting in general, and more broadly, reporting in 
general; but a statement about investigative reporting about the environment alone 
cannot be generalized without parallel studies for comparison with investigative 
reporting on other topics (again, correspondence theory of truth). 
The government agency in this story was attempting to create a set of standards 
that would apply to all of their components in an attempt to do the thing more 
efficiently. But each component operates differently. Thus, the agency quickly proved 
that each subset required its own rating system in order to perceive essences accurately 
and make sound economic decisions for the agency as a result. 
As explained in this chapter, lessons gleaned from the phenomenological
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 interview process initially applied here led me to use grounded theory in this study. 
The coupling seemed to provide verisimilitude, as demonstrated by the findings 
located in the following chapter and my conclusions about them.
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 CHAPTER 4 
THEORY
 This section describes the process by which this researcher made discoveries 
about investigative reporting concerning the environment, and how the ideas emerged. 
What does investigative reporting about the environment tell us about advocacy in 
journalism today and journalism at the turn of this century? A significant theory about 
environment reporting and journalism revealed itself through the grounded theory 
process. 
Grounded theory aims to produce a mid-range theory ? that is, one preceding a 
broader and perhaps more significant observation. A mid-range theory can be 
understood as a step taken to move a concept to into a realm that reveals the notion as 
part of a greater whole. In other words, locating a mid-range theory may lead to a new 
robust one. 
Grounded Theory Defined
 Grounded theory focuses on the process of generating theory, emphasizing 
steps and procedures for connecting induction and deduction through constant 
comparison (Patton, 2002, p. 125). Its methods are systematic and specific, and follow 
two distinct variations: one constructivist, and the other objectivist. Overall, grounded 
theory, first articulated by Glaser and Strauss in 1967, aims to consider alternative 
meanings of phenomenon. In that respect, it is compatible with the phenomenological 
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 approach to reasoning. When applied in this research, the two appeared to enhance 
each other. Like phenomenology, grounded theory emphasizes being systematic and 
creative at the same time. Its application appears to be especially powerful for 
considering information gained through interviewing. Grounded theory?s structure of 
analysis is aimed at identifying building blocks that may lead to a holistic theory. The 
central question grounded theory attempts to answer is ?What is happening here?? 
(Charmaz, 2002, in Gubrium and Holstein, p. 675). The question is phrased slightly 
differently in phenomenology. Phenomenology asks, ?What is the essence of the lived 
experience as described by those having the experience?? Grounded theory, like 
phenomenology, relies on first-hand experience with the phenomenon in question. 
Components of Grounded Theory
 Like phenomenology, grounded theory depends on methods that take the 
researcher into and close to the real world so that the results and findings are grounded 
in the empirical world (Patton, 2002, p. 125).  That is, the roots of the research are in 
everyday experience rather than hypotheses and theories. The goal of this approach is 
to keep the research on-the-ground, so-to-speak, and produce a theory that is relevant, 
applicable, and significant for understanding the world around us.
 Several layers of checks exist to make sure the researcher is providing an 
accurate and balanced observation of the data collected. The steps are done 
concurrently while collecting research. In other words, data analysis begins right 
away. In grounded theory, the researcher adapts interview questions based on what the 
researcher needs to learn and/or verify at any given point in the research process. 
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 Consequently, the researcher talks with the interviewees as necessary following the 
initial interviews.
 To begin analysis, the researcher transcribes the interviews fully, then applies a 
two-step process for coding data. The first is called initial coding. It is line-by-line 
coding. In this part, the researcher considers each line of a story or statement told by 
an interviewee and reduces each line to key words and phrases that indicate what is 
happening in the story being told by the interviewee. This is done by creating two 
columns ? one showing the story as told, and the other showing the researcher?s 
coding. The second step in this layer is called focused or selective coding. It is a 
process of reduction. Again, the researcher looks at the entire story as told, but codes 
the content only where there are significant shifts or revelations in the story. 
The first level is done to force the researcher to begin to make analytic 
decisions about the data. The second forces the researcher to identify the codes 
appearing the most frequently and use them to sort, synthesize, and conceptualize 
large amounts of data. Coding, then, helps researchers capture categories that 
simultaneously describe and dissect the data. As Charmaz (2002) describes, 
In essence, coding is a form of shorthand that distills events and meanings 
without losing their essential properties. During the coding process, the 
researcher (a) studies the data before consulting the scholarly literature, (b) 
engages in line-by- line coding, (c) uses active terms to define what is 
happening in the data, and (d) follows leads in the initial coding through 
further data gathering. (in Gubrium and Holstein, 2002, p. 684) 
In this respect, coding in grounded theory is aligned with reduction in 
phenomenological research practices.
 The second level of rigor in grounded theory is memo writing. Akin to the
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 researcher?s process notes, they define the properties of each category identified in the
  coding, specifying conditions under which each developed, is maintained, and 
changes. The memos also note the consequences of each category and its relationships 
with other categories. In the end, the researcher takes the categories identified and 
draws examples from these memos to illustrate each category. The aim of this 
standard of rigor is to connect the researcher?s original interpretations with the data 
and help the researcher avoid forcing data into existing theories. 
Charmaz writes that memo writing helps grounded theorists: (1) stop and think 
about the data; (2) spark ideas to check out in further interviews; (3) discover gaps in 
earlier interviews; (4) treat qualitative codes as categories to analyze; (5) clarify 
categories ? define them, state their properties, delineate their conditions, 
consequences, and connections with other categories; and (6) make explicit 
comparisons ? data with data, category with category, concept with concept (p. 687). 
Like the epoche described in the previous chapter as a phenomenological standard of 
rigor, memos in grounded theory sometimes read like stream-of-consciousness letters, 
other times like focused analysis. Both the epoche and memo tend to increase the 
researcher?s sense of confidence and competence, according to Charmaz (2002).
 Another layer, one not pursued for this research, is theoretical sampling. 
Theoretical sampling, as defined by Charmaz (p. 689), is sampling to develop the 
researcher?s theory, not to represent a population. This endows grounded theory 
studies with their analytic power. In this step, the researcher returns to the field or 
seeks new cases to develop and expand categories. In this respect, parallels may be 
drawn between grounded theory and phenomenology concerning expansion. Again, as 
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 described by Charmaz, theoretical sampling helps grounded theorists: (1) gain rich 
data; (2) fill out theoretical categories; (3) discover variation within theoretical 
categories; and (4) define gaps within and between categories (p. 689). Theoretical 
sampling aims to sharpen concepts and deepen analysis to help the work gain clarity 
and generality that transcends the immediate topic. As evidenced by the latter two 
theories mentioned earlier, this process can lead to potent yields.
 The last phase of rigor in grounded theory is integrating the analysis. It is 
putting the memos and data together in an order that makes sense to the researcher. In 
this respect, the researcher creates the order and makes connections for the reader, just 
like in journalism. In this last phase, an attempt is made to reflect the logic of a 
participant?s experience and provide verisimilitude. The steps to do so vary, but 
generally include sorting the memos by category title, mapping ways the ideas 
connect, and choosing an order that works for the analysis and the prospective 
audience, just like in investigative reporting. And, just as in trend stories in journalism, 
grounded theory interviews are used to tell a collective story, not an individual tale 
told in a single interview. The power of grounded theory methods lies in the 
researcher?s piecing together a theoretical narrative that has explanatory and predictive 
power, just like the new category of investigative reporting seeming to emerge from 
coverage of the environment. 
Approaches to Grounded Theory
 There are two camps in grounded theory. One approaches grounded theory 
from the point of view of constructivism while the other makes its approach from 
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 objectivism. In the most general terms, constructivism refers to the theory that 
knowledge is not something we acquire but something we produce. In other words, 
constructivists hold that the substance of an area of inquiry is not there to be 
discovered but is invented or constructed (Mautner, 1999, p. 111). The notion of 
constructivism itself includes many branches, among them ethical constructivism and 
social constructionism.
 Ethical constructivism is the notion that moral facts and truths either are 
constituted by or dependent on our moral beliefs, reactions, or attitudes. In this view, 
given equally coherent epistemic conditions, the truth or lack of it in a particular moral 
belief is predicated on a moral system or code (Audi, 1999, p. 283). Social 
constructivism holds that knowledge is the product of our social practices and 
institutions, or of the interactions and negotiations between social groups. In the 
mildest form of this view, social factors shape interpretations of the world. Stronger 
versions maintain that the world, or some significant portion of it, somehow is 
constituted by theories, practices, and institutions. Social constructivism has roots in 
Kant?s idealism, which claims that we cannot know things in themselves and that 
knowledge of the world is possible only by imposing pre-given categories of thought 
on otherwise inchoate experience. But where Kant believed that the categories are 
given a priori, contemporary constructivists believe the relevant concepts and 
associated practices vary from one group or historical period to another. Since there 
are no independent standards for evaluating conceptual schemes, social constructivism 
leads naturally to relativism (Audi, 1999, p. 855).
 Charmaz (2002) provides that all variations of grounded theory include six
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 categories of rigor. They are: (1) simultaneous data collection and analysis; (2) pursuit 
of emergent themes through early data analysis; (3) discovery of basic social processes 
within the data; (4) inductive construction of abstract categories that explain and 
synthesize these processes; (5) sampling to refine the categories through comparative 
processes; and (6) integration of categories into a theoretical framework that specifies 
causes, conditions, and consequences of the studied processes (p. 677). 
As explained by Charmaz, the constructivist approach to grounded theory 
places priority on the phenomena of study and sees both data and analysis as created 
from the shared experiences of researcher and participants and the researcher?s 
relationships with participants. In this view, any method is always a means rather than 
an end in itself. In this view, data analysis is perceived as a construction that not only 
locates the data in time, place, culture, and context, but also reflects the researcher?s 
thinking (p. 677).
 In contrast, objectivist grounded theory assumes that data represent objective 
facts about a knowable world. This position holds that the data already exist in the 
world and the researcher?s task is to find them. In this view, meaning is in the data and 
the grounded theorist discovers it. This perspective assumes an external reality 
awaiting discovery and an unbiased observer who records facts about it (p. 677).
 Charmaz also explains that objectivist grounded theorists make four other 
assumptions: (1) that research participants can and will relate the significant facts 
about their situations; (2) that the researcher remains separate and distant from 
research participants and their realities; (3) that the researcher represents the 
participants and their realities as an external authority; and (4) that the research report 
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 offers participants a useful analysis of their situations. As Charmaz has observed, 
interviewers who subscribe to these assumptions look for explicit themes, gather 
findings, and treat their analytic renderings as objective, just like some journalists 
attempt to do.
 The approach Charmaz takes to grounded theory, and the one that makes the 
most sense to this researcher, is a symbolic interactionist theoretical perspective with 
constructivist methods. Both symbolic interactionism and constructivism emphasize 
the study of how action and meaning are constructed. In this approach, the researcher 
aims to learn the implicit meanings relevant experiences have for study participants 
and build a conceptual analysis of them. Charmaz?s approach to grounded theory 
hinges on three assumptions: (1) multiple realities exist; (2) data reflect the 
researcher?s and the research participants? mutual constructions; and (3) the 
researcher, however incompletely, enters and is affected by participants? worlds. This 
approach explicitly provides an interpretive portrayal of the studied world, not an 
exact picture of it, just like interpretative reporting.
 This research was conducted by adhering to objectivist assumptions while also 
following Charmaz?s approach. Together, they seem to have forced to the surface the 
notion that there is a time and place for constructivism in journalism. It appears 
another appropriate term for advocacy journalism might be constructivist journalism.
 However, the notion of constructivist journalism could also take in the sort of 
investigative reporting done by Schapiro in the example cited earlier. In that context, it 
could be said that this new form mixes constructivism and objectivism together and 
makes dough out of them. For a long time they have been in the kitchen together on 
148
 separate shelves; but together they put a new arrow in the investigative reporting 
quiver. The findings that follow in the next chapter shed light on what the reporters 
interviewed are doing that led me to that notion. 
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 CHAPTER 5
 FINDINGS
 This section considers data that reveal what drives and motivates the six  
journalists participating in this study to collect and write investigative news reports 
about the environment. Based on their self-perceptions, the data present what 
investigative reporting about the environment means to the study participants, what 
they get out of it, and whether they include what they view as advocacy as part of their 
job description. Also noted are the boundaries study participants used to define 
advocacy, journalism, and investigative reporting. A brief profile of each participant 
can be found in Appendix B along with detailed responses to specific questions 
intended to elucidate meaning based on their personal experience with investigative 
reporting on subjects involving the environment.
 Responses generally fell into 12 categories: (1) view of investigative reporting; 
(2) criteria for moving the public; (3) the reporter?s investigative reporting procedure; 
(4) the reporter?s attraction to environment reporting; (5) view of advocacy and 
environment reporting; (6) view of investigative reporting in relation to advocacy 
journalism; (7) personal lessons learned from environment reporting; (8) personal 
lessons learned from investigative reporting about the environment; (9) realities of the 
environment beat; (10) what makes environment reporting meaningful for the reporter 
interviewed; (11) what makes investigative reporting meaningful for the reporter 
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 interviewed; and (12) the future of environment reporting as perceived by study
 participants.
 Other categories included for some, but not all, participants based on responses 
are: (1) types of environment reporters; (2) types of investigative reporters; (3) 
journalistic responsibility; (4) description of journalists in general, and (5) attraction to 
journalism and investigative reporting. Further, most, but not all, study participants 
articulated personal lessons gleaned from the experience of reporting about the 
environment, from investigative reporting about the environment, or from 
investigative reporting in general. All of the following quotes were taken from the 
interviews conducted for this research on location between March and May 2003.
 View of Investigative Reporting
 Specifically, participants were asked in one interview to describe what they 
knew about investigative reporting before they had any experience with it, and in a 
second one to compare what they knew prior to their experience with what they know 
now. Only Pekow, with his extensive experience with Freudian psychotherapy, was 
able to articulate the two experiences separately. All other participants provided 
integrated responses.
 Also, participants were asked to describe investigative reporting about the 
environment. In general, participants did so by providing examples illustrating what 
they do. While each participant gave examples relating to investigative reports about 
the environment, only two provided a view of investigative reporting concerning the 
environment.
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 Chart 3: SELECTED DEMOGRAPHICS OF STUDY PARTICIPANTS
 Study
 Participants
 Intro. to I.R. Medium
 Rogers not indicated newspaper
 Helvarg Watergate, John Reed, 
Carleton Beals, Upton 
Sinclair, ?Harvest of Shame? 
(Murrow)
 all
 Bayles ?All the President?s Men? NP, TV, online
 Willman Arizona Republic newspaper  
investigation establishing IRE, 
?All the President?s Men?
 radio
 Pekow Watergate, Jack Anderson, 
Ralph Nader, Mike Royko, 
Upton Sinclair, ?Harvest of 
Shame? and ?See it Now? 
(Murrow)
 magazines
 Meersman not indicated newspaper
 Study
 Participants
 Level of Education Awards
 Rogers 2 Bachelor?s ? journalism, 
political science
 Pulitzer+
 Helvarg Bachelor?s ? history Emmys+
 Bayles Bachelor?s ? Education
 Master?s ? Journalism
 Two-time Pulitzer 
Nominee+
 Willman Master?s ? Environment & 
Community (no bachelor?s)
 Murrow+
 Pekow Bachelor?s ? Government
 Master?s ? Journalism
 Nat?l Press Club, 
Am.  Newspaper 
Assn.+
 Meersman Bachelor?s ? English
 Master?s ? English
 John B. Oakes 
national award 
for distinguished 
environmental 
journalism, 
National 
Headliners Award 
for radio 
documentary+ 
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 All described their perception of investigative reporting as well as their 
experience with it in ways congruous with the literature. Consistent themes were: (1) 
time-consuming, (2) labor- intensive, (3) hard evidence collection including documents 
and records required to support claims, (4) quest for truth, (5) watchdog for truth, (6) 
story reveals and/or stems from wrongdoing, (7) 16-hour days, (8) operating on not 
enough sleep, (9) working toward something you believe in, (10) requires tenacity, 
humility, excellent organization skills, (11) requires a sense of justice and injustice, 
passion for facts, outrage, (12) requires an ability to ask the right question, (13) 
requires an ability to think fast under pressure, and (14) demands a sense of humor of 
the reporter. Participants stressed that investigative reports, unlike other kinds, are 
edited line-by- line, word-by-word, and often reviewed by a lawyer prior to 
publication. A surprise was that newspaper reporters working on an investigative 
project are removed from their ?home? desk in the newsroom to a kind of cloister with 
other members of the reporting team while working on the project. Two of three 
newspaper reporters participating in this study described that segregation as 
unpleasant, but necessary.  
In their own words, the participants viewed investigative reporting as:
 WILLMAN: ?Document work, to me, is in a sense investigative reporting. It means 
connecting the dots. It?s finding the threads...and the commonality amongst those 
things.?
 PEKOW: ?A report covers. An investigative report uncovers. You have to be able to 
get doors slammed in your face, get people to talk who don?t want to talk, and be able 
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 to spot a needle in a haystack. Investigative reporting requires persistence more than 
intelligence.?
 BAYLES: ?An investigative reporter is a master reporter. It?s a person [adept] at 
making sources into best friends. You may not see your byline for a year while you?re 
doing [an investigative report]. That?s tough. But it?s really cool to [hear that] you 
don?t have to file a story for the foreseeable future ? just go [pursue a lead]. Not only 
is it cool to be relieved from the daily grind, but...it?s a heart-warming testament to 
your boss? belief in your ability to get the job done and be a self-starter. Not everyone 
is a self-starter.? He added, ?The essence of investigative reporting is truth.?
 HELVARG: ?Much investigative journalism lacks a kind of writing that connects to 
people?s lives. You have to take investigative journalism skills and use them to tell 
stories and impart information in a way that has a personal and visceral connect to the 
reader.?
 MEERSMAN: ?Trying to set a good story in context, to broaden it, and make it 
significant [for more] people. ...Investigative reporting is all part of the same 
continuity.? 
ROGERS: ?[Investigative reporting] is exhausting. ...When I was in the middle of [an] 
investigative report [about cow grazing], I wanted to quit. I was miserable. And I 
realized, this isn?t just me! It?s a really fun way to make a living.?
 Of investigative reporting about the environment, Rogers and Meersman alone 
offered descriptions:
 ROGERS: ?The very best investigative stories combine the outrage of some kind of 
environmental degradation with the outrage of taxpayer rip-off.?
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 MEERSMAN: ?An awful lot of environment reporting is investigative. ...There?s a lot 
of potential there for stories to be much broader...without having to be major 
investigations that come up with some big ?Gotcha!??
 Criteria for Moving the Public
 Each participant described how they ?hook? their audiences with their 
investigative stories. Their offerings included everything provided in the literature, 
such as how many people the story impacts, whether there is a conflict, whether the 
story is unusual, contrarian, and whether there is an outrage factor for anyone involved 
in the story. All also said their criteria included presenting information in a balanced 
way, in context, for public discussion.
 Pekow added that he tries to find something that is not obvious and deliver an 
artful telling of the story. Meersman added the requirements to be curious and care. 
?Journalism?s way of moving the public is through reporting, not persuasive writing, 
he said. Along with Helvarg, Meersman said let the facts lead to the conclusion rather 
than starting with a conclusion and locating facts to support it, an approach found in 
academic literature under the heading of objectivist grounded theory. Helvarg phrased 
it this way: ?What is the story the facts are telling?? Bayles added that investigative 
reports must be written with the voice of authority in order to be effective. ?The voice 
of authority comes by being fair in the way the story gets framed in the newspaper,? 
he said, explaining the tie between voice and balance. His criteria also includes 
dedication to bringing clarity to the situation being investigated, in an effort to reveal 
truth, and establish oneself as an independent thinker. 
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 Helvarg, who has a substantial amount of experience with immersion 
journalism on location from Antarctica to Ireland, the United States to Eastern Europe 
to Central America, added four points to the literature addressing ways of capturing 
audience attention. According to Helvarg, the reporter should: (1) be possessed by the 
story; (2) examine what the story tells the reporter about him or her self; (3) illustrate 
the human condition and show how it is changed by circumstances and events; and (4) 
select the story?s components depending on what the reporter perceives is the 
substance of the story, the nuances that prompted the investigation, and the story?s 
impact on democracy and injustice.
 Investigative Reporting Technique
 Study participants talked a lot about investigative reporting technique. 
Meersman begins with writing down a handful of questions prior to doing any 
research and answer them first. This provides grounding for the story, he said, helping 
the reporter stay focused on what a regular person might want to know about the story. 
It also provides a reality check in the research process later on, like bracketing in 
phenomenological research.
 Bayles begins with a Lexis-Nexis search to discover what has been written on 
the subject and where the holes are in the topic. Then, like Meersman, he writes an 
outline. The outline follows a five-point storytelling format Bayles created that he uses 
for every investigative story he writes. But first he puts on paper a sense of where he is 
going with the story and writes a rough lede. He uses that to sell his editors on the 
story. When it is time to write, Bayles tells each story in the series following this 
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 format: (1) describe the concept in four or five paragraphs; (2) write the first subhead, 
followed by paragraphs describing the breadth of the problem and what the report 
looks into; (3) write the second subhead, followed by paragraphs filled with the 
?meat? of the report: statistics and arguments; (4) write the third subhead, followed by 
paragraphs providing a response from all sides; and (5) end with an anecdote, 
something whimsical. 
Willman slotted his technique into three categories: (1) understand what you 
are investigating; (2) protect your sources ? get permission as needed; and (3) talk to 
everyone involved and address all facets of the story. Pekow provided a similar 
description of his process, but added that stories about the environment usually have 
fewer witnesses to a problem and therefore require scientific documentation as well as 
the usual evidence.
 Investigative Reporting Procedure
 While all study participants said investigative reporting procedures are 
individualistic, all six follow the Paul Williams Way ? described earlier ? in one form 
or another. The approach is the guide endorsed and taught by Investigative Reporters 
& Editors (IRE) for producing verifiable and credible investigative reports. Whether 
freelancer or staff member, regardless of medium, study participants consistently ask 
or are asked: (1) Is there a story? (2) Is it a go? (3) Is it worth it to do this story? (4) 
What evidence is in-hand? (5) What evidence is needed? and (6) Where is the story 
leading? All of those questions constitute the Paul Williams Way described in the 
literature synthesis. 
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 With near precision, all three newspaper reporters described the Paul Williams 
Way in detail as the process applied in their newsrooms. The two freelancers (Helvarg 
and Pekow) and Willman (radio) were less specific with their descriptions but adhered 
to its tenets in examples they provided.
 Discoveries About Process 
In describing the process they use from beginning to end when doing an 
investigative report about the environment, some study participants unknowingly 
revealed that their approaches add two steps to the Paul Williams Way, outlined in 
Chapter 2. Those two steps are found in the phenomenological research process. They 
are bracketing, or the epoche; and the writing of process notes to help sort data. The 
Paul Williams Way concentrates on sorting the data, the third part of 
phenomenological research process. 
In phenomenology, the 10 questions constituting the method?s rigor when it?s 
time to sort data are:
 (1) What is the aim of the investigation?
 (2) What can be seen?
 (3) What can be said?
 (4) What statements speak directly to the subject?
 (5) What ideas and concepts surface when the statements are taken out of 
      context?
 (6) What are the strengths of this investigation?
 (7) What are the shortfalls?
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 (8) Double check interpretations with source.
 (9) Inspect the meanings of statements common to all interviewees for what 
      they reveal about the essential, recurring features of the thing under 
      investigation.
 (10) Offer a tentative statement of definition of the thing under investigation.
 In contrast, the steps in the Paul Williams Way (1978, p. 14) have been set forth by 
him as:
 (1) Conception
 (2) Feasibility study
 (3) Go/no-go decision
 (4) Planning and base-building
 (5) Original research
 (6) Re-evaluation
 (7) Go/no-go decision
 (8) Key interviews
 (9) Final evaluation
 (10) Final go/no-go decision
 (11) Writing and publication.
 Phenomenological research seeks to answer a question rather than prove something. In 
that respect, the question is akin to Williams? conception phase, and parallels the 
phenomenological question: What is the aim of this investigation, a question that also 
covers the next three stages in Williams? formula. The fifth one, original research, is 
an ethic not specifically addressed in descriptions of phenomenological research. It is 
understood as the researcher?s responsibility to integrity. 
Williams? Step 6, re-evaluation, is embodied in phenomenological research 
question two, which asks: What can be seen? Similarly, Williams? Step 7, another 
go/no-go decision, surfaces in phenomenological rigor this way: What can be said? 
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 That is the checkpoint question editors regularly ask investigative reporters on a 
project to make financial and editorial decisions about whether to proceed with the 
endeavor. 
Next, Williams lists that sorting information pertinent to the aim of the 
investigation from key interviews follows. Phenomenological research process 
addresses that step with the questions: What statements speak directly to the subject? 
What ideas and concepts surface when the statements are taken out of context? 
At this point, Williams recommends a final evaluation of the project. Similarly, 
at this point in the phase in phenomenology governing the sorting of data, standards of 
rigor ask: What are the strengths of this investigation? What are the shortfalls? 
Williams follows that assessment with another go/no-go decision. In phenomenology, 
the researcher at that point double checks his or her interpretations with the source, 
and inspects the meanings of statements common to all interviewees for what they 
reveal about the essential, recurring features of the thing under investigation. Once 
that is done, the researcher completes the study by writing a tentative statement or 
definition of the thing under investigation, and offering that to an audience. Similarly, 
Williams? final step is writing and publication; but it does not specifically require the 
author to make any sort of statement defining the thing under investigation. This is 
significant, because this seems to be a line that some investigative reporters writing 
about the environment have crossed: they have made statements defining the thing 
under investigation, a step beyond merely describing the thing itself. In a 2003 article 
entitled, ?Oil and Water Don?t Mix: Is the U.S. prepared for a major oil spill in its 
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 waters,? for Grist Magazine, an online publication providing environmental news and 
humor, Helvarg rode that line this way:
 [The U.S. Department of the Interior?s Mineral Management Service] 
has long been recognized as a tool of the oil and gas industry. Its mandate to 
increase production and revenue (both for industry and the government 
through royalty payments) continues to supercede its obligation to prevent oil-
 spill disasters in U.S. waters. Decisions such as whether or not to permit 
drilling off the coast of Florida (where the president?s brother is governor) 
seems to be made on a political rather than a scientific basis. When asked why 
MMS has never canceled a lease sale based on its own biologists? oil-spill risk 
assessments, Bob LaBelle, chief of MMS?s Environmental Division, 
responded, ?It?s hard to make or break something as big as a lease on one 
issue.
 There are other risks posed to U.S. waters by the oil industry as well, 
including the security of tanker terminals and coastal refineries, marine 
hydrocarbon pollution from operational leakages in the Gulf of Mexico, and 
the impact on sperm whales and deep-ocean ecosystems from acoustic guns 
used in deep-oil survey work. None of these issues is being adequately 
addressed. For a long time, there has been insufficient public agency oversight 
on these matters; now, unfortunately, we also have an administration that 
seems more concerned with maximizing offshore fossil fuel production than 
with protecting our nation from an environmental disaster like the Prestige 
spill. (http://gristmagazine.com/cgi-bin/printify-2.pl)
 A second contrasting and more mainstream example from Helvarg appeared in 
Popular Science in 2002 under the headline, ?If by Sea.? The second to the last 
paragraph reads:
 Maritime trade is expected to more than double in the next two 
decades. As long as the United States participates in a global consumer culture 
in which exotic amenities [such as bottled water]...are commonplace, our 
maritime transportation system will, by dint of scale, remain vulnerable to 
disruption, sabotage, or terror. (p. 58-67)
 In addition to the process of sorting data just described, which appears to be 
the focus of the Paul Williams Way but only one of three phases of phenomenological 
research, study participants described using bracketing (a phenomenological process) 
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 to check their biases and preconceptions before beginning any research. To review, 
bracketing unfolds this way:
 (1) Empty yourself onto the page. Write down everything you know about the 
thing under investigation prior to doing any research.
 (2) ?Walk around the statue,? looking at it from different perspectives, shifting 
attitudes, looking at the subject differently each time, getting ideas out. 
(3) Identify potential points of bias and preconceptions.
 (4) Scrutinize.
 (5) Generate new questions, new understanding.
 (6) Write statements describing the context of the experience provided. 
(7) Write statements about the experience described, including hypotheses 
about the possible essences of the thing under study. These are definitions of the thing 
being investigative. They are nonjudgmental observations. An adequate 
phenomenological statement is precise: all vagueness has been purged. All the 
dimensions of the subject or thing have been drawn. 
The concept or notion of the thing under investigation is clarified through this 
process, making these statements necessary although apparently obvious. Meersman 
described his approach to bracketing this way: 
...You don?t have a preconceived notion of the story, you investigate, you let 
the facts lay themselves out for you, and that?s what the story is.... [objectivist 
grounded theory]
 Before I get into a project, I try to write down a handful of questions 
that I want to answer, so that I don?t learn too much and forget about what a 
regular person might want to know about this. And maybe some of the 
questions might be pertinent as I learn more. [This step] provides me [with] a
 reality check to go back to. [It gives me a marker for saying] these are 
questions at that point that I thought a regular person would want to know in 
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 terms of information. You can?t neglect these things. You can go deeper if you 
want to, but you have to get these things first because these are the things that 
would come to any reasonable person?s mind when you bring up the topic.
 So when I?ve answered all those questions, and taken it further and 
found new things...sometimes [my editor will] raise the question of whether it 
might be time to start writing. (Appendix B, Tom Meersman)
 Helvarg described ?walking around the statue,? looking at it from different 
perspectives. He simply said, ?Study your interviewee in advance.? Bayles walks 
around the statue by beginning with a Lexis-Nexis search. ?[That] not only gives me a 
knowledge base, because I trust what other papers write, but it shows me where the 
holes are in the [current discussion],? he said. Bayles then outlines the story he?s going 
to go after, ?because at that point I have a pretty good sense of where I?m going.? 
Bayles? rule to end with an anecdote, perhaps something whimsical, seems to correlate 
with the notion that such statements are necessary for perspective and context, 
although apparently obvious. 
Helvarg was the only study participant to describe in discernible terms the 
concept of taking notes on the investigation process, and even his description is 
sketchy. What he recommends is that reporters ? of all stripes, not just investigative 
reporters, or those covering the environment ? transcribe their tapes immediately, 
while they can still decipher their notes. This suggests that the reporter transcribing 
tapes without delay can fill in blanks about the subject under inquiry that may not have 
been obvious before, and raise questions about what is and is not working in the 
investigative reporting process.  
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 Why Environment Reporting? 
All but one reporter cited the perks of environment reporting ? for instance,
 getting paid to go to Yosemite National Park or to be on a boat out in the ocean 
chasing a story inaccessible any other way ? as their first attraction to covering the 
environment. After that, many of the reasons given fell into general categories shared 
by all study participants. They are: (1) it is challenging; (2) it is intriguing; (3) 
everyday it is something completely different (e.g., water pollution one day, 
conservation the next, land use the next; etc.); (4) the stories make a big difference in 
people?s lives; (5) the learning curve is continuous; (6) it is never boring; (7) 
environmental issues are complex and cover many disciplines, including architecture, 
macrobiology, and ethnobotany; and (8) it covers the welfare of wildlife and ecology 
as well as human welfare.
 Both Meersman and Helvarg also said they saw a reporting niche that needed 
filling. They saw environmental problems that were not getting resolved, many of 
them overlooked completely, and wanted those problems to get their due attention. 
Helvarg specifically said the beat had low prestige initially, that reporters who wrote 
about science or nature were not considered serious by their peers who wrote about 
politics, war, economics, business, crime, or public affairs. The investigative reporting 
possibilities Helvarg saw when it came to the environment were too much to resist, he 
explained. ?I saw many investigative reporting opportunities to help inform, broaden, 
and democratize the crucial environmental debates taking place today,? he said. 
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 Advocacy and Environment Reporting
 The study participants all believe the Earth and its inhabitants are entitled to 
clean air, clean land, and clean water. Only one was able to talk about advocacy in
 environment reporting. All others relied on defining or giving a description of 
advocacy in general as they perceive it, and journalism as they perceive it. All 
indicated the standards that define journalism in general hold for anything calling 
itself journalism, which is fairly consistent with the literature. Those standards are 
?fairness,? ?accuracy,? ?balance,? ?fact-based,? ?verifiable,? and backed by evidence 
supporting the report. 
?You gotta prove what you say,? Bayles said. Pekow said, ?As long as it is 
written based on facts, it [can be called] advocacy journalism.? Advocacy, he said,  
should be labeled as such. ?Advocacy is a point of view. Slant is not being fair to one 
side, leaving out part of the story but making it appear otherwise,? Pekow said. Slant 
is never journalism, Pekow said. 
Meersman said, ?To be journalism, it has to be balanced. That is legitimate 
journalism. Anything is fair game as far as topics.? Rogers said, ?The value of the 
conversation, the very integrity of the democratic process, depends on you as a 
reporter holding all sides accountable. Nobody has a monopoly on the truth,? Rogers 
said. ?Your credibility depends on asking difficult questions of all sides.?
 Helvarg, who came to journalism after being an activist for many years, 
stepped back from definitions and looked at environment reporters and their work. 
When he began to meet other investigative reporters covering the environment, he 
observed, ?There was this self-flagellation I found with environment reporters that I 
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 never found with other investigative reporters looking at political corruption or 
national defense issues and AIDS. In the last 30 years, environmentalism has become 
a social ethic. Considering yourself an environmentalist and reporting on the 
environment ? if you?re a good journalist [i.e., one who does not slant facts and other 
information] ? is not different than a national defense reporter considering himself or 
herself a patriot. We have shared values as a society and environmental protection is 
one of them.?
 One cannot be both activist and reporter, Helvarg said. He is speaking as a war 
correspondent now. ?I saw the limits of advocacy reporting in a war zone, where truth 
really is the first casualty,? he said. A journalist is obligated ?to provide a fair and 
honest presentation of the truth? as it is perceived at that moment or risk becoming a 
propagandist, being manipulated, becoming a dupe, Helvarg said. ?We all have a point 
of view, but we can?t ? or we shouldn?t ? cheat with it,? he said, echoing Meersman?s 
words that advocacy journalism could mean someone who lets their feelings get in the 
way of getting as close to the truth as possible. 
Investigative Reporting and Advocacy Journalism
 Returning to the literature synthesis under the heading of ?Attraction to 
Environment Reporting: Advocacy?? beginning in the 1960s, the ideal of objectivity 
was increasingly questioned by scholars and journalists. All participants in this study 
hold there is no such thing as true objectivity, only balance. They collectively said the 
public entrusts journalists to be balanced and fair. Also, they defined journalism in the 
United States as a public forum where information is exchanged so the collective 
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 community, based on generally accepted values, can decide what is right for their 
society. Study participants also all said the ordering of the facts can and does introduce 
a persuasive element to the writing, particularly in an investigative report. 
Consequently, there is no such thing as true objectivity; but there is balance, all study 
participants stressed.
 Bayles added to the literature about advocacy by identifying two types of 
advocacy: (1) self motive, which is equal to lobbying; and (2) advocating on behalf of 
another person. He said it is a news outlet?s responsibility to advocate in some cases. 
For instance, giving an example of his news judgment, Bayles would not endorse 
wife-beating or raping children, and does not think the newspaper he writes for should 
either. Bayles said if he went to a prison to interview a man who had raped a child and 
the man said, yeah, everyone should rape children because it is a great emotional 
release, he would not use that quote because he does not agree with the prisoner?s 
perspective, does not think that raping children is good for society. Balyes said, 
?There are moral imperatives that come before journalistic goals. My duty is to stop 
these things [wife beating, child rape] from happening. Your duty as a citizen 
outweighs your oath as a journalist in most cases. ...You can act the proper way 
journalistically and also do your duty as a citizen.? 
Similarly, he said, if a two-year-old child in the community needed a liver 
transplant but the parents could not afford it, the news outlet could write a profile of 
the family and its struggle, a story depicting the human condition. If that story brings 
in contributions for the child, that is fine, Bayles said. Just by telling the story, the 
news outlet is not advocating for or against transplants, but is displaying compassion, 
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 which is in concert with generally accepted values in the United States. Supporting the 
literature, he said, ?Voice, framing, and point-of-view are the factors that, depending 
on how they are handled, determine whether a piece of writing is advocacy or 
investigative reporting.?
 Study participants supported the literature by categorizing advocacy 
?journalism? as traditional persuasive writing. The difference is that to carry the 
moniker of journalism, writing with a viewpoint must also be fair and balanced, or 
else it is not journalism, and therefore cannot be called advocacy journalism, they 
generally said. It cannot be an article with spin, they said. For instance, Meersman 
said, ?Both [investigative reporting and advocacy journalism] are the same in that they 
raise issues of legitimate concern. The purpose of raising issues is to get them into 
public discussion. They could lead to action. ...But the approach is different. 
Journalism doesn?t take a side.? 
The current debate about advocacy in environment reporting includes these 
questions: Is the environment reporter in it because he or she is an environmentalist? 
Should environment reporters be advocates because of the seriousness of the threat of 
environmental degradation? Are they advocates, regardless of personal belief, simply 
by virtue of placing environmental issues on the nation?s political agenda? When 
should a reporter simply present opposing arguments, and when should he or she feel 
confident enough to take a step further to suggest which of the claims seems to have 
merit?
 Rogers added to that debate with the question, ?Why are you doing this?? a 
question investigative reporters looking into an environmental concern must ask, he 
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 said. If the answer is because the reporter has an allegiance to the truth, then it is 
investigative reporting, Rogers said. If it is to communicate key issues the reporter 
thinks need reform, it is not journalism, he said. That view seemingly discounts 
Helvarg?s War Against the Greens as journalism (see Appendix B, David Helvarg, this 
question ? Helvarg considers his books, Blue Frontier and War Against the Greens his 
?best investigative work.?). 
Helvarg without a doubt demonstrates an allegiance to the truth in both books. 
In both cases he writes from the perspective of a protector, pointing out actions that 
have shaped the reality we know and have assigned meaning to, but that may be 
difficult to understand without seeing those actions gathered under one banner for a 
closer look. In both cases he presents a detailed discussion collecting many 
components ? views, documentation, dramatic action, and peer reviewed science, for 
instance ? leading him to the observations he has set forth. Although his work is 
investigative, Rogers might stop short of calling it journalism, while Pekow might not. 
On this point, Rogers did not address whether an investigative report with allegiance 
to the truth and that includes a conclusion qualifies that report as journalism and 
therefore advocacy journalism, or strictly advocacy writing. 
Drawn out of the literature synthesis, in 1990, Meersman lauded the alternative 
press and advocacy journalists for ventilating issues in a way that forced the major 
press to consider them. He also said some stories warrant a conclusion while others do 
not, stressing that a more important element is what stories are chosen. His views have 
not changed as of this study.
 Study participants almost universally described investigative reporting as an
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 attempt to give the public as much information as possible to help ?consumers? 
develop their thinking about an issue and make decisions for themselves, supporting 
the literature about investigative reporting. Pekow stressed that it is possible to for a 
report to advocate without being investigative, but that there could be a merger 
between the too, supporting Teya Ryan?s position discussed in the literature synthesis. 
Willman cited early muckraking as a kind of advocacy journalism, directly 
saying, ?Muckrakers were advocates. Izzy Stone dug out a lot of important stories. I 
don?t see much of a difference between investigative reporting and muckraking in that 
sense. Good muckraking to me is just good investigative reporting.? Offering an 
example Willman said, ?With what we know today, it?s not fair to say that humans 
aren?t at least partly responsible for global climate change.? 
Personal Lessons From Environment Reporting
 Three of six study participants described personal growth as a reward of 
covering the environment. Another described environment reporting as providing a 
deeper sense of purpose for him because the environment is ?closer to ultimate truth.? 
Another said environment reporting reinforced his love of learning, and one other said 
it reaffirmed for him that life is what we make it. 
Describing the personal impact environment reporting had on him, Rogers 
described a revelation. ?It made me less of an environmentalist than before,? he said 
(see Appendix B, Rogers, this question for details). Rogers said he learned from 
covering the environment that activists for the environment ?will lie to you as much as 
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 government officials will.? He also learned he did not want to be an editor. ?This is 
too much fun,? he said. And perhaps the biggest surprise of all for Rogers, a self-
 described political junkie, was this awakening: ?I?d rather do this than cover the White 
House.?
 Willman said covering the environment gave him a clarity of identity he did 
not have before. Among other things, he learned he was an environmentalist, he said. 
For Helvarg, writing about issues concerning the environment helped refresh his 
commitment to the craft of journalism. ?Seeing the level of passion and commitment 
that many environment reporters, particularly those working outside the United States, 
brought to the beat [was inspiring]. While still critical thinkers, they tend not to fall 
into the traps of cynicism or careerism that many other reporters have. It reminded me 
of the reasons I first got into journalism,? Helvarg said.
 Personal Lessons from Investigative Reporting About the Environment
 Four of six study participants offered responses that fell into this category. 
They are too varied to draw any generalization. While Helvarg and Rogers talked 
about the process of investigative reporting as the root of their lessons, they came from 
different points on the circle, so-to-speak. Helvarg spoke directly to a connection 
between investigative reporting specifically about the environment, what he learned 
about himself, and what he learned about society, while Rogers spoke about what he 
learned about himself from the process of investigative reporting in general. 
Helvarg said he feels that ?too little investigative journalism is focused on the 
economic and political interests driving how people use and abuse critical 
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 ecosystems.? As a result, while continuing to ?follow the money,? he began 
encouraging colleagues in IRE and other journalism groups to see the environment as 
an opportunity for new kinds of storytelling. ?We?re at a critical point,? he said. ?A 
year ago I thought about returning to war reporting in Iraq or becoming an advocate 
for ocean protection, exploration and restoration. In part I decided that while we?ll 
probably always have wars, we may not always have wild fish.? Part of the action he 
plans to take as an advocate is to establish a fellowship for investigative reporting 
about the seas.
 Just as covering the environment give Willman a clarity of identity, so does 
investigative reporting in general give Rogers a clarity of identity he did not have 
before, Rogers said. ?Investigative reporting is harder than I imagined. There?s very, 
very little about the process of investigative reporting that?s rewarding. It?s one of the 
most stressful, miserable things I?ve seen. You run down hundreds of blind alleys, you 
spend many days in the newsroom until midnight going through thousands of 
statistics. You?re threatened with lawsuits all the time. It?s a very, very unpleasant 
craft.
 ?Sometimes you just throw your hands up. ...But usually you come out of the 
nadir and write something you?re proud of, that either does a great job of explaining a 
complex facet of society to the public ? which is your job in a democracy ? or you 
expose some level of corruption, or some level of unfairness in society that the public 
sees and grows from. In the end there?s a change based on your reporting. That?s what 
the benefit is. ...It?s the highest and best use of your journalism career, but it?s really 
difficult. I didn?t realize that when I got into it,? he said.
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 Willman said investigative reporting about the environment led him to the 
essence of who he is as a reporter. ?Am I an environmentalist? Yeah, I am. But do I 
try to advocates in my pieces? No,? he said. For Pekow, the personal reward was, ?I 
learned I could handle the reporting without the science background.?
 Realities of the Environment Beat
 In one way or another, all study participants said there are so many stories to 
write about the environment that (a) it is overwhelming, and (b) the beat is new all the 
time. They also concurred that one cannot effectively cover the environment from a 
desk because seeing what people are talking about might change your perspective, and 
that the breadth of knowledge needed for environment reporting sets it apart from all 
other kinds.
 Meersman said that wherever the reporter lives, there is always an interesting 
environmental topic. Also that there is not a story surfacing everyday like on the crime 
beat. Willman also said environment stories are slow to develop. As well, Meersman 
pointed out that in addition to the diversity of topics an environment reporter covers, 
the beat requires the reporter to write different kinds of journalism: daily, enterprise, 
investigative, and explanatory. To that, Pekow added that environment stories without 
exception must be humanized. 
Adding to the literature, Willman said, ?The environment beat is one of the 
most polarized beats. The language has been hijacked to a great extent so that it?s hard 
to do a story without being accused of being an advocate or zealot for one side or the 
other.?
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 What Makes Environment Reporting Meaningful for You?
 Of the study participants, five out of six expressed a clear indication of a deep, 
personal connection to the environment, including both atheists. The exception, 
Rogers, spoke only about the gratification he gets from the beat in terms of fulfilling 
his social responsibility, his obligation to society, the personal recognition it provides 
in part because ?so few people cover it all the time,? and the pride he feels from rising 
to the challenges the beat presents. ?The level of expertise required is so high that you 
write with authority,? Rogers said. ?You?re much more likely to influence policy, 
write something that will get noticed, shine a light on some problem, or expose some 
taxpayer rip-off. Environment stories seem more likely than others to have people act 
on them.? That revealed, Rogers, who calls himself a conservative democrat, stops 
short of saying that he seeks to inspire people to take action to keep the environment 
clean, or to preserve open space.
 The other study participants do not. Each clearly indicated a desire to protect 
the environment ? whether registered republican or democrat. The meaning they 
derive from their work includes everything Rogers described that speaks to social 
responsibility. In addition, however, they describe their sense of personal connection
 to the planet and the life it sustains. 
Specifically, they said:
 MEERSMAN: The fact that he is a father gives him a strong desire to pass on a 
healthy and thriving planet to his children, Meersman said. The former teacher said, 
?Those are my values. You have to behave in a responsible way. You don?t take an 
action that will spoil things for the future. There needs to be respect.? Staking his 
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 claim on the environment beat let him ?do stories that educate people about nature,? 
he said.
 PEKOW: ?A good story is a good story, but the environment is something of a 
tremendous concern for me. This is one way I have of protecting the environment 
outside of doing the normal things of living an environmentally sound life. What right 
do humans have to despoil the Earth for humans or other beings or for the Earth itself? 
The environment is everything. It?s where we live. If we don?t keep our environment 
in order, our lives will eventually become unpleasant. The environment beat is the 
most important because it transcends mankind, transcends everything we do. It?s 
where we came from. Also, environment reports [are] more likely to affect me 
personally.?
 WILLMAN: ?The clearest indication of a greater power is to be outside in the 
environment,? Willman said. Reporting about the environment deepens his connection 
to the environment as well as its meaning for him, he said.
 BAYLES: ?It?s really important that someone outside the government and special 
interests is watching what?s going on with our environment. Just like if we screw up 
our schools, we screw up a whole generation of our children. If we screw up the 
environment, we screw up our planet. If we?re not paying attention, we could all die. 
The planet could become uninhabitable. I?m going a bit far, but it?s important that we 
in the media keep watch. That?s right on, and key to how I feel about my job,? Bayles 
said.
  HELVARG: Covering the environment allows him to have adventures and encounters 
with people, animals, and habitats that challenge and excite him, Helvarg said. ?It?s 
175
 symbiotic if I can go on great dive adventures that also become the basis for radio 
reports, articles, TV segments, and books that help inform the public on the risky state 
of the world?s coral reefs for example, and inspire them to take corrective action,? 
Helvarg said. His best reporting, he said, are his articles written from first person 
perspective. 
What Makes Investigative Reporting Meaningful for You?
 All study participants said investigative reporting feeds their sense of social 
purpose. It not only feels meaningful, but it is something that each one would do 
because it is the right thing to do, they said. It is the right thing to do because it is an 
effort to reveal truth, injustice, and abuse by the powerful, among other things, they all 
said. Without exception, they said they are delighted to get paid for doing something 
they would do on their own time. Investigative reporting is what a journalist is 
supposed to do, they all said in their own way. 
?It?s righting wrongs,? Willman said. ?It?s this sense of anger and injustice that 
really pushed me to want to do investigative reporting. The other element is that I also 
think investigative reporting is just really good reporting.? Rogers said he gets more 
satisfaction from investigative reporting than plain environment reporting because he 
gets ?paid to learn,? ?paid to become an expert,? and ?paid to influence society.? ?It 
doesn?t feel like a frivolous pursuit. It doesn?t feel like you?ve wasted your time,? 
Rogers said. 
Helvarg said investigative reporting gave him a deeper personal sense of 
satisfaction about his craft. It happened at a time when ?easy satisfactions were few 
176
 and the inquiries I was making were putting lives ? my own and others ? at risk,? he 
said, reflecting on his years as a war correspondent, the roots of his investigative 
reporting career. 
Pekow and Bayles spoke along similar lines. Pekow said investigative 
reporting ?confirmed that I could do what I hoped to do. I got into journalism and 
investigative reporting because I wanted to find truth. ...[Investigative reporting is] not 
a very lucrative way of making a living, but it?s a way to be a good citizen. It?s a way 
of using my ability to help improve the world. I get a little money, but more 
importantly I get the satisfaction of knowing I made some contribution, and I hope it?s 
for a better, more livable world for me, too.? 
Bayles said, ?If there are enough [people] out there who are inspired by this 
[investigative report] and we put some better rules in place to make...it a little bit 
easier for humans and animals to co-exist, from both points of view, then there you 
go! That?s as great a legacy as anybody can have ? where I come from! With 
investigative reporting, you can pour your heart and soul into it and definitely have 
some positive outcomes: if not changing laws, then you?re alerting society to potential 
problems that could be fixed.?
 What a journalist is supposed to do, Meersman said, is be critical and 
thoughtful, pick important questions, and educate people about them. In addition to 
educating people, with ?investigative reporting you get something extra special, which 
is shelf life. In my case, where you really take a look at something, [the report] has 
made significant changes in terms of bringing about discussion and changing policies. 
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 So occasionally your work can actually change things in a way that you can see, in 
addition to educating.?
 The Future of Environment Reporting
 The three newspaper reporters participating in this study said newspapers have 
a special responsibility to do investigative reporting in part because its format is well-
 suited to the in-depth genre. But, adding to the literature about online reporting, 
Bayles talked about the emergence of a new dimension in investigative reporting: 
online diary reports as a component the journalist is expected to produce while 
working on an immersion report, for instance. For one series of investigative reports 
about firefighters, which included the search for an arsonist (Bayles became a 
firefighter for the story), Bayles wrote daily personal narratives and reflections on his 
experiences while the story unfolded. Contributing to the literature about 
dissemination of information by the media, Bayles said with the advent of newspapers 
owning cable stations, new questions are presenting themselves not about content but 
about how to use the mediums in complementary ways. 
Newspapers that own cable stations are producing whole television news 
reports that tease the newspaper version of the story, which is what the Sarasota 
Herald-Tribune, owned by The New York Times Company, is doing, he said. Editors 
and cable reporters there are struggling to answer five basic questions: (1) How do you 
do a story on television that you are also doing in print? (2) How long can a television 
piece be that backs up a newspaper report? Two minutes? Three minutes? Five 
minutes? Eight minutes? Ten minutes? (3) What, if any, are the reasons we could not 
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 keep a topic interesting for 10 minutes, especially if it is something as multi-faceted as 
an environment story? (4) Should there be a cable tease the day before the story runs 
in the paper as well as the day it runs? (5) Should the television report contain 
different information? Should it be more substantial than just a tease? 
Further, Bayles said that, ?Sometimes the environment reporter for a 
newspaper now is interviewed as an authority,? particularly for a television report, 
pointing to a shift in the role of the newspaper journalist and returning to Rogers? 
point about the investigative reporter as an authority, a slightly different take from 
Bayles? position that an investigative reporter must write with authority, as discussed 
earlier.
 With the exception of Pekow, all participants saw the environment as a 
mainstream value now, which Rogers said is making it easier for editors to accept that 
?a separate person is needed to cover the environment.? The five also noted increases 
in environment reporting across mediums as a result. Pekow, however, said he 
continues to see a smaller quantity of reporting about the environment in the 
mainstream press, and projected the beat would continue to be fractured in the sense 
that a lot of in-depth reporting about the environment would continue to be done by 
specialty publications rather than the mainstream press. He said consolidations in 
media ownership will bring into question the credibility of a news report about the 
environment because the station owners have a special interest stake in the stories. ?Is 
ABC going to want to cover a land use story [fairly] when Disney, which owns ABC, 
wants to knock down trees and open a theme park? Synergy will definitely become a 
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 problem. Also, General Electric owns NBC as well as energy and engineering 
businesses that affect the environment,? Pekow said. 
With one exception, the general feeling was that the content of environment 
reports would not change much, although two of four said more stories about global 
disease and global climate change might appear. Adding to the literature, Meersman 
noted that coverage of the environment is ?no longer just parks and pollution. It?s also 
sustainability.? Elaborating and illustrating, Helvarg predicted another change in 
content. ?There?s a collapse of the natural systems that sustain us, so look for more 
investigative reporting in this area,? he said. ?Conditions allowing the ability of 
ecosystems to sustain themselves in the face of growing environmental abuses will 
keep the environment beat alive for along time to come.?  Another story that may 
begin to get wider play is pollution insurance, Meersman said. ?How do we deal with 
the legacy of the past?? he said.
 Rogers sees a need for more international coverage, which is not an addition to 
the literature. ?If most things are getting better in the United States and they are not 
getting better in the rest of the world, why aren?t we reporting how bad it is in the rest 
of the world? It gets down to convincing editors that this stuff is relevant,? he said, 
noting money and open-mindedness are also required. Mostly, though, he said it takes 
?people challenging the status quo.?
 The subjects just mentioned are in addition to current staples of the 
environment beat, including public health concerns about food and its safety, 
agricultural issues including ground water quality and quantity and water shortages 
(How much is used? Who gets to use it?), land use, particularly in terms of 
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 brownfields and greenfields, the design of roads and policies concerning fuels and 
vehicle emissions (air pollution), and how we produce electricity, for example. 
?So the environment is more a theme than a beat,? Meersman said. ?It crosses 
many beats.? With that in mind the beat is safe, Meersman said, indicating it would 
not go the way of the labor beat. What environment stories will increasingly address 
are the questions: What does this mean? Is this a matter of concern? Meersman said, 
echoing a point made by Rogers (see Appendix B, Rogers, this question) that current 
arguments about how clean is clean sometimes revolve around the difference between 
2 parts per billion (ppb) and 3 ppb. Is that difference a concern, Rogers posits. 
Frequently, this researcher has heard it said in journalism circles that the 
Internet is going to change everything when it comes to reporting and investigative 
reporting in particular. But it does not, Bayles said. ?You still have to double check it. 
[The Internet] is just another way for people to put their views out there. Or their 
spins. Which is fine. But you still have to get the original document in your hands. 
You still have to talk to the mayor,? he said. Bayles stopped short of saying the 
reporter also has to know how to evaluate the credibility of a Web site, and be able to 
determine the source disseminating the information.  
That investigative reporters covering the environment seem to be applying 
phenomenological process in their work is an especially exciting finding reported in 
this chapter. The significance of that finding and others revealed in this writing follow 
in the next chapter, which offers my conclusions. 
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 CHAPTER 6
 CONCLUSIONS
 This work sought to locate and tell a story that has not been told. In that it has 
succeeded. Among other things, it is a story about how environment reporting has 
evolved, and how journalists working environment stories have expanded the craft of 
investigative reporting. That fact came unbidden when I sought to learn what might 
qualify investigative reporting about the environment as advocacy. 
Paul Williams Way
 Early in the research phase, I wondered if members of SEJ interviewed for this 
study applied the Paul Williams Way or did something entirely different. I found they 
not only applied the Paul Williams Way in all cases, seemingly by instinct for some, 
but also embellished upon it, using phenomenological approaches including 
bracketing and process notes. With that in mind, I have concluded that the Paul 
Williams Way by itself falls short when it comes to investigative reporting about the 
environment. The 34 years of scrutiny environment reporters have been put through by 
their editors, sources, and audiences seems to have forced into practice the two 
additional phases of research identified.
 Advocacy
 Findings presented in the previous chapters seem to show that the
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 phenomenological research approach does not constitute advocacy but investigation 
and definition. This conclusion is based on evidence that the phenomenological 
research process defines something by clarifying its components. It also checks bias 
by applying a prescribed system of practice and questioning to get at the truth. In this 
way, point of view is checked and the story produced is grounded in a classic way of 
researching and reporting dating back to Aristotle. The phenomenological research 
approach seems to complement ideas espoused by Lippmann. It appears to do so by 
articulating a process for including point of view in journalism that does not appear to 
hinder credibility, but rather boost it. 
Constructing Meaning, and Related Essences
 The use of phenomenological process in news reporting seems to point to a 
constructivist approach taking hold in journalism today. That approach is based on the 
creation of knowledge (integrated investigative reporting). That knowledge is created 
through a construction of reality derived from primary and secondary sources. In that 
respect, the reporting may be viewed as a kind of social construction filtered through 
the reporter?s experience and framed by it as well. That construction, when derived 
through the sense-making system of phenomenology described, does not appear to be 
persuasive writing, and therefore not advocacy as defined in this writing.
 One way to consider the movement of constructivism into journalism is 
through a timeline. As delineated in this work, environment reporting took a turn 
around 1970, branching off from parks and conservation into pollution and natural 
resources. The literature synthesis and findings section provided here seem to indicate 
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 that environment reporters gradually learned they had to explain more on this beat 
than they did on any other to provide the facts fairly and in context. Beyond basic 
definitions of terminology not in everyday use, they needed to define the thing itself. 
Beyond attempting to simplify complex stories to make them accessible to a broad 
audience, and to use plain language to describe what they discover, the literature and 
interviews contained herein support the idea that journalists covering the environment 
had to begin interpreting, explicating, clarifying, and illustrating the facts in their 
stories to account for what they witnessed, heard, experienced, learned, and discovered 
in order to reflect, with verisimilitude, who we are as people. In other words, 
environment reporters gradually found themselves constructing meaning out of 
necessity. The reporters had to explain the story to themselves and then their 
audiences. This is the essence of what a complex story demands of a reporter. 
Environment stories required the reporters to make sense of the facts by conveying the 
story?s significance on a personal level as well as a societal one. 
Study participants indicated they construct meaning for themselves first, that 
is, they write to explain discoveries to themselves, which they then seek to share with 
a wider audience. The important thing, they said, is to discover truth, and then spread 
the word. 
That appears to be the essence of investigative reporting about the environment 
for the six journalists interviewed. However, they also seem to know that the acuteness 
of their perceptions will sell a story and give it substance in the form of social 
significance. The acuteness of their perceptions, the artfulness of the telling, and their 
word choices seem part of what they mean by ?writing with authority.? The reporters 
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 interviewed for this study seem to gain that authority by applying the 
phenomenological research approach. 
In 1971 the first Pulitzer Prize was awarded to a report about the environment 
in the category of public service. Fifteen years later the first Pulitzer Prize was 
awarded for explanatory journalism, to Jon Franklin, for an article involving deep 
science about brain function. It appears the need to explain science involved in 
reporting about pollution may have helped demonstrate the need to create a new 
category to recognize this emerging form of journalism that I call integrated 
investigative reporting.
 Bridges
 The investigative reporting process demonstrated here has a deeply rooted 
academic base ignored in the current literature about investigative reporting, and also 
about journalism in general. Consequently, this dissertation bridges one gap between 
professional approaches to journalistic research and academic practices for researching 
journalism.
 Without balancing professional discussion with academic conversations, much 
is lost. The innovative approach to a literature review applied here ? which I call a 
literature synthesis ? demonstrates where the lines are between two concurrent 
discussions about the same things. It illustrates what comes unbidden when 
conversations in academic circles and discussions professionals are having on the 
same subject are woven together. Simply, it is necessary to do that to make the work 
grounded. 
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 This study also showed that personal narrative is fast becoming a component 
of investigative reporting. Long relegated as creative nonfiction or at best (from a 
journalistic perspective) the domain of columnists, personal narrative is surfacing in 
the form of online diaries written as part of the process of investigation in an 
immersion report, for instance. The first-person telling of a story with social 
significance ? which it can be argued is the deepest root of news dissemination ?
 reveals the news from a personal perspective showing how it caused the individual to 
grow, to come to terms with change, and to understand place. 
This dissertation also locates a bridge between academic theory and 
journalistic reporting practices. It appears that study participants out of necessity 
stumbled upon a symbiotic relationship between objectivist grounded theory and 
Charmaz?s interactionist approach to grounded theory. When combined by the 
reporters interviewed, they seem to result in a kind of meaning construction based on 
the reporter?s interpretation of findings for the self, the self in relation to society, and 
what those findings seem to reveal about the world we live in on a small scale as well 
as a grand one. This theoretical approach, whose components have been verified in the 
literature, seem to allow the truth to emerge from the reporting rather than supposing 
what that truth might be and then seeking proof for that hypothesis. Embedded in this 
theoretical approach is a process for deconstructing interviews, for instance. In that 
respect, when the theory is used it hammers into the journalist a procedure that prizes 
transparency, in fact relies on it as a means for locating truth. That transparency seems
 to be a channel between objectivist and interactionist approaches to grounded theory.
186
 Opposing Viewpoints
 The literature discussed here provides that training investigative reporters in 
how to work an environment story requires that more attention be paid to the scope of 
the story than the process of story collection. This dissertation refutes that idea by 
delineating two steps investigative reporters interviewed for this study take beyond 
standard investigative reporting practices to tease out scope. Further, as a whole, this 
dissertation demonstrates the kind of depth those additional steps provide in a timely 
manner.
 Lippmann?s notion that journalism ought to be based on direct observation 
rather than hearsay also is challenged here. I have heard, for instance, that Einstein?s 
Theory of Relativity is valid, but I have not read the theory. As this study 
demonstrates, description of lived experience gathered in the phenomenological way 
provides another view of truth different, perhaps, than that provided by direct 
observation but no less valid. That approach has integrity, particularly for assuring 
verisimilitude in all reports emerging from that process. Consequently, Lippman?s 
view that ?there is but one kind of writing possible in a world as diverse as ours. It is a 
unity of method...? is bifurcating, a point of grave concern for Kovach and Rosenstiel, 
but a positive evolution in this author?s eyes. It appears that investigative reporting 
about the environment is leading this evolution out of necessity. In that respect 
Kovach and Rosenstiel seem short-sighted when they say that journalism of assertion 
is weakening the methodology of verification journalists have developed. 
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 Integrated Investigative Reporting
 This dissertation locates what appears to be a new kind of investigative 
reporting. That sort, which this writing terms integrated investigative reporting, does 
not center on finding and exposing a predator. Instead, it seeks to locate and assemble 
into a big picture the pieces of a puzzle. 
In the past, investigative reports normally revolved around obtaining 
government or secret or obscure documents to reveal wrongdoing. However, although 
those remain staples of integrated investigative reporting, as the discussion of 
Schapiro?s story about genetically modified crops contained herein demonstrates, 
investigative reports about the environment today do not have to pivot on wrongdoing 
to capture an editor?s and the audience?s attention. Based on this research, the goal of 
the investigation can, as said, simply be to locate the pieces of a huge picture to see 
how they fit together. This form of investigative reporting helps people see how the 
pieces fit together according to the reporter?s logic, allowing audiences to begin to 
interpret their meaning in relation to each other and ourselves. 
It is an integrated form of reporting about an investigation. The window it cuts 
seems aimed at showing how we are all connected. At the moment, this sort of 
reporting is clearly associated with environmental issues. This study does not look at 
other news topics for comparison. Integrated investigative reporting begins with the 
goal of contributing to understanding rather than to point a finger of blame. In this 
writing, I have modeled my concept of integrated investigative reporting. 
188
 Essences
 If integrated investigative reporting is viewed as a form of explanatory 
journalism, then it appears that the essence of explanatory journalism can be described 
as constructing meaning, which can be argued as a form of advocacy. As elucidated 
earlier, the environment angle on a story about genetic modification or global climate 
change is not obvious; rather, it requires investigation to identify the pieces, and an 
explanation to show how they fit together. In this view, explanatory journalism is not 
advocacy, but merely a description leading to a definition of the thing in question. 
The surfacing of integrated investigative reporting seems to point to a 
constructivist trend in journalism. With this in mind, it seems the essence of 
investigative reporting about the environment during the 20th century is truth-seeking. 
At this point in the 21st century, however, another essence of investigative reporting 
about the environment seems to be emerging. Whether consciously or not, there 
appears to be a possibly unconscious striving on the part of study participants to show 
relationships and associations that not only educate people but also remind them that 
they are part of a greater whole. This is a consistent message seemingly set between 
the lines of all environment reports reviewed for this writing. Even though we may not 
be able to prove scientifically that all life is interdependent, there is a logic to it set 
forth by philosophers over time in the form of theories about truth.
 As described, the respondents appear to go in as seekers, without a clear idea 
of what they will find. The motivation for these reporters seems to involve being as 
much as doing. The desire to be of service appears very strong in these reporters. 
Perhaps that is the manifestation of their application of the metaphysical element of 
189
 phenomenology, which is described in the literature as connecting ways of knowing
 that are not officially recognized. Seemingly their quest for truth ties into the human 
fear of dying without having lived a life that mattered. That appears to be the reality 
behind their truth-seeking, and the essence of investigative reporting about the 
environment at the turn of this century.
 Metaphysical Element
 Overall, study participants spoke about a strong, mystical connection to the 
Earth that drives and motivates their work (see Findings chapter and Appendix B). 
That is significant for two reasons. First, it indicates that it might be possible to 
categorize the study participants as existential journalists, as described by Merrill in 
his 1977 classic, Existential Journalism. This is interesting because it indicates the 
possibility that, for the first time, a specific category of reporters may be identified 
who fit Merrill?s description. 
Second, all study participants described themselves as either atheists or 
agnostics except for one, who declined to disclose because he viewed the information
 as irrelevant to this research. This author recognizes that much can seem unrealistic in 
the idea stage. The statistics mentioned are at the very least curious; and at the very 
most significant because, in the broadest terms, they indicate a universal feel and high 
value for keeping the environment clean, regardless of culture, location, or faith 
practice. Viewed from a spiritual perspective, this seeming tidbit appears to point to an 
underlying, as yet undocumented, reason supporting a statement made by Rogers in 
the 2002 Neiman Report. 
190
 In that writing Rogers offered his observation that concern for the environment 
is accepted as a mainstream value now, thereby giving what appears to be a new set of 
measures to the question of what might constitute advocacy in investigative reporting 
about the environment. It can be argued that the way spirituality is perceived changed 
during what has been termed The New Age, the beginning of which corresponds to the 
last 20 years of the 20th century. Coincidentally an increase in concern for the 
environment was seen during that time, a time when environmental awareness appears 
to have shifted to a mainstream value. 
Future Research
 There is more to discover, more to explore. This study has its limits. First, the 
sample is quite small. Consequently, enlarging the number of participants in a 
subsequent study would help to validate or indicate the boundaries of the conclusions 
presented. Also, the data hint at a quality of investigative reporters covering the 
environment that is not provided here. As mentioned earlier, they all appear to display 
characteristics falling into Merrill?s definition of an existential journalist. Briefly, the 
existential journalist, he wrote, is committed to personal standards that rebel against 
anything dehumanizing. That reporter?s stance tends to be toward involvement rather 
than aloofness (Merrill, 1996). Studying the existential question further also may 
reveal more reasons indicating how and why constructivism appears to be taking hold 
in journalism in the early 21st century. For instance, philosophical problems seem to 
exist for the reporters interviewed when it comes to the notion of what constitutes 
progress.
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 Seemingly, it can be said that there is a culture around environmental issues. 
When it comes to investigative reporting about the environment, an unspoken identity 
seems to unite those who do it. It appears to be a quality they recognize in each other, 
rather than a culture they build to attract each other. Nowhere is this more evident than 
at an IRE conference. It appears to be a knowing, something beyond camaraderie that 
unifies reporters who have written about the environment. Future research into the 
notion of existential journalism may bear out this line of thinking.
 The research presented here also does not go into new obstacles to obtaining 
critical information about water quality or hazardous waste transportation and storage, 
for instance, due to the advent of homeland security on environment reporting. A 
current discussion about the impact of the Patriot Act on environment reporting could 
be found at the SEJ website at www.sej.org as of this writing.
 Studying how investigative reporters covering the environment build 
community among themselves may also yield some significant findings. Especially 
interesting might be research revolving around whether the reporters doing 
investigative reports about the environment struggle to build a third culture in their 
articles (see Adler, P., August 1974, pp. 23-40; also in Weaver, 2000, pp. 240-255; 
and Finn Jordan, 2000, pp. 232-239 in Weaver, 2000) when trying to impart 
understanding and meaning. Such research might inform discussion about intercultural 
communication in relation to globalization.
 Future research also might include conducting a study looking at parallels 
between environment reporters? struggle for newsroom acceptance and that of black 
reporters. The literature synthesis in this dissertation pointed to that as well. In 
192
 addition, a survey could be conducted to learn about how personal narrative is 
becoming part of investigative reporting and what purpose it serves journalism.
193
 APPENDIX A
 To illustrate, Lynch and Dorn Steele lead with the money:
 Hanford is infamous for the witches? brew of lethal nuclear wastes 
dumped in the ground and stowed in tanks during four decades of bomb-
 making.
 Now there?s a new waste problem ? the waste of millions of taxpayer 
dollars.
 Your money is supposed to be cleaning up the scary mess on the 
fenced-off nuclear reservation in Central Washington.
 But five years and $7.5 billion into the project, little has been cleaned 
up. On in three dollars may be wasted.
 Your money goes for...? (Landers, p. 22).
 Cone also set the scene, then led to the science:
 Death came abruptly to the plump seals basking on the tiny Danish isle 
of Anholt.
 First the pups, then the adults could barely swim and refused to eat. 
Lungs clogged with fluid, skin became mottled with ulcerous sores, and fevers 
soared.
 Within three days, almost 300 carcasses piled up along the shore of this 
sparsely populated retreat in an arm of the North Sea. With the virulence of a 
hurricane, the mysterious killer jumped south, then north, then west, until it 
had ambushed nearly every seal colony of Northern Europe. When the 
outbreak ended six months later, in the fall of 1988, 20,000 harbor seals had 
perished ? more than half the continent?s population.
 ...[S]cientists now suspect that this traditional and simplistic 
explanation for mass epidemics that periodically plague the world?s animals
 masks an underlying man-made cause: immune-altering pollution.
 Immune systems are under global assault from chronic buildup of 
chemical pollution. And experts in this emerging science are amassing 
compelling new evidence that wildlife, especially sea mammals, that feed in 
contaminated waters have weakened defenses tat leave them easy victims of 
deadly disease... (Landers, pp. 7-8)
194
 APPENDIX B
 This section provides relevant excerpts from full transcriptions of interviews with each 
participant. Shown here are the categories of classification produced through grounded 
theory. A brief profile of each study participant is included.
 PAUL ROGERS
 Background
 Paul Rogers, born in England of British parents in 1960, moved to New York 
City at age 2, but reared in Ohio, holds two bachelor?s degrees from Indiana 
University ? one in journalism and another in political science, green card holder until 
1993 when he became a United States citizen, is presently natural resources and 
environment reporter for the San Jose Mercury News in California?s San Francisco 
Bay area, where he covers regional and state environmental concerns, and 
occasionally national ones. Known to his colleagues as a staunch watchdog of 
environment reporting, and called ?Slick? behind his back by many of them, Rogers 
has been covering the environment for the newspaper since 1995, although covered 
coastal issue from its Santa Cruz bureau before moving into that position. He was 
Hewett Teaching Fellow in environmental journalism at the University of California-
 Berkeley in 1999 and 2002, lecturer in the science communication program at he 
University of California-Santa Cruz since 2000, was part of the San Jose Mercury 
News team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 
1990 for general news reporting (an explanatory report). He also received the Sierra 
Club?s David R. Brower Award for environmental journalism in 2003. Rogers? 
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 investigative reports about the environment often involve politics and injustice. For 
Rogers, environment reporting is fun and investigative reporting is a drag, evidenced 
by these statements he made while describing his experience with journalism, and also 
investigative reporting: 
?I really enjoy being a journalist in general.?
 ?I don?t want to be an editor.?
 ?[Investigative reporting] is exhausting.?
 ?When I was in the middle of the investigative report [about cow grazing], I 
wanted to quit. I was miserable. And I realize this just isn?t me.?
 ?There comes that awful moment when you have to sit down and write. And 
the more you?ve collected, the higher the drop is going to be. And you?re miserable.?
 ?It?s a really fun way to make a living.?
 For the change it prompts, Rogers endures investigative reporting?s tedium, but 
not gladly.
 View of Investigative Reporting About the Environment
 When Rogers became a journalist, he developed a love-hate relationship with 
investigative reporting while covering the environment for the San Jose Mercury 
News. The detecting and discerning process made him miserable, but the action 
resulting from his efforts made him proud and gave him a sense of accomplishment. 
Rogers comes to investigative reporting with little prior influence about what it should 
accomplish. Growing up, he did not read investigative reports or watch them on 
television, nor were they discussed over dinner or at any other time in the household.
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 Rattling off historical case examples and statistics, he demonstrates his passion 
for facts as a means for criticizing public policy and illustrating injustice. He says it is 
how a responsible journalist locates and reveals truth. Investigative reporting, Rogers 
says, must cause outrage in its audience to be worth anything. ?The very best 
investigative stories combine the outrage of some kind of environmental degradation 
with the outrage of taxpayer rip-off. There?s nothing more fun to me than to watch 
lefties and righties get together on an issue, to see people from two ultra conservative 
political policy think tanks - the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute ?
 agreeing  with the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. And it 
happens. It happens more than you think. Those are the best environment stories,? 
Rogers said. 
In the beginning of each year, Rogers makes a list of projects he would like to 
do so he does not end up doing 100 15-inch stories and never do anything with depth 
that year.
 Criteria for Moving the Public
 The outrage factor is only one of five criteria Rogers uses to determine whether 
an investigative report about the environment will move the public. Together, they are: 
(1) How many people does it impact? (2) Is there a conflict there? (3) Is it unusual? (4) 
Is it contrarian? (5) Is there some outrage factor, regardless of who would be 
outraged? After a story passes muster, Rogers said, ?You either end up with egg on 
your face and you lose your job, or you get sued if you screw up, but there are lots of 
well-written stories where you don?t end up with egg on your face or sued.?
197
 Investigative Reporting Procedure at the San Jose Mercury News
 for Environment Stories
 At the San Jose Mercury News, the formal process for going about doing an 
investigative report involving the environment is nine-fold: 
(1) Propose the story at the beginning of the year to the science editor, who is 
in charge of a 5-person team of reporters, including specialists in the 
environment, biotechnology, science, and a couple of medical 
reporters. 
(2) The science editor pitches story ideas to the projects editor, who gives them 
a thumbs up or down.
 (3) If accepted, the team budgets how much time they?ll need, if the story is 
going to pull Rogers off his beat entirely, if its going to involve 
lawsuits for public records, database searches, and what kinds of 
resources the team will need, including travel.
 (4) Once that is approved, the team sketches a thesis to try to prove. Rogers 
does that with his editor, and then begins exhaustive background 
research, making a list of main themes and ideas, potential sources, 
potential questions, trying out the thesis as he goes. 
(5) During the process there is clear and regular oversight from editors. This is 
because its easy to sit in a cubicle and collect information forever. ?It?s 
always fun to collect it,? Rogers says. ?It?s no fun to write it. It?s pain. 
It?s agony. You?re opening your veins when you have to suddenly take 
stacks and stacks of notebooks that you spent months and months 
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 collecting information on. Hundreds of screens of database 
information. And start writing it and organizing it. That is agony. It 
doesn?t matter how long you do it. It?s hard. It takes a lot out of you. 
And so you need editors to hold your hand and ask you all along the 
way, what is this story about? What is this story about? What do we 
have? What don?t we know? What do we have to get now? Why does 
my grandmother care? Why is this relevant to the public? It helps keep 
the reporter focused.?
 (6) Write a first draft and turn it into the science editor, who carves it up. 
(7) Rewrite until the science editor passes it on to the special projects editor for 
carving. 
(8) Rewrite. 
?Then, after much yelling and screaming and pain, it gets in the paper, and sort of 
makes the world a better place,? Rogers smiled and said. 
Why Environment Reporting?
 Rogers became interested in environment reporting because he wanted a job 
where he would get paid to go to Yosemite National Park. ?There are a lot of other 
jobs I could have done here in the last few years but that I?ve turned down,? he said. ?I 
could have been our main Washington, D.C. correspondent. I could have been in our 
Vietnam bureau. I could have been in our Sacramento bureau covering state politics. I 
could have covered the governor?s race. The presidential race. You name it. I gave up 
a job where I was covering Monterey Bay and Santa Cruz and Pebble Beach and Big 
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 Sur and Carmel [as municipal beats]. People go on vacation there all the time! There 
are a lot of other folks I know who would like to do that.
 ?But one of the things about the environment beat that?s so wonderful is it?s 
challenging, it?s intriguing, everyday is something completely different. You get paid 
to go to all these interesting places, unlike the White House, where you?re basically a 
stenographer following people around and regurgitating into a computer. [On this 
beat,] the stories you write make a big difference, because there aren?t that many 
people on this beat. So, if I suddenly decide it?s very important to start doing stories 
about invasive species in San Francisco Bay and all over the place, that becomes an 
issue and legislators will introduce bills. Or if a decision is made that we?re going to 
do stories about how the San Joaquin River and Sacramento River are polluted from 
farm run-off, advocacy campaigns are going to spring up around those from 
environmental groups, and lawsuits will be introduced, and things like that will 
happen,? Rogers said. ?I could do this for another 30 years and it wouldn?t bother me. 
There?s such a learning curve on this beat. 
?That?s one of the satisfactions that comes from doing this beat. The longer 
you do it the more you can understand and the deeper you can bore into it, the better 
the stories you can write, and the more impact you have. [I] love the give and take, the 
ebb and flow of the democratic process. And the democratic conversations. It?s nice to 
be an integral part of that, by putting issues on the table to discuss and fight about.?
 Advocacy and Environment Reporting
  A member of the Sierra Club when in college and later a member of the 
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 Nature Conservancy, Rogers dropped his memberships deciding, as a newspaper 
reporter covering the environment, that his allegiance is to the truth. He explained, 
?As long as you?re hanging out the shingle that you?re a newspaper reporter, you?re 
not working for the Sierra Club. They have plenty of P.R. people. 
?If you?re a journalist and not an advocate, you should be asking the same 
questions of the environmentalists as the polluters, and keep the whole thing honest. If 
you?re going to do fair journalism, you have to at least try to be objective, to show 
balance. Your credibility depends on asking difficult questions to all sides, and the 
value of the conversation, the very integrity of the democratic process depends on you 
as a reporter holding all sides accountable. Nobody has a monopoly on the truth. 
?If I come in here with a Sierra Club t-shirt on, all of my stories are going to be 
buried. I want people to think that what I?m doing is serious journalism, and fair 
journalism, and that I am not a player on the stage. That like other journalists, I am a 
participant and a chronicler of what?s happening on stage. Then the editors and readers 
trust me and will devote resources to do it more.  
?In a democratic society, we have this wonderful marketplace of ideas where 
everybody gets to throw in their opinion. It?s my job to give those opinions a bullhorn, 
to let the public hear those opinions evenly and fairly, and let the public decide. 
Information cannot be withheld when it disproves a point. You haven?t given folks 
context unless you show folks basic numbers. As long as you include context, then 
you?re providing a service to readers.?
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 Investigative Reporting and Advocacy Journalism
 There is a difference, Rogers said, between investigative reporting and 
advocacy journalism. ?Investigative journalism is journalism with depth, context, and 
most importantly a foundation of factual, provable, empirical evidence. Advocacy is 
journalism trying to convince people of a viewpoint without those things. To me, 
advocacy is public relations. It?s central function is to convince people of something, 
regardless of whether the facts back it up.?
 Rogers emphasized that environment reporters have to ask themselves a few 
basic questions with every story: Why are you doing this? Is it because you see 
yourself as part of the environmental movement communicating to the public key 
issues that you think need reform? Or is your allegiance not to any movement but to 
the truth, even when it makes environmentalists look bad? Are you a journalist first?
 Advocacy journalists are the former, Rogers said, while he is the latter.
 ?I have an opinion about every story I write,? Rogers said. ?I ask who seems 
like they are carrying the weight of the evidence in this argument. So when I sit down 
to write, I ask myself: Who do I feel more sympathetic to? I might do 55 to 60 percent 
to the side I disagree with, just to make sure that in a story I?m not actually coloring it, 
or showing some bias. I also choose the most powerful, plain-spoken quote I can 
find.?
 Personal Lessons from Environment Reporting
 Environment reporting has made Rogers less of an environmentalist than 
before he started on the beat, he said. ?I used to assume that environmentalists always 
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 have the best interest of society at heart, and they never lie to you, and they were 
always the good guys. And I found that environmentalists mislead, obfuscate, and lie 
as much as government or industry does. I have learned to look at these issues with 
much more of a healthy skepticism.
 ?This beat also made me realize I don?t want to be an editor. I like doing this 
too much. It?s fun. I?ve climbed down the side of an oil tanker outside the Golden 
Gate Bridge on a rope ladder at midnight with 10-foot waves crashing against my feet. 
I?ve seen grizzly bears in the wild in Alaska. I?ve hiked through the Amazon rainforest 
with some of the best tropical biologists in the world. I?ve gone out on cattle pastures 
with Mormon ranchers in Utah. I?ve talked with tree sitters and squid fishermen and 
strawberry farmers and all sorts of interesting characters. It?s a really fun way to make 
a living!
 ?The environment beat is among the most fascinating. I?m a political junkie. I 
love politics. I have a degree in political science. And I would rather do this than cover 
the White House.?
 Personal Lessons from Investigative Reporting About the Environment
 Investigative reporting is different than Rogers imagined. ?It?s harder,? he said. 
?Many reporters begin with a theory and end up with nothing. There?s very, very little 
about the process of investigative reporting that?s rewarding. It?s one of the most 
stressful, miserable things that I?ve ever seen. You run down hundreds of blind alleys, 
you spend many days in the newsroom until midnight going through thousands of 
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 statistics. You?re threatened with lawsuits all the time. It?s a very, very unpleasant 
craft, I think.
 ?Sometimes you just throw your hands up. But usually you come out of the 
nadir and write something you?re proud of, that either does a great job of explaining a 
complex facet of society to the public ? which is your job in a democracy ? or you 
expose some level of corruption, or some level of unfairness in society that the public 
sees and grows from. In the end there?s a change based on your reporting. That?s what 
the benefit is. It?s the kind of thing that a lot of people aren?t cut out for. It?s the 
highest and best use of your journalism career, but it?s really difficult. I didn?t realize 
that when I got into it.?
 ?I was miserable,? he smiles and says, recalling a particular investigative 
report about the environment. ?I had to move my desk to another part of the room to 
get away from distractions. And I realized that this just isn?t me. I didn?t realize that 
until I was deep into a project.? 
Realities of the Environment Beat
 ?There are so many things on the beat to write, it?s overwhelming,? Rogers 
says. ?I get more than 200 e-mails per day. I get stacks of faxes ? at least 100 per day. 
I get at least 30 to 40 phone calls a day. My mail is delivered in those big plastic bins 
that the Post Office uses. I have 246 story ideas on my to-do list right now, so the 
world could stop turning and I could fill the paper with environment stories. There is 
this fire hose of stories that come, and trying to figure out which one to take a drink 
off of...? Rogers sighs. 
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 A few reporters, he said, get a similar quantity of mail but most do not. ?It?s 
because this beat is so broad. That mail is not people writing necessarily, it?s the vast 
number of catalogs and magazines and reports and newsletters and things like that you 
have get on this beat. I get everything. I get everything from the Wilderness Society 
magazine to the Natural Resources Defense Council magazine. I get Mining Voice. I 
get cattle grazing magazines. I get the newspaper that goes to the Department of 
Interior employees, because if I?m going to try to understand what the main stories are 
from all viewpoints, I have to read all viewpoints. And so there?s an immense amount 
of information that can be overwhelming. So I don?t have a lot of time usually to do 
national stories unless there?s some effect directly on the Bay Area.?
 Rogers also emphasized that environment reporting cannot be done well from a 
desk, that to understand the conversations the reporter must go out and see the 
controversy, and talk to the people in the landscape. ?It might change the theory you 
had in the beginning,? Rogers said, describing his initial attitude when former 
President Clinton declared part of Southern Utah a national monument without even 
going there to do it. The declaration meant economic development in the form of a 
coal mine could not be located there. 
Rogers recalls, ?At first I was agreeing and sympathizing with the cowboys ?
 saying it was a shameless political act, that he didn?t even go to Utah to do it, he went 
to Arizona because he knew there would be huge protests where they were hoping to 
have a coal mine and other jobs in this poor area of Southern Utah where people have 
to drive 100 miles in each direction to go work at a motel. It?s tough. And I thought, 
this is really low rent. This is tacky. He?s playing to people in Hollywood, he can?t 
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 even defend his own actions, and he?s doing it by fiat because he knows Congress 
won?t approve it. And I went out there, and I was standing at Escalante, Utah at sunset 
on the top of this mesa looking over this vast area that was the last place to get 
telephone service in the lower 48, and I said, well, they can?t put a coal mine here. 
And I thought, tough s---- about those cattle ranchers because there are some values 
sometimes that trump local economic values.?
 What Makes the Environment Beat Meaningful for You?
 ?There are so few people who cover this beat all the time,? Rogers said. ?The 
level of expertise is so high that you write with authority. You?re much more likely, 
when you write a story on this beat, to influence policy, to write something that will 
get noticed, that will go out on the wires and have millions of people read it, that will 
shine a light on some problem, or expose some taxpayer rip-off. Environmental stories 
seem more likely than others to have people act on them. To get results. If you just 
write the truth, there are plenty of activist groups that will embrace whatever cause is 
in the story. You don?t have to do their work for them. Just shine the light.?
 What Makes Investigative Reporting Meaningful for You?
 Rogers struggled to find words to describe the tension between tedium and the 
social obligation he feels as a reporter that gives meaning to the depressing dread 
brought on by an investigative assignment. ?It?s something that feels meaningful, it?s 
something where if you?re an idealist you feel like you?re not just making money for 
money?s sake. You?re not just screwing the tops on toothpaste tubes as they go by you 
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 on an assembly line all day. It?s not a frivolous pursuit. It?s not something where you 
feel you?ve wasted your time. Good investigative reporting creates bodies of new, 
original research. It turns out things that you can?t find in any other report, that you 
can?t get anywhere else,? Rogers said.
 Rogers gets something out of investigative reporting that environment 
reporting alone does not provide. ?I get the same satisfaction, but moreso. If you like 
to get paid to learn, you?re getting paid to become a real expert. If you like to get paid 
to influence society, hard-hitting investigative pieces really influence society. If you 
like to get to do a job where you can see the results of your work, it?s likely that at the 
end of an investigation someone is going to introduce legislation or do something to 
make the change.? Rogers described investigative reporting as regular daily journalism 
with extra stresses and rewards.
 Types of Environment Reporters
 Rogers notices two types of environment reporters: the one who likes to write 
about why things happen, and the type who likes to write about how things happen. 
?How? people are interested in the mysteries of nature and science and how things 
work. They love to go out on boats with scientists and look at test tubes and ask what 
the levels are of pollutants, Rogers said. ?If they go into a forest and write a story, 
they?ll say what the natural processes are there and how well they are working. They 
do a lot of explanatory journalism, and tend to be a little more scientific-minded,? he 
said. Los Angeles Times reporter Marla Cone is Rogers? favorite in this category. 
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 ?Why? reporters like to explain why things are the way they are. ?Instead of 
going out on the boat with scientists and looking at test tubes,? Rogers said, ?they 
would write why all those invasive species are out here. And why that pollution is 
there. Well, it?s there, maybe, because this oil refinery gave a campaign contribution 
to the governor. They?re less interested in the science.
 ?While the beat is a mix of politics and science, the ?how? writers are two-
 thirds science and one-third politics, and the ?why? writers are two-thirds politics and 
one-third science. ?Why? writers love the skullduggery of whose giving what money to 
whom.?
 Types of Investigative Reporters
 There are two types of investigative reporters, Rogers says: deep divers and 
grazers. Deep divers like to find one interesting issue or piece of scholarship and dig 
in like scientists. Grazers prefer to sample everything. Rogers is a grazer. Putting him 
in a cubicle for six months to study a database breaks his stride. 
 ?I?m glad I did it,? Rogers says of investigative reporting, ?but when I was in 
the middle of [one] investigative report, I wanted to quit. Some reporters descend into 
an absolute funk while they?re doing one project. They get sick of the topic. After 
about three weeks you normally don?t want to ever see the topic again that you?re 
writing about. It?s so exhausting.?
 A Description of Journalists in General
 Overall, Rogers said, journalists are misperceived. ?A lot of reporters are 
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 iconoclasts. As the world changes around them, sometimes they don?t change so well. 
But in the end, they are proud of the career choice they took.
 ?Also, journalists aren?t cynics. They?re actually idealists. They are people 
who believe in the power of the printed word, who believe in the power of ideas, who 
believe that if you present the public with all the facts, the public will make the right 
decision. And there?s something wonderfully idealistic about that.
 ?It?s the idea the whole country is premised on. People forget that. I have faith 
that common people without perhaps a level of wealth or education can better decide 
in a more even-handed or free and just and compassionate way their own affairs. 
Journalists, deep down at their core, have a lot of faith in regular people. If you shine a 
light on certain things in a decent way to people, at their core people will want to do 
the right thing. And that?s a very idealistic world view. Journalists also believe in the 
validity of institutions. If something gets screwed up, then they?ll fix it. They believe 
that the free exchange of information makes people freer, and makes them richer, too.?
 The Future of Environment Reporting
 Rogers is optimistic about the future of environment reporting for several 
reasons. First, editors now accept that a separate person is needed to cover the 
environment. The beat is no longer considered frivolous or a novelty like it was in the 
beginning. Second, environmental journalism has matured. ?If you look at the early 
coverage, a lot of it was very activist. It was reprinting what the Sierra Club said 
without a lot of critical vetting. And in part because the problems were worse. When 
there was no Clean Water Act in 1969 and he Cuyahoga River caught on fire, it was 
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 pretty obvious what the problem was there. But when you?re fighting about whether 
there should be 3 ppb or 1 ppb of something in a river full of fish and people 
swimming, it?s a different story. The maturing of the beat has taken a generation, and 
has brought the same kind of healthy skepticism to this beat that is brought to all beats, 
and that?s good for it,? Rogers said.
 Also important for the beat is that concern for the environment is accepted as a 
mainstream value now, Rogers said. Industry also is recognizing environmental 
journalism as a serious and important pursuit, he said. Lastly, Rogers is encouraged by 
what computer-assisted reporting has done for investigative reporting about the 
environment. ?People are doing a lot more sophisticated journalism than was done 
before. The amount of information that?s out there online and the ability to crunch it is 
making environmental journalism much more sophisticated.?
 ?To expand and nurture this kind of coverage, environmental journalists need 
to continue to increase their interaction with each other. That?s first. It?s a very lonely, 
difficult beat. It?s a beat where it takes you a long time to learn the issues. You can 
spend your whole lifetime studying these issues and still not feel like you understand 
them. And it?s a beat where a lot of people get mad at you no matter what you write. 
Therefore, it?s a beat that has potentially high levels of burn-out, too. And it?s a beat 
that ? it?s a kind of beat that lends itself nicely to having vetting sessions between 
reporters, where they can talk to each other about the trials and tribulations, about the 
things that work. They can see each other?s work on e-mail listservs, and they can 
have quick conversations with each other via e-mail and other forums. It helps keep 
people encouraged. It helps teach people. It helps people feel good about what they do 
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 and feel that they?re not alone out there. We have to keep emphasizing that it?s hard, 
and you?re going to get yelled at a lot, but it?s worth it.
 ?But I think there still needs to be a very tough conversation about some of the 
underlying assumptions that environmental journalists have, and whether those are 
still valid. We need to have a conversation about what is the best way to clean the air? 
What is the best way to clean the water? How bad or good are things in the U.S.? 
Society has assumed, and reporters have assumed, that the government command and 
control model is always the best no matter what. But there are some examples where 
that?s not true. You can say at a factory that we want you to reduce your output of 
smog by 50 percent and we?re going to tell you how to do it. And most reporters say 
that?s good environmentalism. And it?s worked pretty well. The air quality has 
improved dramatically. But there?s another model. There?s We?re going to tell you as 
a factory that we want smog reduced by 50 percent. We don?t care how you get there. 
And by he way, anything additional that you do, we?re going to allow you to sell those 
credits to someone else. So suddenly you unleash the creativity of those plants. You 
can do better than 50 percent because there?s a reward for them. 
?I?d also like to see more international coverage. We don?t have pipes with red 
gunk running into streams any more. That?s a good example where laws, 
environmentalism and activism have helped clean up America?s waterways. We need, 
as journalists, to say, alright, let?s not only make sure we write about the failures but 
also the successes. If most things are getting better in the U.S. and they are not getting 
better in the rest of the world, why aren?t we reporting how bad they are in the rest of 
the world? It gets down to convincing editors that this stuff is relevant. You can write 
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 about loss of biodiversity, smog, clean water, fresh water, there are so many ?
 fisheries, that?s where the real downward trends and disasters are happening.
 ?I?d like to see us do all those things, but those things take money. They take 
open-mindedness. Those things take people challenging the status quo.?
 Rogers also notices another concern environment reporters will continue to 
confront in their work. Addressing the ?How clean is clean?? question discussed 
earlier, he said, ?Government is about the allocation of finite resources. If we spend an 
extra $500 million going from 2 parts per billion (ppb) to 1 ppb of arsenic, how many 
lives have we saved? How many cancers have we stopped? The general public doesn?t 
want to ask that question, but it?s because they don?t necessarily understand risk 
factors.?
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 DAVID HELVARG 
Background
 David Helvarg, a 30-year independent multimedia journalist with an 
international reputation who used his reporting background to get a California private 
investigator?s license, is a historian by degree, a New Yorker by birth, the son of war 
refugees and spies (father from Ukraine, mother escaped Nazi Germany), former 
Associated Press correspondent in Central America deported from El Salvador in 1983 
while reporting on a massacre of civilians, former freelance urban combat radio 
reporter in Northern Ireland covering the British-Irish Revolutionary Army conflict in 
1973, author of Blue Frontier: Saving America?s Living Seas and The War Against the 
Greens, television news and documentary producer concentrating on environmental 
issues concerning oceans, investigative reporting trainer for the International Center 
For Journalists in the United States and Europe, Emmy Award winner, and an 
accessible nonconformist with a searing sense of humor and precise pen. 
An avid scuba diver and body surfer living on San Diego?s beach in 1977, 
Helvarg began reporting about the environment that year with a story about the 
liability of mining the oceans for minerals, and later created programs about the 
environment for PBS, Discovery, and other television venues. His viewpoint currently 
is heard on Markeplace radio and read on Slate.com, with his reports appearing in The 
Nation, Earth Island Journal, International Geology Review, Popular Science, and 
Multinational Monitor, a publication founded by consumer advocate and former Green 
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 Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, for which Helvarg is currently managing 
editor. 
Cited as one of the top environmental journalists of the 1990s by author 
Michael Frome in Green Ink, in 2003 Helvarg declared victory and moved on to 
establish and head the Oceans Awareness Project, a Washington, D.C.-based non-
 profit organization dedicated to restoring the world?s waterways through education 
and legislation, a return to his activist roots. Helvarg?s instincts have been to follow 
environmental issues by following the money, looking at how contending political and 
economic forces respond to changing science and policy. 
View of Investigative Reporting
 Although Helvarg is a war reporter when he is being shot at in combat zones, 
he has always thought of himself as an investigative reporter. ?It?s about finding the 
truth, where the truth is often up for grabs. It?s often being, you know, information is a 
weapon in conflict. And the truth may not conform to one side of the other. You may 
find a lot of sleazy journalism ? the kind of he said, she said reporting that you see 
more and more, particularly in broadcast journalism. Sleazy because neither side may 
be right. And the truth isn?t always in the center, either.?
 Woodward and Bernstein?s reports about the Watergate break-in captivated 
Helvarg, and he cites that political episode as his introduction to investigative 
reporting. On closer examination, however, it is really underground news in the 60s 
and 70s, and early 20th century renegade reporters that inspired Helvarg to become an 
investigative reporter. His college readings in American history led him to identify 
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 ?with the participatory journalism practiced by John Reed, Carleton Beals, and Upton 
Sinclair. I discovered a contemporary resonance in the boisterous, often insightful and 
occasionally libelous voice of the underground press.? But it was Reed he most 
wanted to emulate. 
Helvarg?s first exposure to investigative reporting was the now-legendary CBS 
documentary series ?Harvest of Shame? reported by Edward R. Murrow and 
influenced by John Steinbeck?s October 1936 reports in the San Francisco News about 
the plight of California migrant farm workers. Helvarg later found the early CBS-TV 
show, ?60 Minutes,? inspiring, but added the nightly news didn?t teach him about 
investigative reporting. ?There was a huge underground press I read avidly,? he said. 
?It traveled an interesting line between expos? and libel: very outrageous, very 
challenging, and I think it was a training ground.? It was as a stringer for an 
underground press syndicate that he traveled to Northern Ireland in the early 1970s. 
Much investigative journalism, he says, ?lacks a kind of writing that connects 
to people?s lives. You have to take investigative journalism skills and use them to tell 
stories and impart information in a way that has a personal and visceral connect to the 
reader.?
 Critera for Moving the Public
 Above all, Helvarg is a dramatic storyteller. He is after the story, not just the 
facts. The details gained from investigation become the pieces of the tale he chooses to 
tell with aplomb. Helvarg possesses the story he tells. In that respect, every story he 
writes seems to tell Helvarg something about himself. Each story seems a part of him 
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 as a result. Considered in that light, Helvarg?s criteria for moving the public through 
investigative reports seems to be the components that make it a personal experience 
story: the elements that illustrate the human condition and show how it is changed by 
circumstances and events ? by history as it happens. Those components appear to be 
selected subjectively, depending on what he perceives as the substance of the report, 
the nuances of the stories that prompted the investigation, and the report?s impact on 
democracy and injustice. ?I think I got to be a good writer being immersed as a 
participant observer ? first in Northern Ireland, and later when I moved to San Diego 
where I edited a weekly muckraking investigative paper in a town that had a happy 
news reputation,? he said.
 Investigative Reporting Procedure in General
 When teaching the basics of investigative reporting, Helvarg stresses doing 
background searches of news clippings and other materials, tracking original 
documents, doing initial interviews and follow-up interviews, developing varied 
sources, getting all sides of the story, keeping organized notes and tapes, verifying all 
information, and being persistent. Working as a private investigator taught additional 
tools and databases and places to look as well as keeping more complete notes and 
transcripts, detailing times and places, and doing day-to-day searches of court records, 
legal data, and property. It gave him experience and kept him practiced, he said.
 Helvarg follows 10 general rules when producing investigative reports: 
(1) Study your interviewee in advance.
 (2) Go in prepared, with notebook, pen or pencil, and tape recorder. 
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 (3) Make a list of five or six questions. Others will come to you.
 (4) Observe etiquette. Get off to a good beginning. 
(5) Establish eye contact and stick to the subject.
 (6) Ease off before leaving. Close with an open-ended question like, ?Do 
you think we?ve covered everything??
 (7) Keep the door open for further communication.
 (8) Transcribe your tape while you can still decipher your notes.
 (9) Save your notes.
 (10) Learn from the Freedom of Information Act.
 What Attracted You to Environment Reporting?
 The perks of the beat are secondary to Helvarg?s cat-like curiosity. While 
gathering investigative reports about AIDS, immigration, and a security break down at 
a nuclear power plant, he had the opportunity to probe stories about high-seas 
driftnets, military dumping of toxic waste at sea, and the car bombing of an 
environmental activist. ?I found myself increasingly drawn to hard-edged 
environmental stories,? Helvarg said. ?In large measure this was a case of finding an 
ecological niche that needed o be filled. I noticed that most political and investigative 
reporters tended to view the environment beat as either uninteresting or low-prestige, 
while many environment reporters came to the beat from a science or nature writing 
background. And, just curiosity kind of draws me to want to have the adventures, to
 do the first-hand reporting so that, you know, I?d rather, if I?m going to write about 
nuclear waste in the Pacific, I?d rather dive the site myself than see it in documents.? 
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 In Frome (1998) Helvarg calls the environment the defining issue of the 21st 
century. It is not just about science and economics, but is multi-faceted, about how 
people live and use resources and distribute wealth, he says, adding, ?My key goal 
remains to produce the best possible investigative works to help inform, broaden and 
democratize the crucial environmental debates taking place today? (p. 160). 
Advocacy and Environment Reporting
 Calling journalism the roughed-out sketch of history, in which he sees himself 
as having a personal stake, Helvarg gets passionate about accuracy and exploring a 
full range of sources as well as trying to be fair and honest in his presentation. 
?Voracity is important to me. I?ll work harder than most reporters I know to get the 
facts right and my ducks in a row. As a freelancer, I don?t have the deadline pressure 
generally; and if I do, I won?t put stuff in that I haven?t checked. It?s an internal thing. 
I get very upset if I get something wrong,? he said.
 Before Helvarg became a journalist he scorned reporters, perceiving media 
outlets as conservative forces rather than agents for change. ?I thought [journalism] 
was advocacy for the powers that be. I thought it was essentially a reflection of the 
establishment,? he said. But a New York Daily News reporter at the democratic 
national convention in Chicago in 1968 changed 17-year-old Helvarg?s view when he 
took off his helmet and gave it to one of the girls protesting with Helvarg?s teenage 
group, saying, ?You know, I always respected the police and didn?t like you kids 
calling them pigs, but the way these guys are acting today, they are pigs!? Helvarg 
recalled. A few hours later the group ran into him again and his head was bleeding, 
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 having sacrificed his helmet for the girl. ?I think that was my first very positive 
impression of a reporter,? Helvarg said.
  Activism is not the same thing as propaganda, said Helvarg, who is committed 
to social engagement, which motivates his work. His political activism initially 
fulfilled this middle-class, first generation American?s need to participate in the 
democratic process, but he chose to become a journalist because ?it gave me 
tremendous access. I realized I could cross lines that other people couldn?t,? he said. 
In Northern Ireland, Helvarg said he quickly ?came to see the limits of advocacy 
reporting when confronted by Hiram Johnson?s old lesson that truth is the first 
casualty of war. I quickly learned to develop survival skills as an eyewitness and an 
investigator in order to produce accurate and analytical reports too often defined by 
the gun, the car-bomb, and the disinformation campaign.? He learned that his 
sympathies didn?t matter ? that all sides were going to lie to him because information 
is a tool of war. That made him realized he could not be both activist and reporter at 
the same time. ?In Northern Ireland, I learned very quickly that regardless of your 
sympathies you have to operate independently otherwise you become a propagandist. 
You get manipulated. Or else you become worse than a propagandist: you become a 
dupe, being manipulated because you?re not being smart. I quickly realized there may 
be two sides to a story but they can both be wrong, or lies,? he said.
 Many close friends died while reporting from war zones with Helvarg, one he 
quotes sentimentally, with a choke in his voice trying to bring to life a point about 
advocacy in journalism. The man, John Hoglund, a frontline reporter, said, ?There?s 
no such thing as objectivity in journalism. The thing about it is that I?m not going to 
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 be a propagandist for anyone. If you do something right, I?ll take your picture. If you 
do something wrong, I?ll take your picture also.? To that Helvarg adds this: ?We all 
have a point of view, but we can?t ? or we shouldn?t ? cheat with it. You have to be 
factual.? That said, he added that different types of media outlets ? magazines vs. 
newspapers, television vs. blogging ? have different requirements and also different 
standards for including point of view in a story. 
?People sometimes perceive me as an advocate in the reporting I do. And when 
I do training overseas in places like Poland, it?s very funny because these Polish 
reporters who came up under communism had to figure out how to get the word out in 
[their new] free-swinging atmosphere. At one point we were talking about how you 
have to get both points of view and [one of the reporters says,] ?Well, I?m interviewing 
this guy and he has one point of view and I have an opposite point of view, so that?s 
two points of view!? So you get a strong sense of advocacy where the issues are 
freedom and democracy.?
 One accusation came after his book, War Against the Greens, came out. The 
right-wing American Enterprise Institute, Washington Times newspaper, and assorted 
members of the wise-use movement accused Helvarg of being a shill for the Sierra 
Club. ?They were unable to find factual errors in the book, so they accused me of 
being a liar,? he said, strutting his reason to be voracious about details and 
uncompromising about accuracy. 
Helvarg was threatened with libel twice, both on stories about the environment.
 The first came from a dolphin trainer who lost his security clearance because he talked 
to Helvarg without permission. The second was in 1984 when he reviewed the movie 
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 ?Salvadore.? ?The main character got a libel lawyer in San Francisco to say I 
portrayed him as a drunk and a loser. I did. And I suggested to the publisher that 
there?s no need for a retraction, that I could get half the press corps to verify. More 
importantly, the lawyer hadn?t seen the movie,? he said. Neither lawsuit materialized.
 Early on Helvarg noticed some differences between environment reporters and 
other investigative reporters. ?There was this self-flagellation I found with 
environment reporters that I never found with other investigative reporters looking at 
political corruption or national defense issues and AIDS. In the last 30 years 
environmentalism has become a societal ethic. Considering yourself an 
environmentalist and reporting on the environment ? if you?re a good journalist [i.e, 
one who doesn?t slant facts and other information] ? is no different than a national 
defense reporter considering himself or herself a patriot. We have shared values as a 
society and environmental protection has been one of them,? Helvarg said.
 Investigative Reporting and Advocacy Journalism
 With Helvarg committing the rest of his career as a writer of advocacy to 
heightening awareness about oceans, part of his function will be to press newsrooms 
to add a specific beat covering oceans. He says, ?The one ocean resource not being 
fully exploited is good investigative reporting on waste, fraud, abuse concerning salt 
water special interest operations and the agencies that are supposed to regulate them.
 ?It?s hard to stop thinking of myself as a journalist,? he says. ?But I do see that 
in setting up a non-profit advocacy group my status changes. It?s a return to activism 
in a way, 30 years later.? Helvarg considers both his books his best investigative work, 
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 but adds Blue Frontier also comes from the heart whereas War Against the Greens is 
more of an intellectual pursuit. Both have strong viewpoints, a requirement for making 
book-length journalism a good read, Helvarg says. The earliest example of a call to 
action in Blue Frontier comes when Helvarg writes, ?This is why there is a desperate 
need to develop and expand not only our biological knowledge of the seas, but also an 
active and educated political constituency to protect the oceans? living resources. 
?Unfortunately, our politicians and national leaders seem to be suffering 
anoxia of the brain when it comes to understanding the value of our living Blue 
Frontier? (Helvarg 2001, p. 5). War Against the Greens relies strictly on description, 
dialog, statistics, facts, setting, characterization, plot, narration and detail to carry the 
author?s point of view until the last chapter when Helvarg directly states his 
conclusion:
 If Wise Use?s attempt to sponsor a ?holy war against the new pagans? 
of environmental regulation and reform is fully exposed to the public ? the 
right-wing terrorism and vigilante violence, personal profiteering, political 
sabotage, dirty tricks, and disinformation ? the public?s reaction will almost 
certainly force the transnationals into abandoning Wise Use. (p. 459) 
Personal Lessons From Environment Reporting
 Helvarg was surprised at the level of passion and commitment that many 
environmental reporters, particularly those working outside the United States brought 
to the beat. While still critical thinkers, they tended not to fall into the traps of 
cynicism or careerism that many other reporters have. He says it reminded him of the 
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 reasons he first got into journalism, and has helped refresh his commitment to the 
craft.
 What Makes Environment Reporting Meaningful for You?
 Helvarg finds the best reporting he does is from a first-person perspective. 
Covering the environment has allowed him to have adventures and encounters with 
people, animals and habitats that challenged and excited him and also needed a voice 
he felt he could provide. ?It?s symbiotic if I can go on great dive adventures that also 
become the basis for radio reports, articles, TV segments and books that help inform 
the public on the risky state of the world?s coral reefs for example, and perhaps inspire 
them to take corrective action.?
 Personal Lessons From Investigative Reporting About the Environment
 Helvarg feels that too little investigative journalism is focused on the economic 
and political interests driving how people use and abuse critical ecosystems. As a 
result, while continuing to ?follow the money,? he also became an advocate within the 
field, encouraging colleagues in IRE (Investigative Reports & Editors) and other 
journalism groups to see the environment as an opportunity for new kinds of 
storytelling. ?We?re at a critical point,? he says. ?A year ago I thought about returning 
to war reporting in Iraq or becoming an advocate for ocean protection, exploration and 
restoration. In part I decided that while we?ll probably always have wars, we may not 
always have wild fish.? One of his plans is to establish a fellowship for investigative 
reporting on the seas.
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 Attraction to Investigative Reporting
 This journalism specialty charms Helvarg?s soul with its sense of mystery and 
intrigue. ?At its best, investigative reporting is fun. It?s puzzle-solving,? he says, ?I 
won a local Emmy and generated some prison.?
 That said, he hates its monotony and repetition. ?I didn?t know it would be 
tedious at times,? he says. ?It?s probably good that I didn?t. On he other hand, you?re 
digging for hours in some really boring stuff and there?s an ?Ah ha!? moment, and the 
pieces fall into place, and you have the factual metaphor you?re searching for.? 
What Makes Investigative Reporting Meaningful For You?
 For a time, Helvarg?s need for a larger social purpose was met in providing 
people with information and points of view they might not otherwise have access to. A 
deeper personal sense of satisfaction came from the practice of his craft when he 
added investigative reporting to his quiver, he suggested. It happened at a time when 
?easy satisfactions were few and the inquiries I was making were putting lives ? my 
own and others ? at risk,? Helvarg explained.
 The Future of Environment Reporting
 Conditions allowing the ability of ecosystems to sustain themselves in the face 
of growing environmental abuses will keep the environment beat alive for a long time 
to come, Helvarg predicted. ?There?s a collapse of the natural systems that sustain us, 
so look for more investigative reporting in this area,? he said. 
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  ?I used to say that it?s better to come to reporting out of something you?re 
passionate about and want to write about than it is to just decide you?re going to be a 
journalist and study journalism. I used to say that when people came out of journalism 
school. I have no training in journalism other than on-the-job. I think on-the-job works 
best. Today, journalism students don?t learn journalism, they go into it.
 I came to reporting out of my interest in history and activism. So it was 
following my interest of how history impacts all of us, which I learned early on from 
my parents? experiences. I was attracted initially to war reporting and found that you 
have to be more investigative because you aren?t getting the truth from either side.? 
225
 TOM BAYLES
 Background
 Tom Bayles, 38, descendent of a priest who came over on the Mayflower as 
well as German immigrants, began Boy Scouts in Ramsey, New Jersey where he 
became a Star Scout, dropped his first novel behind the couch at age 11, got report 
cards saying he needed a lot of help in writing, and became a newspaper reporter in 
Largo, Florida for love of the byline. Currently weekend editor, environment editor 
and investigative projects reporter for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. In that capacity, he 
became a firefighter for an immersion report on wildfires in Florida, spent $800 on 
clothes and $100 on makeup (?So I would look good?) to begin reporting for SNN 
news, the newspaper?s cable television station located in a corner of the paper?s 
newsroom. Wanted to become an environment reporter once he discovered the beat 
existed while in college at the University of South Florida. Gathered a love of the 
environment and wildlife from the Boy Scout manual he read cover to cover many 
times and the My Side of the Mountain series of children?s books he read and re-read. 
Is an avid beachcomber and sailor, frequently out on his boat midweek chasing a story 
not accessible any other way. 
Mesmerized and fascinated by the atmospheric reactions between the Earth 
and sky, before the 15-year veteran reporter obtained a master of arts degree in 
journalism from the University of Southern Florida after he started a masters degree in 
geomorphology, intending to become a weatherman. He is the first in his family to 
pursue anything even close to writing as a career. A two-time Pulitzer prize nominee 
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 for investigative reporting about the environment, he holds assorted awards for feature 
writing, environment reporting, and investigative reporting, including the Florida 
Society of Newspaper Editors Best of Show gold medal award given for an 
investigative series about the building of sandy beaches in Florida, which sprang from 
a related local death (Bayles described the barges used in dredging to build the 
beaches as floating construction sites during a storm at sea). At age 7, Woodward and 
Bernstein introduced him to investigative reporting through the movie ?All the 
President?s Men.? Beyond that, he learned his investigative reporting skills from his 
two years with The Associated Press and also with Rosemary Armao, former director 
of Investigative Reporters and Editors, who was managing editor of the paper until 
late 2002.
 Bayles, who has strong convictions and opinions and is passionate about his 
work, loaded trucks for United Parcel Service at 3 o?clock in the morning in junior 
college in Largo, Florida, wrote for the University of South Florida?s student paper 
while working on a bachelor of arts to teach high school social studies, including 
sociology, geography and history, but did not pursue a classroom, managed a 
restaurant instead, craved a newspaper byline again, started stringing for the St. 
Petersburg Times for a friend he knew from the student paper, became editor of  the 
Beacon-Leader-Bee Newspapers, a weekly chain in the Tampa Bay area, city 
government reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, and breaking news reporter for The 
Associated Press throughout Florida, covering race riots in St. Petersburg, the murder 
of international fashion designer Gianni Versace in Miami, the aftermath of the Value-
 Jet crash, and part of the Florida tobacco trials before joining the Sarasota newspaper 
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 in 1998. ?Journalism turned out to be more interesting than I thought it would be,? 
Bayles said. He describes the environment reporter?s post as the plum position at the 
paper, one that is taken seriously and is well-funded.  
Although reared Methodist, Bayles describes himself as a universalist.
 View of Investigative Reporting
 ?Do you know what an investigative reporter needs to be?? Balyes quizzes. ?A 
master reporter. An investigative reporter has to be able to do any kind of reporting at 
a high level. When you were a city government reporter, you should have been a really 
good one. When covering cops, you should have just kicked ass. You know how to 
approach the school board. You know how to approach a cop. You know how to 
approach business. You know? 
?And the little things that you as a reporter do to get into the mayor?s office all 
the time. Make them your best friends. When you?re the investigative reporter on a big 
project, all of that comes into play. And if you never were a schools reporter and never 
covered the environment and all of a sudden you?re on a project about that, you?re at a 
huge disadvantage. So a master reporter and a master generalist are your main keys to
 being a successful investigator.?
 No special formal education is required to be a good investigative reporter, 
Bayles said, ?but I do think you?re going to have a hard time being an investigative 
reporter unless you have some type of advanced degree. The higher level analytical 
thinking skills that you flex when you are in college come very much into play. I 
constantly compare what I do in my investigation with a very large term paper, trying 
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 to impress the hell out of your professor and get an A. It?s the same thing ? with 
perhaps a little more at stake. And you have more resources to help you get there, like 
a librarian and a budget.?
 Investigative reporting, he said, is one of the lynchpins of the profession. It?s 
what makes journalism the fourth estate, what makes it the watchdog for truth, justice, 
and the American way, Bayles said. ?The qualities of an investigative journalist are 
tenacity, organization, respect, humility, an incredible ability to clarify a complex 
situation, and absolute perfect fact-checking,? he said.
 Although the immediate gratification that came with working well on deadline 
and seeing his byline in the paper within a couple of hours, or by the next morning, 
attracted Bayles to newspaper reporting in the first place, there?s nothing like seeing 
your byline on an investigative report, he said.
 ?The feeling it gives,? he waxes. ?I thought it would be really cool to be an 
investigative journalist. That?s the cr?me de la cr?me. It?s fun, you?re respected in the 
newsroom, and you do good things and you change the world. That?s what I thought it 
would be, and it is that way. It?s very cool.?  For the most part Bayles has been doing 
nothing but project work for about three years and loving it, slowing being able to 
handle the delayed gratification it brings. 
?I love it,? he said. ?It?s really cool to [hear that] you don?t have to file a story 
for the foreseeable future ? just go. Not only is that cool to be relieved from the daily 
grind, but more importantly it is a very heart-warming testament to your boss?s belief 
in your ability to get the job done and be a self-starter. Because not everyone is a self-
 starter. Some people could not do investigative journalism. They?d be lost. [In some 
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 cases] they can?t do them,? he said, ?because maybe you don?t see your byline for a 
year while you?re doing it. That?s tough.? 
As President George W. Bush deployed members of the armed services to Iraq, 
Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, Bayles was pulled off project work to 
write stories with military connections throughout Florida as well as locally. ?It was 
tedium,? he said. ?I was punching out daily stories about the environment just to see 
my byline and stuff ? they wanted that [environment stories] too ? and I was getting 
very frustrated because here I was being a daily journalist again. I wasn?t ? I?m by no 
means saying that is beneath me ? not at all! But it was just like (groan) I want to get 
back to a project! (Groan) I want to get back to a project! I?m happy to be even on a 
small project again. I like to be on projects, and now that I have a taste of blood I want 
more. I enjoy the hell out of it.?
 Criteria for Moving the Public
 There are three things an investigative report must have to be effective, Bayles 
said. The first is voice, he stressed, the voice of authority. ?I?m still learning how to do 
that. It is a sense of confidence with the prose. It is not wavering on driving home your 
point that something needs to be fixed. People should not be in avoidable accidents. 
Period. Not, people shouldn?t be dying in avoidable accidents, but you know the 
dredging companies really need to make some money and oh, they?re poor dumb 
people anyway and maybe it?s okay if they die. No! People shouldn?t die in avoidable 
accidents! And you stick to that theme. And you hammer it home with everything you 
say. And the story backs that up. It?s an authoritative tone from beginning to end that 
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 says here?s what we?re trying to say. With authority, you know it when you?ve got it.  
It?s something where there are really clear sides to it.? 
The second essential is balance, ?extremely important? for presenting 
something in context for public discussion, Bayles said. The voice of authority comes 
by being fair in the way the story gets framed in the newspaper, Bayles said, 
restricting his comments to mainstream journalism. ?We?re coming out very strongly 
that this is something the general public needs to know and look at and then they can 
decide to do what they want. That [report] better be fair.? The essence of investigative 
reporting, he said, is truth.
 The third essential is a sense of outrage. 
?You can be personally outraged when you write something, but you have to 
put [it] in context,? he said. ?Try to bring a little clarity to the situation, a little more 
truth. That?s why you?re an independent thinker on any particular topic you?re writing 
about.?
 Investigative Reporting Procedure
 Investigative reporting at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is individualistic, Bayles 
stressed, but generally involves an editor regularly asking whether there?s a story. That 
occurs at periodic intervals to help investigators assess what they have, where it 
appears to be leading, and what needs to be done to flush out the story. Bayles? style 
when developing an investigative report about the environment begins with finding 
out what everyone else has written on the subject in question. ?All my investigations 
start with  a Lexis-Nexis search,? he said. ?Not only does it give me a knowledge base, 
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 because I trust what other papers write, but it shows me where the holes are in the 
topic. Then I go to the source chain.? Just like in scholarly research.
 ?Usually, after I do my Lexis-Nexis search, I outline my larger stories because 
at that point I have a pretty good sense of where I?m going. I don?t know what 
information is going to be in what particular paragraph. But I write a rough lede, 
where I?m going to go with this story. And this is what I use to sell my editors on 
something,? said Bayles. His outline is a five-part format for each story in the series, 
following in order: (1) introduce the concept in four or five paragraphs, maybe up to 
eight; (2) write the first subhead to lead into the breadth of the problem and what the 
report looks into, including between three and five examples demonstrating any 
national implications, and finishing by flushing out those examples and how they 
relate to Florida?s problem (local angle); (3) write a second subhead to lead into the 
meat of the story ? the statistics and arguments; (4) write a third subhead leading into 
a response from all sides; and (5) end with an anecdote, perhaps something whimsical. 
?I?m very fond of a technique that Newsweek writers use a lot, where the end of it 
leaves you feeling like you just got hugged. I try to do that. I can?t get away with that 
in daily reporting too much because it?s almost a little preachy. But you can get away 
with it in your bigger pieces,? Bayles said.
 An Example
 Bayles described his process in detail on a story nominated for a Pulitzer prize. 
Known as the ?Beach Builders? series, it was sparked when a local man died in a 
dredging accident on the job. Bayles? investigation into the cause of death led to winks 
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 between special interests and law enforcement officials, and several unfavorable 
economic and environmental consequences of creating and maintaining sandy beaches 
all along Florida?s coast to protect property values and maintain tourism. 
Building up the beaches in Sarasota also was aimed at preventing barrier 
islands in the Gulf of Mexico, which protect Florida?s coastline from erosion, from 
disappearing into open water. Building a beach for Sarasota, he explained, involves 
dredging from barges in the Gulf of Mexico, hence the analogy to a floating 
construction site during a storm. The story developed into a three-part series including 
exposes, explanations, and interpretations that took the concept of beach building to a 
new level of understanding for the public by illuminating government and politics, the 
environment, economics, and law enforcement and looking at them together, as a 
whole.
  The newspaper used three voices in the report. In the first section, it spoke for 
people in a weak position. In the second section, it spoke for the elite or comfortable. 
In the third, it section spoke for wildlife. The newspaper?s frame was to show 
injustice. Its point of view, its intent, was to say the injustices were avoidable, that 
they shouldn?t happen. Period.
 The Details  
?So, one of our home boys died on a barge. And we get to thinking, let?s figure
 out how he died,? Bayles said. ?It?s a death, it?s a young guy, it?s an accident. Let?s 
see if this is a preventable accident. So I make a few calls and all of a sudden within 
one day I learn there are probably seven more deaths in the Southeast United States. 
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 So the flag goes up. So then I started getting records and I realize that the vast 
majority of these were due to cost-saving measures on the dredging firm?s behalf, that 
were overseen by the federal government, and that allowed safety measures to be 
missing,? Bayles said, escalating further into outrage with each word, although Bayles 
describes that passion as nothing more than ?professional interest.?
 Bayles filed piles of Freedom of Information Act requests and got some help 
from people in the government and the Army Corps of Engineers. ?Most of my stuff 
came, as it always does, from people whom I made my friend and they just gave it to 
me. The FOIAs asked for accident records in all 41 Army Corps districts that border 
beaches in America ? Alaska and Hawaii, too. And as they came in, I learned how to 
streamline the FOIA system by convincing the FOIA officers that it would be best to 
just call me back with it rather than going through all he expense of copying it and 
mailing it. And I got a lot of Coast Guard records with lines blacked out. And a lot of 
OSHA records ? they?re online. They?re pretty easy to do. I had a computer-assisted 
guy up my back (backing him up), so he helped a lot, too. 
?In the beginning when we were trying to frame up what we were going to say, 
we found first of all right off the bat that these dredging companies, which were 
employed by the government, were not following the government?s own safety rules 
and things like that. Some have rusty hand rails and the gears are supposed to be 
covered. A big gear wasn?t and sucked one guy in. So I cross-referenced OSHA?s 
databases with the records I was finding from these companies, and a guy came to me 
who was a disgruntled safety officer no longer working for anyone involved in 
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 dredging who had kept really good records for the past 15 years at one of the 
government contracting companies. So we had clerks type all that into a database.
 ?So at this point we know we have a story about this vaunted industry. Before 
we wrote what we did, no one ever wrote anything bad about beach building. It was 
always ?Save the community? and ?It?s the greatest thing since sliced bread!? Nobody 
ever asked these questions. So we knew we had a story that we, as a paper, could say 
we knew these accidents were preventable. Now who is going to dispute that??
 At that point Bayles knew he had a ?Gotcha!? story, the sort that doesn?t come 
along very often. In the past, investigative reports often stopped there. But Bayles 
wanted to see what else might be wrong with beach building. ?We wanted to see 
where we could effect very positive social change for people in a weak position,? 
Bayles said. He began talking with dredgers and their families, learning what they go 
through on the barge and how many times a finger or foot or limb gets crushed on the 
job, discovering one company had averaged three injuries a day for 10 years. He 
continued to ?drag string? for a story that would say everyone thinks beach building is 
so great but it may not be so great for the people who do it. That was the voice Balyes 
and his editors decided they?d use for the first day of the story.
  The second day of what would become the three-part series took on a different 
voice. This one said what a great thing it is for the communities along the new two-
 mile stretch of beach being built ? that it is only costing those communities $100,000, 
and the local politicians are great because they got the federal government to do it. 
But, Bayles said, ?If you go in the back end of that figure, that $100,000 is the tip of 
the $55 million, 50-year cost of this beach. The federal government mandates through 
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 water resources [laws] that once they decide to make a beach sandy, they agree to 
keep it sandy for 50 years. So, every time a storm comes by and washes the beach 
away, they put it back. Sixty-five percent of the funding comes from the federal 
government in most cases. So, the wheatfield farmer in Iowa is paying for Sarasota?s 
new beach. It?s not the cost from the taxpayer that?s getting the most benefit. 
?In the balanced story we ran, we had the success stories ? the Miami Beaches. 
And in doing that, I came to find there were environmental factors that were not 
looked into,? Bayles said.
 In the last part of the report, Bayles began his investigation into environmental 
impacts of beach building based on the premise that if you take 1.2 million cubic yards 
of something and dump it at the shore, there?s going to be some effect on wildlife 
there. The question was how much. Bayles went to the Army Corps of Engineers and 
asked to see an environmental impact statement, which is required by state and federal 
law before any development can occur. 
?So I get one,? he says, ? and it?s 500 pages long and you can?t read it. So I ask 
for a few more. Well, they?re all the same! How can a detailed environmental study of 
Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina be exactly the same as for Sarasota, Florida? So I 
went to various professors, some independent voices critical of [beach building], and 
they pointed me to some of their students? work. They were right in the loop.? Bayles 
found the dumping caused dramatic impact to the bottom ecosystems along the shore. 
?The 500 little creatures that inhabit the beach get smothered, and there?s damage to 
the fishes. We had the research department do a search of all the newspapers in 
America to find if anyone else had written about this stuff. I found a small newspaper 
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 that had reported on how a sea turtle got killed in the dredging of this one channel that 
needs to be kept deep for the military. The sand from the dredging is dumped on a 
nearby beach. So I called the people working that beach and asked how often that 
happens. And they started screaming at me! They said, ?It?s not a beach nourishment!? 
?And I said well, what is it?? 
?Well, it?s a channel dredging, so it doesn?t count.? 
?I said well, where?s the sand put? On the beach? What does it do to the 
beach??
 ?It widens it.? 
?So what is it? I asked.?
 ?It?s channel dredging! It?s channel dredging!?
 ?You know, well, bullshit. It?s an artificial separation between the two. 
They?re putting sand on the beach and in the process they?re killing turtles. Well, I 
come to find out they get this special exemption. The private dredging industry is 
exempted by the federal government from its own endangered species regulations by 
allowing incidental takes ? they call it a ?take? when it?s really a death ? of like 35 
turtles a year. And one year they reached that number by April, so they upped it to 50. 
I mean, it?s just ridiculous what people will do for beaches!
 ?So it has a huge environmental cost that no one ever reported about. Some 
people had touched on how much money it costs, and how committed it is, but 
everything else was never reported by anyone anywhere. Everyone always thought 
beach building was great,? he said. The story cost $70,000 total to produce.
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 The reporting, Bayles explained, flushed out the voice the newspaper would 
use. ?We had a good idea of what the voice would be after some initial phone calls, 
but the reporting told us what was wrong with this picture, and that was our voice. 
Men are dying while reshaping the beaches and reshaping the ecosystem, a lot of 
people are spending a lot of money to do this, and a lot of creatures are being killed in 
this quest in a futile attempt to keep a barrier island from moving.? 
Why Environment Reporting?
 Bayles said, ?I love to be out on the water. I love the beach. I love the forest. I 
wouldn?t say I?m an environmentalist, but I definitely love being outdoors and 
learning the cool things about animals and the reactions between the Earth and the 
sky.?
 He was attracted to geomorphology, the study of things that live in and things 
that occur one mile above the Earth and one mile below the Earth, because of his love 
of the outdoors. ?It?s so cool,? he said. ?You?ve got volcanoes, plate tectonics, soil, 
water, all that kind of stuff ? everything on the surface of the planet. Plus you can do 
lower stratosphere and weather patterns. So I knew that I loved to learn about that 
stuff ? this is great stuff and Wow! There?s a beat dedicated to all this. 
?I had a friend, a reporter, and I was just so jealous because she got to write 
about the coolest stuff. I didn?t know she had to go to water board meetings and sit 
through them, but most of what she got to write was about really significant things. I 
thought that was cool, and I made it a career goal to work myself into an environment 
beat if one should ever open up while I?m around. 
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 ?If I stay as a reporter and stay on a beat, the environment would never get 
boring. Environment seeps into every aspect of reporting ? cops, courts, death, natural 
disaster, almost anything is an environment story. With the environment, there?s 
always something new. Here at this paper they let me spread my wings and become a
 firefighter. Some of my stories I do out on my boat. I take my boat out for the day and 
do a story on something that needs a boat to get to. So it rarely feels like working.?
 Advocacy and Environment Reporting
 ?Writing with authority, it?s fun to do. And it?s challenging. And it?s hard. 
People in the beach building industry don?t like me very much because they think I?m 
against beach building. They think I?m against it as an issue personally. And I?m not. I 
see it as one of the very valid ways that we can protect priorities and also provide 
recreation for tourist dollars. 
?I?ve been asked more than once ? why are you so against us? And I?m not! I 
just am reporting things ? true things ? that they wish wouldn?t come out. It?s a spin 
game. And you gotta figure out ? you don?t necessarily come down in the middle 
every time. You gotta prove what you say. Check and double check and triple check 
the facts. The beach story is the one that probably gives me the most to stomach. The 
beach industry ? this good old boy closed right up to Congress. They [the company 
hired to build the beach] had special things, they limited competition, they are 
constantly getting charged by the Justice Department with bid rigging. There?s a long 
history. There are only two or three firms that do this kind of work, they limit foreign 
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 competition, and jump back and forth between lobbyists and congressional candidates, 
all in the same industry. And it just reeks!
 ?But I still gotta think to myself, am I being fair in the way we frame it up? As 
long as it?s fair in the way it?s framed, in a way that the average reader can look at it, 
it?s fair. That?s why journalism isn?t truly objective. Too many judgment calls all 
based on the subjective learning that we?ve had from childhood on. 
Investigative Reporting and Advocacy Journalism
 There?s no such thing as true objectivity, but there is such a thing as balance, 
Bayles said. Advocacy, he said, consists of one-sided propaganda from someone who 
is trying to further a single cause rather than general understanding of the topic. The 
public entrusts journalists to do the latter, he said. 
?There are two different types of advocacy. There?s advocacy born out of self-
 motive, and advocacy on behalf of another person. Self-advocacy is what lobbying 
groups do. They say this is our cause and you need to think it?s important. That?s 
different than saying here?s something where there?s a waste of money and wrong 
things are happening to people, and that?s not going to further your agenda,? Bayles 
said. 
However, he said, ?If I?m asked to write a story about wife beaters or children 
rapers, my perspective is going to be that it?s not a  good thing. I?m not going to put 
someone in the story who rapes children, and interview him in prison and use a quote 
of him saying it?s really what we all need to be doing to relieve tension. I?m not going 
to do that because there are moral imperatives that come before journalistic goals. My 
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 duty is to stop these things from happening. Your duty as a citizen outweighs your 
oath as a journalist in most cases. And even in all those cases, there?s a creative 
solution so that you can do both. You can act the proper way journalistically, and you 
can also do your duty as a citizen when you get in a pinch like that,? such as 
publishing a column reflecting contact with someone who appears to be a suspect in a 
crime without going to the police directly with the information. 
It?s very easy to confuse investigative reporting with advocacy, Bayles said. 
?Voice, framing, and point-of-view are the factors.
  ?There?s not a problem with writing a story and having, as part of that story, 
some alternatives. But when you go much beyond that, then you?re advocating 
something, you?re moving away from being an independent. You move toward 
molding your community rather than mirroring it. When you put out a story that 
shows the police chief?s a crook, you?re going to change your community because the 
chief is going to get fired. That?s not advocating that the chief gets fired, though. 
That?s what an editorial would do. With a story, you have to balance it, and stop there. 
?Mainstream weeklies or dailies are dedicated to both sides of the truth. If an 
article points to a problem and says this is the solution, period, that?s being an 
advocate. That?s imposing the might of the newspaper on the community, and that is 
advocacy. Let?s flip the coin, though. What if we?re writing a story about a family that 
is in real need of a liver transplant for their 2-year-old daughter and they?re broke. 
What if we write a story that brings in $2 million worth of contributions and everyone 
lives happily ever after. Didn?t we advocate on behalf of the little girl? Yeah. We did. 
And that?s ethical. We decide. There are many more of those people in the world than 
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 we in the media write about. So it?s an independent decision to write the story. Its not 
like the United Way came to us, told us about a person, told us to put it in the 
newspaper, and we said sure. 
?There?s a fundamental difference between what Amnesty International will 
write about itself and how I will use the organization in a news story about political 
prisoners  of war.?
 Personal Lessons from Environment Reporting
 ?It has reinforced my desire to continue learning throughout my life because 
reporting on the environment is like a big science project.  Quite often you have to 
learn new things about nature that keeps feeding the brain. It reinforced my love of 
learning. It was nice to know that being on the environment beat is like being in 
college again, because it?s rewarding in terms of learning, and getting paid for it,? 
Bayles said. 
Realities of the Environment Beat
 ?Like most beats, there?s never enough time to do all the stories you want to 
do. Often an editor will forget you?re the environment reporter and assign you to a  
breaking news piece or filling in on another beat because many environment stories 
can wait. It?s frustrating when you?re in the middle of a Weekender (an evergreen that 
runs over the weekend ? doesn?t have a day hook) on a local environment problem and 
you get pulled to cover a trial. But I guess that happens on any beat. I think it may 
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 happen more often on the environment beat because so many of the stories are left 
pressing,? Bayles said.
 What Makes Environment Reporting Meaningful for You?
 ?It?s really important that someone outside the government and special 
interests is watching what?s going on with our environment. Just like if we screw up 
our school, we screw up a whole generation of our children. If we screw up the 
environment, we screw up our planet . If we?re not paying attention, we could all die. 
The planet could become inhabitable. I?m going a bit far, but it?s important that we in 
the media keep watch.?
 After reviewing these notes, Bayles said this quote is, ?right on, and key to 
how I feel about my job.? He said did not specifically note any spiritual connection to 
the environment that gives environment reporting meaning for him. 
What Makes Investigative Reporting Meaningful for You?
 For Bayles, part of the joy of investigative reporting is being able to work from 
home when he chooses. But, there?s more to it than that. Bayles loves the work. ?I 
even do it on my own time,? he said. ?Journalism is the greatest profession in the 
world. I get paid for something I would do for free. And that?s really cool. And I get 
paid well. I have good benefits, and bosses treat me right. I have a lot of autonomy. 
Investigative reporting is the best because you have the greatest potential change the 
world for a little bit better. It truly is the Fourth Estate, and I?m part of it. 
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 ?There?s no way that I could have as much positive influence on my 
community except through journalism. I would never be a politician, I would never be 
an actor or any kind of activist or some great author that would change the world for 
the better. This is the only way I have to leave the world just a little bit better than I 
left it, in the smallest way, even if it?s only Sarasota County rather than the whole 
United States or the world. If there are enough [people] out there who are inspired by 
this and we put some better rules in place to make the environment, to make it a little 
bit easier for humans and animals to co-exist, from both viewpoints, then there you 
go! That?s as great a legacy as anybody can have ? where I come from anyway. 
?If you cover the city council and report what happened, that?s great ? people 
need to know that. They wouldn?t go to the city council meeting, most of them. So 
that?s an important service. But it?s not going to change anything unless some major 
blow-up happens and someone gets canned.
 ?But with investigative reporting, you can pour your heart and soul into it and 
definitely have some positive outcomes: if not changing laws, then you?re alerting 
society to potential problems that could be fixed. There you have it!?
 Types of Investigative Reporting
 ?Explanatory journalism doesn?t necessarily have a balance. It?s an 
explanation of what?s going on. For instance, in the ?Inside the Fire? series I was 
?embedded? with firefighters. The story is showing an explanation of what happens to 
the men and machines that fight the forest fires during a big fire year, back in the 
woods where no one ever sees them. And here?s what it?s like when people flee from a 
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 neighborhood that a fire pounced on, and burned down their homes. Here?s the chaos. 
Here?s an explanation of what it?s like to be a firefighter, what it?s like to stop a huge 
wildfire, what it?s like to be a homeowner threatened by a wildfire. There?s no greater 
purpose to that except to illuminate people?s knowledge about something that hasn?t 
been written about in that kind of detail. 
?That?s an investigation because it takes a lot of original reporting, of looking 
into things that aren?t necessarily in a database anywhere that has been created by 
some government entity. It?s the softest form of investigation for sure. But it?s 
definitely going out to learn something ? to investigate what it?s like.?
 Responsibility
 To help mankind and the environment.
 A Description of Journalists in General
 Bayles is motivated by opportunities to learn new things about the world 
around him. Broadening that, he said, ?The motivation of any journalist is to make 
something better for a group of people who need help righting a wrong in the 
government, which might be people in Montana paying [to put] sand out here on 
Siesta Key. It?s not really right.?
 He added, ?The best journalists are the ones who constantly learn. They love 
the profession because they are learning all the time.?
 Journalists don?t help out the authorities. But there are moral imperatives that 
come before journalistic goals, Bayles said. ?Your duty as a citizen in most cases 
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 comes before journalism. For instance, when I was doing the fire series, there was an 
arsonist running around the woods lighting most of the big fires we covered that year. 
And I started having a pen pal through the online journal I did for the web site while I 
was in the woods. He sounded awfully suspicious from things he was telling me ?
 things that maybe only the person lighting the fires or the firefighters could know. So I 
thought he was a former firefighter, or that it might be the firebug. So now I had a 
name that I should probably turn over to the authorities, but I?m a journalist and we 
don?t help the authorities. What do I do, right??
 Bayles talked about it with his editors and he decided it was his duty to stop 
the fires from happening. The police had not come to the paper and asked for 
information, and Bayles had gotten the information as a reporter, not as a private 
citizen. Bayles and his editors decided he would write an online diary that included a 
passage noting he had received a lot of e-mail on the topic, and quoting from some, 
including his suspect. In another case, Balyes the reporter saw a guy start a controlled 
burn that got out of hand and burned down a home. The authorities were investigating, 
but didn?t know Balyes was on the scene working on his series. Again, he opted to 
write about it in a column in his online diary.
 The Future of Environment Reporting
 At least for investigative reporters, it appears from Bayles? experience that a 
new responsibility will be the possibility of providing daily diaries online for readers, 
making personal narrative a new component of standard investigative reporting. He 
stressed that while common thinking is that the Internet is going to change everything, 
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 it doesn?t ? that it?s just a different way to get information. ?You still have to double 
check it,? he said. ?It?s just another way for people to put their views out there. Or 
their spins. Which is fine. But you still have to get the original document in your 
hands. You still have to talk to the mayor,? he said.
 Bayles doesn?t see any great changes ahead for the beat, or any instability 
about its future, although he anticipates more reporting about global climate change 
and global disease like AIDS and SARS. That, he said, may bring about a sense 
?among some of the elite environment reporters of a grander scale of projects and 
stories. But a very average mid-size newspaper like mine, it?s going to carry on with a 
mix of daily journalism and longer pieces that bring things out.?
 He added, ?The environment is too big an issue in Florida to be ignored. So 
you won?t see massive cuts in the environment in most papers in Florida. I can?t think 
of a paper in Florida that doesn?t have an environment reporter.?
 That said, Bayles doesn?t think environment stories are well suited for 
television news. ?I don?t think you can do anything really well on TV. Maybe the 
news magazines can kind of get into some stuff. But the power of television often 
eclipses the power of newspaper in audience in mass and numbers. They?re going to 
get the word out faster than we are, and more completely. But as far as in-depth 
journalism, TV is just not going to have the lasting impact of newspaper stories.?
 At the Sarasota paper, the cable studio in the corner of the newsroom mostly 
teases to the newspaper version of a story. How to use the cable station for news, 
Bayles said, is the hot topic of the moment at the paper. It is an ongoing debate in this 
multimedia newsroom, one of the first in the country. How do you do a story on TV 
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 that you?re also doing in print? For the most part right now, those reporters at the 
paper choosing to do TV as well as print use it as a vehicle to tease something they?ve 
written, and co-ordinate the tease with when the series or story is going to run. So the 
whole news report is a tease. 
?This is exactly the stuff that?s happening in our New York Times-owned 
newsroom is a discussion of how long can a TV piece be that backs up a newspaper 
report? We talked about two minutes, three minutes, and the producer said why don?t 
we try five minutes? Why don?t we try eight minutes? And everyone started nodding 
their heads. Newsmagazines keep a topic interesting for an hour. Why can?t we keep it 
interesting for 10 minutes, especially if it?s something as multi-faceted as [an 
environment story],? Bayles said.
 Questions also include whether to do a two-piece thing on the cable channel 
the day before and the day of a newspaper piece. Should the TV report be more 
substantial and contain different information? Also, there is sometimes major 
coordinating required with other broadcast outlets to get a story together. Sometimes 
the reporter is interviewed as an authority, Bayles said, speaking from experience.
 ?That?s the way the environment beat or any beat is going to change in the 
future. Reporters are going to need increasing flexibility. I don?t think the content ?
 what we?re covering ? is going to change. But the way we?re doing it certainly will. 
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 DALE WILLMAN
 Background
 Dale Willman, a 30-year mainstream, cable, and public radio reporter who is a 
lifelong Republican, trapped as a kid, grew up an hour-and-a-half from the burning 
Cuyahoga River in 1969, never read newspapers or watched television news very 
much before becoming a reporter although watched Walter Cronkite because his 
parents did, graduated from high school and holds a master?s degree but no bachelor?s 
degree because he failed at proficiency in a second language. Is fluent in science 
communication. Became a journalist at age 8 when he produced his first newspaper, a 
house organ for the Willman family. His second job in the business was as chess 
columnist for the Smithville High School Mosaic. At 17 he became a disc jockey, but 
after a year his boss ? also a friend ? suggested pursing news as a career instead. 
Willman took his first journalism classes at Ohio State University where he 
became a nuclear propellerhead majoring in international studies but could not deliver 
the language requirement, quit to collect and deliver radio news in Columbus, Ohio. 
Grew to become a national award-winning radio reporter, leading voice in 
environmental journalism, managing editor, and journalism instructor in Croatia and 
Macedonia before securing a master?s degree in environment and community from 
Antioch College, which led to distinguished media studies professor at Carleton 
College as well as trainer of professional journalists in storytelling, writing, and the 
latest field technology for radio production. 
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 Willman began covering the environment in 1989, took biology as an 
undergrad and a freshwater ecology class for his master?s, secured most of his 
knowledge of science on-the-job and through professional organizations including the 
National Association of Science Writers and the Society of Environmental Journalists. 
Grounded in investigative reporting techniques through workshops provided by 
Investigative Reporters and Editors. 
 Worships the environment. In 2002 dedicated the rest of his career to 
environment reporting by establishing Field Notes Productions to produce 
environment stories for national and international radio broadcast. Before getting there 
he was a dishwasher, waiter, bagboy and night mop and clean-up at a grocery store, 
and summer landscaper, also National Public Radio news anchor, reporter, editor, 
segment producer, Midwest editor of NPR?s National Desk in which he managed a 
staff of three plus a bureau chief and several freelancers, managing editor of the Great 
Lakes Radio Consortium overseeing a $380,000 budget and staff of three serving a 
weekly news feed carried by more than 135 radio stations in 20 states, national 
correspondent/environment reporter for CNN Radio covering the White House, 
Pentagon, State Department and writing travel features, CBS radio correspondent, 
Monitor Radio (Christian Science Monitor) anchor and senior editor, landing 
prestigious journalism awards along the way including two-time winner of the Edward 
R. Murrow Award, once for the best use of sound and once for investigative reporting.
 Willman describes his religious practice as universalist.
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 View of Investigative Reporting
 Before he ever did an investigative report, Willman said he had a clear idea of 
the  impacts that kind of journalism produced. He became interested in it at an early 
age when he learned Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bowles got blown 
up after uncovering organized crime. It was the story that brought about Investigative 
Reporters and Editors (IRE), and it got Willman thinking. Reporting of the Watergate 
break-in also intrigued Willman and he chomped at the bit for his chance. No 
opportunities to do it presented themselves. He became an early member of  IRE when 
disco was popular, and started to learn about investigative report through the 
organization?s conferences and newsletters, preparing, laying in wait for opportunity.
 ?What turned me on to investigative reporting was in ?All the President?s 
Men,? the Eye of God above [Redford and Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein] as 
they looked through the stuff at the Library of Congress. What turned me off to 
investigative reporting for a long time was the view that it was just laborious, and 
dreadfully long hours sitting in archives somewhere and just pouring over arcane 
documents. That was my view before I began to learn more about it, let alone do it.
 ?There?s the view that all reporting is investigative in some sense. Which it is. 
And as I read more about it, my understanding grew. [I learned] it doesn?t necessarily 
have to be records, but it is often prying things out that people don?t want revealed ?
 not in a ?60 Minutes? ?Gotcha!? sort of way, but wading through things and finding 
that nugget, digging through and finding that one kernel that sends you into a direction 
and making connections. 
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 ?Document work to me is in a sense investigative reporting. It means 
connecting the dots. News reporting is often doing something about this dot, and that 
dot. And that dot over there. Investigative reporting and document reporting are 
connecting those dots. It?s finding the threads. It?s finding the commonality amongst 
those things.? 
Criteria for Moving the Public
 ?Being taken seriously is separate from hooking an audience. To me, the way 
of hooking people into a story is to be a storyteller. To present the story, at least in the 
beginning, through the eyes of someone affected.  There?s a basic convention in radio, 
and that is using a focus statement ? one line that goes like this: Someone is doing 
something for a reason. In using that, that gives you a story that people can relate to. It 
puts it in human terms, and it gets people engaged, because chances are they probably 
know someone like that. So that?s the way of hooking them in.
 ?How to move the public ? that heads toward advocacy. I don?t purposefully 
try to move the public in terms of a direction they should take. I try to move them to 
feel the story. To be a part of it. And to be compelled to do something. But I don?t try 
to tell them what it is they should do,? Willman said.
 Investigative Reporting Procedure
 There is no rigid process for investigative reporting that Willman follows. The 
process for him is intuitive. One thing leads to another, he said.
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 Throughout his life, once there was something he wanted to do, Willman set 
out to learn more about it. The same is true for stories. Always on the lookout for the 
right investigative story for him to pursue, Willman did so and it landed him a Murrow 
award.
 Investigative reporting means a lot of conversations, calling people who know 
about a topic, calling people who understand it, he said. ?I find I can?t investigate 
something adequately until I understand it. I am kind of dense. So it means I have to 
gather a lot more information than probably I will ever use. But that context is 
important for giving me a greater understanding of the issue. That?s the only way I can 
actually do an investigation.?
 He describes the story about Disney?s Broadway production of ?Beauty and 
the Beast,? for which he won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative 
Reporting. The story told of why the orchestra musicians wore respirators and double 
canister gas masks as they performed, which was because the ventilation for the 
production?s pyrotechnics sucked harmful particulate matter into and through the 
orchestra pit. Willman picked up on the story three years into that practice and 
exposed it, working on the story on his own time although employed by CNN Radio. 
To clarify, CNN Radio did not give him on-the-job time to investigative the story, but 
said they would be interested in running it if it passed scrutiny. CNN Television 
declined to do the story when Willman could not deliver tape, which happened 
because Disney got wind of the story before he could get the hidden camera video 
CNN Television wanted. 
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 The story took almost a year to collect. It took several months just to get 
permission from the musician?s union to go into the pit with the orchestra. Willman 
met with the union representatives and the musicians, explained to them what he 
wanted to do, why he thought it was important, and that he was not interested in doing 
a story that would hurt them. He guaranteed any of them anonymity if they needed it, 
but said it was important that he had their participation. He told them he would not do 
the story unless he had full approval of everyone in the orchestra pit. As he cultivated 
each union member involved, Willman researched pyrotechnics, a business ?that is 
really cloooosed? because it mostly consists of family operations which do not have 
public records. ?And regulators don?t want to talk to you,? he said. 
Willman, based on his research, explained the chemistry that makes propylene 
glycol come out in a mist or fog on the stage, which floats the particulate matter into 
the air. The chemical is safe in foods, for ingestion, but ?no one knows what it does 
when it is inhaled, hot or cold,? he said. Willman cited a case where a singer in the 
stage wings accidentally got a blast in the face of hot propylene glycol3 that seared his 
lungs and permanently scarred his throat. 
Willman had very little support from CNN Radio for the story. The process in 
this story is a fairly unusual one, he said, because of having to get the approval and 
support of those who were in the pit. If they didn?t support he effort, he said, ?they 
could do a lot to screw it up. They could tell Disney we were doing the story. I just 
though it was the human thing to do, to make sure people agree this is the right thing
 3
  Propylene glycol is related to anti-freeze ? ethylene glycol. The difference is propylene glycol has 
three carbons, whereas ethylene glycol has only two. Propylene glycol is like glycerin, and is often 
found in personal care products.
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 to do. Many of the musicians didn?t think it was a problem, didn?t think it was 
effecting them. I had to convince them that some pyrotechnics have heavy metals in 
them because they add color, and that those metals have a huge effect on your health.?
 The research not only involved talking with the musicians, but also the fire 
marshals? association, regulators, legislative officials, a special interest organization 
aimed at protecting the health of performers in relations to their work, and plenty of 
reading and Internet research.
 ?This is exactly what I imagined investigative reporting to be,? Willman said. 
?The people element of it was the part that was a little different. To have a large group 
of people I had to convince. But the rest of it really fit what I thought investigative 
reporting should be.?
 Why Environment Reporting
 ?To me, almost all environment reporting, because of the nature of the topics, 
has to be investigative. The reason is simple to me, and this is what attracts me to 
environment reporting: environment issues by nature are so complex. The 
environment covers so many disciplines. It?s everything from architecture to 
macrobiology to ethnobotany to whatever. It?s this crossing of disciplines so you?re 
forced to be investigative in the sense that you really, in order to understand the issues 
that you cover, have to dig deeper. You have to do a lot of concentrating on the dots to 
make sense of those stories. That?s part of the progression of my own growth.
 ?I started becoming interested in environment reporting at the same time I 
began to evolve in my understanding of journalism in general. I didn?t place any value 
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 on [environment reporting, though]. I grew up in [the traditional journalism] school 
where you hear the voice of god and you impart truth to people. I didn?t realize how 
strongly I felt about the environment until I was much older. There were a lot of things 
that influenced me,? he said, citing family camping trips throughout the country to 
places like Dodge City and Yellowstone National Park. ?It linked the environment to 
people. So I understood we were not separate from the environment, we were part of 
it. 
Advocacy and Environment Reporting
 ?There is a lot of advocacy in environmental journalism. I don?t think it?s 
wrong, but it?s certainly not for me. There is so much baggage around the phrase 
environment reporting as it is, that as soon as people begin to feel you are an advocate, 
you lose a  big chunk of your audience. While I respect a good many people who are 
doing advocacy journalism ? I consider real advocacy journalism that which selects a 
point of view, and advocates for a certain point of view beyond all others. While 
there?s a role for that, it?s not what I want to do. You end up preaching to the 
converted rather than providing information for those undecided to make an informed 
choice.
 ?Is environment reporting always advocacy? No. It does not need to be. You 
can take an issue and present that issue, and present the facts and allow the people to 
make up their minds. It, to some extent, rests on how you view the public?s capacity to 
assimilate information. If you think they need to be persuaded to a point of view, 
you?re going to do advocacy journalism. If you are convinced the public will make the 
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 right choice given enough information, then you?ll just provide information rather than 
a point of view,? Willman said.
 Investigative Reporting and Advocacy Journalism
 Is investigative reporting advocacy? It?s a tough question for Willman. He is 
torn. ?Can you be an environmentalist and be fair and objective? I think yeah, because 
you?re human. Does the fact that you feel strongly about an issue mean that you?re an 
advocate? To me, advocacy is propaganda whereas investigative reporting done well 
is not. The reporter may feel passionate about an issue, but works as hard as possible 
to be fair on that issue, and be as comprehensive as possible. One of the definitions of 
propaganda is to manipulate the truth to achieve a particular goal. And that means 
being selective in the information that you provide. To me, that?s advocacy, and that?s 
not straight journalism, the kind where you are informing people about issues 
significant to them.  
?Just because you believe in something or understand something doesn?t mean 
you?re an advocate. Religion reporters proudly go to church or temple. Every business 
reporter I know is a capitalist. Does that mean they are biased in what they do? Yes! 
What I look at to determine if they are an advocate or not is the depth of their 
reporting. Your report doesn?t necessarily aim toward a call for action, whereas 
advocacy does. I look at the weight of the evidence and make a judgment as to what is 
fair. For instance, with what we know today it?s not fair to say that humans aren?t at 
least partly responsible for global climate change.
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 ?Many muckrakers in the past were advocates. I have a certain difficulty with 
that. Izzy Stone was a muckraker. People thought he was biased, but he dug out a lot 
of important stories. So I don?t see much of a difference between investigative 
reporting and muckraking in that sense. Good muckraking to me is just good 
investigative reporting.?
 Willman views book-length journalism as the ultimate in comprehensive 
investigative reporting. Citing Botany of Desire by Michael Palen, about genetic 
engineering of crops, Willman said, ?He doesn?t come out and say genetic engineering 
is bad. His purpose isn?t to condemn genetic engineering.? The book, Willman said, 
?made me consider all viewpoints and make up my own mind. The weight of the 
evidence does condemn genetic engineering.
 ?Economists say that in a market where there is complete information, people 
will make the right choices. I don?t think that happens with environment issues. The 
Exxon Valdez oil spill was a huge plus for the gross national product (GNP) because 
we lost a little bit in fisheries but the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to clean it 
up actually helped the GNP. The loss of the vista, the loss of the fish that are a 
wonderful part of the ecosystem, the degradation of the ecosystem, that?s not factored 
into the economic equation.
 ?I truly believe that if the public has complete information they are smart 
enough to make their minds up and it will be in favor of the environment,? Willman 
said, adding, ?I don?t think complete information is given to consumers about the 
environmental affects of their actions. And without that they cannot make informed 
choices. It?s our jobs as journalists to give them that complete information, and then 
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 we should trust in their ability to make the right decisions. And that?s what separates 
the journalism I believe in from advocacy journalism ? advocates, it would seem, 
don?t believe that people will make the right choice, so they must help them with that 
decision.?  
Personal Lessons from Investigative Reporting About the Environment
 ?Am I an environmentalist? Yeah, I am. But do I try to advocate in my pieces? 
No.? This is the essence of who Willman is, he says. This clarity about his identity 
came from reporting about the environment, studying it, studying community, and 
completing an investigative report about the environment, he said. 
Realities of the Environment Beat
 ?What?s different is the whole issue of the breadth of knowledge needed for 
environment reporting. That?s the biggest reality. A separate reality is that many 
environment stories are slow to develop, which is counter to the news cycle that 
demands new, different, immediate. So journalists are trained to look for those sorts of 
stories ? those which change rapidly, and with suddenness, rather than those that 
require a longer scale to put together to report on, and to get the public to understand. 
It makes it a harder sell to editors who are used to a whole different style of story.
 ?The environment is one of the most polarized beats. The language has been 
hijacked to a great extent so that it?s hard to do a story without being accused of being 
an advocate or zealot for one side or the other,? Willman said. 
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 What Makes Environment Reporting Meaningful for You?
 For Willman, the clearest indication of a greater power is to be outside in the 
environment. Describing living in Minnesota, he said, ?The cold here is crisp, and the 
stars, on the nights when it drops down below zero and the clouds go away, I don?t 
know how someone can say there?s not a higher power. When I?m out hiking it?s the 
same thing. For me, that?s the greater experience.? Reporting about the environment 
deepens his connection to the environment as well as its meaning, Willman said.
 What Makes Investigative Reporting Meaningful for You?
 ?I have this incredibly strong, stubborn sense of fairness. I don?t know where it 
came from, but I have this intense ? I hate injustice. I hate abuse by the powerful. I get 
really mad about it. I used to get really angry in school about dumb things, about when 
people have power and they abuse it. I?m offended by that. 
?To me, investigative reporting is looking at those who were abusing power 
and covering it up. It is a way of putting light on that and making people aware of an
 injustice. It?s righting wrongs. It?s this sense of anger and injustice that really pushed 
me to want to do investigative reporting. The other element is that I also think 
investigative reporting is just really good reporting.? 
Responsibility
 ?The environment beat isn?t alone in this, but many of the stories we do can 
have a huge effect on people?s health and their lives. So if we?re doing a story about 
PCB contamination in the Hudson (River), or lead in water supplies, or toxic releases 
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 from power plants, all those issues have potential ramifications in people?s lives. And 
that?s a huge responsibility, to get it right, to be as accurate as possible and say it in a 
tone that doesn?t make it too alarmist and yet doesn?t play down potential threats. So it 
has to strike a perfect balance between those, so you don?t lose listeners,? Willman 
said.
 The Future of Environment Reporting
 ?I get angry at a lot of environment reporting now because I realize that [many 
of those doing it] just don?t get it, they just don?t understand it. Investigative reporting 
in part means providing greater context. It?s that depth, that context that is so 
important for environment stories, and we don?t have it. As a result, the public doesn?t 
understand these issues, because they are ill-informed by the poor reporting being 
done by many people.?
261
 CHARLES PEKOW
 Background
 After talking with Charles Pekow, one wonders if institutionalization for 
psychological disorder is among the best grooming for prospective investigative 
reporters.  Pekow, a long-time freelance journalist in Washington, D.C. hailing from 
Highland Park, a Chicago suburb, lapped up investigative reports at every opportunity 
from his first exposure to them around age 16 with CBS-TV?s ?60 Minutes? news 
magazine. Pekow, who lived at Bruno Bettelheim?s Sonia Shankman Orthogenic 
School between the ages of 11 and 21, a residential institution for emotionally 
disturbed children at the University of Chicago, has written about his 10-year 
experience there between 1965 and 1975, accusing Bettelheim of terrorizing the 
residents, which included bullying, public humiliation, and physical abuse, such as 
beating autistic children who could not speaking clearly, slapping children in the face 
for not eating dinner, pulling residents? hair or beating them for skipping school or 
calling a counselor something derogatory, and having women monitor the growing 
boys as they washed in open shower rooms, Pekow said, and wrote in an expos? about 
Bettelheim. 
Pekow?s claims have been verified and embellished upon by some of his 
classmates, both male and female. Despite numerous efforts, he was not able to get his 
view of the truth published for a long time. Bethelheim?s saintly image outside the 
walls of the Orthogenic School made news magazines and newspapers view the 
controversy Pekow presented as off-limits, evidenced by rejection slips he received. 
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 When Bettelheim committed suicide at age 86 in March 1990, The Washington Post
 on August 26 of that year carried a first-person, supported, expos? in its ?Outlook? 
section by Pekow, who wrote about, among other things, residents who complained 
about Bettelheim to the law and were not taken seriously because it was the word of 
?mental patients? against that of a world-famous psychologist. 
Pekow?s experience there, coupled with his sense of being wronged when 
committed by his parents, roots his motivation to right wrongs deep in a sense of 
outrage at injustice. He speaks about the institution prohibiting the residents from 
watching television, reading newspapers and news magazines, or listening to the radio 
based on the thinking that they would make the residents? already fragile emotional 
states more unstable. Consequently, Pekow became addicted to news during summer 
vacations home, for instance. He recalls being embarrassed that he did not know that 
former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner had resigned, and remembers protesting to 
institution counselors that he was entitled to know things like the name of the 
governor of the state and what was going on in the world, claiming a violation of his 
civil rights. The rules began to relax and the residents were allowed to watch ?60 
Minutes? on Sunday nights. The reports intrigued, excited, and inspired Pekow. One 
year instead of summer reruns of the program, the station rebroadcast Edward R. 
Murrow?s ?See It Now? series. ?These were real inspirations,? Pekow said. At home 
for summer vacation, he and his mother would talk about Murrow and the series, 
?Harvest of Shame,? and Murrow?s historic broadcast of the story of Milo Radulovich, 
a landmark piece of advocacy journalism in which Murrow said there is no other side 
to the story but that Radulovich should not be removed from the service because 
263
 members of his family were labeled radicals during the McCarthy Era. ?That was a 
tremendous piece of journalism,? Pekow said. Routinely his parents would talk about 
important things in local news, and Pekow would keep up by following the political 
and social problems in Chicago, reading Mike Royko and others, ?and that would 
inspire me as a citizen to do something.? 
For Pekow, that ?something? was to dedicate his career to righting wrongs, and 
to do it through investigative reporting. Prior to becoming a journalist, he held summer 
jobs as a messenger in a law firm, and worked in a hotel as purchasing manager, desk 
clerk, switchboard operator, and reception all connected to the family business, which 
was hotel management and ownership.
 Pekow, who holds a master?s in journalism from Northwestern University and 
a bachelor?s in government from Georgetown University, has no formal training in 
investigative techniques, holds three national awards for investigative reporting, and 
also one for analytical reporting. In his career he has gathered and written about 20 or 
30 stories about the environment. By contrast, he has done several dozen investigative 
reports. General ones take months. Investigative reports about the environment take 
longer partly due to scientific jargon and partly due to complexity, he said. Most of the 
stories he?s had suppressed did not concern the environment, he said. 
Pekow describes himself as an atheist. Summarizing his views on religion, he 
said, ?Humans arose from the environment, not from divine intervention; though none 
of us know what other universes may exist or what they may contain. I don?t believe 
in deity or practiced religion. I think you can debunk religion. But how do we know 
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 for sure what?s beyond the Earth? How can we prove there is or isn?t anything there? 
We haven?t reached that stage yet.?
 View of Investigative Reporting
 ?A report covers. And investigative report uncovers,? Pekow said, citing a few 
examples. There wasn?t much investigative reporting in Chicago?s mainstream press 
when he was growing up, he said. ?There is a fine line as to when good reporting 
becomes investigative reporting. It?s a matter of art,? Pekow said.
 That doesn?t mean anything going beyond ?he said, she said? reporting is 
investigative, he said. Investigative reporting is taking something not handed to you, 
he said. Although that?s also the definition of enterprise reporting, investigative 
reporting  goes further, since enterprise reporting can also be in the ?he said, she said? 
style, Pekow suggested, stressing again that investigative reporting uncovers, while an 
enterprise report can just cover. Investigative reporting also must involve some 
wrongdoing, such as an abuse of public trust or a social or environmental problem, he 
said. 
Pekow?s biggest inspiration was Watergate. He also remembers Jack 
Anderson?s column in the Chicago Daily News. ?He was always coming up with big 
expos?s,? Pekow recalled. He also cited as an influence Ralph Nader and his ?raiders? 
?who wrote expos?s largely on government programs, fraud and business. Those were 
major inspirations to me. Also, Mike Royko?s columns of cronyism in the Chicago 
government.? Upton Sinclair?s The Jungle also had a big impact on Pekow, who 
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 regards the book-length work of what is now referred to as creative nonfiction as ?a 
major, moving piece of investigative reporting, although it was fictional.
 ?Originally, investigative reporting relied on anonymous sources. At the 
beginning there was the image of the reporter as detective. That?s what I thought 
investigative reporting was: a lot of shoe leather. Later on I thought it was going into 
government files. But initially it was just interviewing. Initially, when I read the 
reports or saw them on TV, I didn?t think too much about the techniques. I though, 
you gotta get people to talk who don?t want to talk. I?ve done that many times, and 
even given anonymity. But later on in my career I got to thinking that maybe 
journalists do that too much, and became more careful about that.?
 His attraction to investigative reporting is a philosophical one. ?It?s the idea of 
making the world what it says it is, of trying to get the reality behind the reality. So 
it?s after the truth behind the truth, which people have been thinking about since 
ancient Greece and more recently since Hegel ? you know, what the world is as 
opposed to what we simply see or what someone wants us to see. I wanted to see if I 
could find the truth behind the ?truth,? reality behind ?reality.? Pekow?s background 
and witness of election politics led him to see and know things that weren?t what they 
seemed to be, he said. 
One doesn?t need any particular aptitude to do investigative reporting, he said. 
?The most important thing is to be able to stick to a story. You have to be able to get 
doors slammed in your face and take it. You have to be able to call 12 people before 
finding one person who will talk to you. And sometimes you have to try different 
tactics on a person who doesn?t want to talk to get the person to talk to you. Not many 
266
 people can spot a needle in a haystack. But an investigative reporter can. It takes 
persistence rather than intelligence. And time. That?s what investigative reporting has 
to do with aptitude. You don?t have to have a specific degree or course of study. There 
are many people with degrees in journalism who are not successful at it [investigative 
reporting], and there are many people who are. I know people who don?t have a 
college degree who do this type of reporting. On the other hand, a law degree could 
help. Or a degree in biology might make it easier to understand environmental stories 
better.?
 While Pekow has never plied a source with liquor to get the person to talk, he 
has traded information for that purpose. He also stays away from writing stories based 
on stolen memos. Yet, he said, ?People have given me things that they didn?t mean to 
and say ?whoops? and I say, ?Too late!? You don?t go through someone?s legal files 
when you?re in their office and left alone, but if it?s left on the desk and you can look 
at it, yeah. But I don?t remember getting something useful that way.?
 Pekow added that from investigative reporting in general he gets a sense of 
spiritual wealth. ?It inspires me,? he said, ?but it?s much harder to sell.?   
Criteria for Moving the Public
 ?It?s finding something that?s not obvious and going out and digging, through 
files, finding recalcitrant witnesses, not taking the first answer. Asking the tougher 
questions.? And delivering an artful telling of the story, he stressed. 
267
 Investigative Reporting Procedure
 Pekow?s response to this question requires some background. In the 
January/February issue of The Washington Monthly, Pekow delivered a gripping story 
of a family cremated while camping along the banks of the Pecos River in New 
Mexico when a corroded oil pipeline ?ruptured and sent a flaming fireball across the 
campground. Burning fuel rained down upon the campers. The fire was so hot it 
melted sand into glass and turned parts of the concrete bridge into powder. Tents and 
sleeping bags turned to soup. The flames leapt 500 feet in the air, were visible from 30 
miles away, and left a crater 86 feet long, 46 feet wide, and 20 feet deep. 
?Amanda Smith survived the fire only long enough to describe the horror of 
the scene to rescue workers. The explosion wiped out most of the Smith family, killing 
Amanda, her parents, her husband, her two kids, her brother and sister-in law, their 22-
 month old daughter and twin 6-month-old babies,? Pekow wrote.
 For this section, Pekow described how he collected that report. ?In 
environment reporting, you?re obviously dealing with something scientific, something 
harder than if you were doing something strictly human [as in ?human behavior?]. So 
you may have to find more physical evidence or documents than if you were reporting 
on some other form of corruption or dishonesty, where you?d have to interview a lot of 
witnesses. The scientific expertise makes it more difficult to do if, like me, you don?t 
have that.  I have had to familiarize myself more with scientific issues. The big help to 
me was knowing something about the environment and the drawback was what I 
didn?t know.
268
 ?What I learned through beat reporting was somewhat inadequate [when it 
came to reporting about the environment]. I had to do a lot of background research.  
On the pipeline story, I knew, for instance, about the pipeline safety program. I 
learned through beat reporting that the government?s efforts to regulate pipelines were 
inadequate, that the government did not have the resources or an effective way of 
protecting the public and the environment from pipeline tragedies. 
?By beat reporting, I mean just covering a topic. I write a monthly column on 
propane for a propane magazine. In the course of writing that column, I came across a 
problem I thought deserved some investigation. So I went to it!?
 The story became Pekow?s first in-depth report involving the environment. 
?First I went through government documents. Some of the things were in the Federal 
Register. And I had to dig through the Office of Pipeline Safety?s information. Some 
of it?s on the Web, but you have to look for it. You have to look very carefully and 
deeply at it and through a bunch of other government files. 
?I then interviewed some people ? experts in the oil business, and one person 
in the environmental movement in Alaska who I was able to identify as an expert on 
pipelines. So I had to track her down. I also interviewed members of Congress. I 
picked up newspaper clips from way back when, looked into the National 
Transportation Safety Board and pipeline safety, rummaged through files ? it?s easier 
now than it used to be because so much of it is on the Web ? and put together a story 
that put two and two together.?
269
 And, Pekow adds, ?I had to get some scientific facts in addition to quotes. I 
had to document what the dangers were about corrosion in pipelines and so forth, and 
the actual dangers of them exploding.?
 Why Environment Reporting?
 ?Before I even read a lot of news articles, I was very interested in 
environmental issues. We gotta protect the world. When I was young, before I ever 
wrote a lead or news story, I would read a lot of environmental magazines and 
newsletters, like Clear Creek. I was interested in pollution, in the wasting of resources, 
air and water pollution, mercury in the fish ? a big topic back around 1970. It was 
important. If we don?t take care of the environment, what do we have left? We poison 
ourselves!
 ?In retrospect, many of the sources were biased. I was getting one side of the 
issue. At the time, though, I thought they were telling the truth. When you?re younger, 
it?s easier to get bogged down in perspective. Now, [looking back] I have to wonder if 
there was really as much poison in food, if it is really as dangerous as they thought it 
would be. People were predicting mass starvation and population doomsdays. But 
what they were talking about and that I was worried about didn?t materialize. I was a 
teenager when I was reading this ? maybe 15-16-17 years old. 
?With the combination of my training as a journalist and the wisdom of age, I 
can see things more clearly. Plus, more facts come out with time. But there?s nothing 
more important than protecting the world, saving he world. We all need the 
270
 environment. It should be in good shape, or we can?t have good lives. The world will 
fall apart if we don?t take care of the environment.?
 Advocacy and Environment Reporting
 Pekow learned of environmental issues mostly from the environmental 
publications he read in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ?I remember reading one article 
that said the way to stop air pollution is to stop driving cars. The way to do that is to 
pour sugar syrup in the gas tanks. That was Clear Creek. So they were not just 
reporting, they were encouraging action.
 ?Advocacy journalism advocates a point of view or an action. I can advocate a 
legislative or regulatory action, or that people carpool or boycott a product. As long as 
it?s written based on facts, it?s advocacy journalism. Everything from The New 
Republic to The Nation to The Weekly Standard is advocacy journalism. For that 
matter, Sierra magazine also. They?re asking people to take positions and write 
members of Congress ? it?s definitely writing with a point of view. 
?Advocacy journalism belongs anywhere, as long as it?s labeled as such. But it 
doesn?t belong in a nightly newscast. And if it appears in a magazine or newspaper, it 
belongs in the opinion section or the editorial or op-ed pages. It should be clearly 
labeled as opinion. 
?Advocacy is that which includes a call to action or point of view, for instance, 
what a specific policy should be about something. Slant is in the eyes of the beholder. 
Slant is when you?re not being fair to one side. In advocacy, you?re making it clear 
you?re promoting something. With slant, you?re just leaving out part of the story but 
271
 making it appear that you are not. In that case, you?re being slanted and appearing to 
be objective. Modern journalists have been trained not to be advocates.
 ?It is a weakness of mine, and one of the greatest weaknesses of man [sic], that 
we tend to want to read what fits our own prejudices. I?m concerned about this, 
personally. The problem with advocacy journalism is they?re preaching to the choir, 
largely, Pekow said, implying non-advocacy journalism reaches a broader audience
 Investigative Reporting and Advocacy Journalism
 Investigative reporting is like advocacy in the sense that it is calling attention 
to a problem the reporter wants people to think about, Pekow said. The difference 
between investigative reporting and advocacy journalism is that an investigative news 
report doesn?t necessarily point out the solution. ?You just say here is the problem, 
public. You might want to think about it.
 ?It differs in that you?re not taking action, you?re not yelling and cleaning up 
the environment yourself, not going before businesses and corporations and telling 
them to stop. You?re just giving information and the tools people need to do that 
themselves.
 ?The degree to which I spell out a solution has to do with the type of 
publication I?m writing for. For The Washington Monthly, they want you to come up 
with some suggestions. So I did make some suggestions in the pipeline story. I didn?t 
emphasize them, but I suggested first of all that the responsibility for pipeline safety 
should not belong to the U.S. Department of Transportation because DoT does not 
have the expertise in either energy or environmental protection. You?ve got the 
272
 Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, either one which 
would be a better place for this. But because pipeline safety laws were created before 
[either agency], they put it in the department of transportation just because pipelines 
move across state lines. I suggest that they move it, and I guess you can call that 
advocacy, although I?m not testifying, I?m not writing letter to members of Congress 
or anything making that suggestion. I?m not lobbying, I?m just putting that out as 
something they might want to consider.
 ?It?s also ridiculous that there are only 50 federal inspectors, whereas there are 
tens of thousands of miles of pipelines. And there are some pipelines that aren?t under 
federal inspection. Some are being covered by the state, but the level of effort is 
woefully inadequate. We may be seeing a lot more tragedies of this type. We could be 
seeing more minor tragedies where only one or two people get killed, or where there 
are only gradual leaks in the pipelines. 
?You can have advocacy without investigative reporting, and there can be a 
merger between the two, which is sometimes done in Sierra magazine,? Pekow 
explained.
 Pekow has been accused of advocacy in investigative reports not related to the 
environment. In one case he was accused of being out to get somebody. Pekow says, 
?I wouldn?t just do a story out of revenge! I got my facts lined up. I think there was 
some animosity between the publisher and the target. [The publisher] asked me to look 
at one thing. The story didn?t come out the way they wanted, but I said, ?Here are the 
facts. It?s not necessarily the fault of this individual.? I put my name on that.?
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 Personal Lessons from Environment Reporting
 ?The environment is the most important subject to me. It?s closer to ultimate 
truth,? Pekow said, citing Martin Heidegger?s philosophical views, as well as Ludwig 
Feuerbach, ?who said man arose from nature, the environment. It was a novel 
suggestion at the time,? Pekow said. ?You gotta remember our roots,? he said. ?That 
makes it the most important beat.? Although Pekow?s passion for the environment is 
evident, he has never gone out and specifically looked for a story about the 
environment. For him, the thrill is finding something wrong that he thinks needs some 
investigation.
 Personal Lessons from Investigative Reporting About the Environment
 ?I learned I could handle the reporting without the science background,? 
Pekow said. He has found more opportunities to write investigative reports about 
social services than about the environment, he added. 
Budgetary constraints in journalism have prevented smaller newspapers from 
producing investigative reporting, Pekow said. ?Advertising brought down news,? he 
said. ?Beyond that, publications don?t have the resources. Another reason for the 
decline in investigative reporting in general is there?s a bigger and bigger squeeze for 
profits as newspapers and television stations become part of bigger and bigger 
conglomerates. You have to understand journalism. But today, many managers just 
see the newspaper or the newsroom as another profit center. 
?That has to do with trends in the quality of investigative reporting. We?re 
beginning to see more people starting to go after business.?
274
 Realities of the Environment Beat
 ?You have to humanize the stories, make them readable by talking about 
specific cases. That makes them interesting to read,? he said. Pekow has not had any 
more trouble selling a report about the environment than he has any other story. 
What Makes Environment Reporting Meaningful for You?
 ?A good story is a good story, but the environment was something of a 
tremendous concern to me. I wasn?t equipped to be a scientist. I was equipped to be a 
reporter and an investigative reporter. So this is the one way I have of protecting the 
environment outside of doing the normal things of living an environmentally sound 
life.
 ?If there?s any such thing as ultimate good or truth, it would have to do with 
the purity of resources and the purity of the environment. What right do we have as 
humans to despoil the earth for other humans or other beings or for the earth itself? 
There needs to be some environmental control. If that constitutes advocacy, so be it,? 
Pekow said, adding that everyone has a right to clean land, clean air, and clean water, 
but that right has to be tempered by other interests. 
?Poisoning things in the wrong place can poison fish, people, can ruin the 
environment, can knock out invasive species. I always wondered, what right do we 
have, we?re just humans, just one species, what right do we have to knock out other 
species for our own convenience? I feel quite strongly about that.? Keeping resources 
pure strengthens diversity, Pekow said, adding in another direction, ?I wonder now if 
275
 we?re getting too far away from ultimate truth with too much technology. Is life 
becoming too comfortable? Those are good questions that go beyond the scope I write 
about. They go into philosophy. The environment is everything. It?s where we live. If 
we don?t keep our environment in order, our lives eventually will become unpleasant.?
 Further, he said, ?The environment is probably the most important because it is 
the one that transcends mankind, that transcends everything we do, where we came 
from. Without the environment, where would we be? It?s something we have to watch, 
and clean up.
 ?Environment reporting is more likely to affect me personally. If I?m writing 
an expos? about some organization, the connection is a little less fluent. 
Environmentalism can mean two things: maintaining a world where people don?t get 
sick, and it can also mean protecting the environment, because there?s something more 
than mankind. 
Personal Lessons from Investigative Reporting
 ?It confirmed that I could do what I had hoped to do,? Pekow said. 
What Makes Investigative Reporting Meaningful for You?
 ?I got into journalism and investigative journalism because I wanted to find 
truth. At some point I began to wonder if the journalism I was seeing was completely 
the truth itself! Or was it one more step in bringing the truth? With the communists, 
people thought they were creating the perfect society, and when they found out what it 
really was really like, kaboom!
276
 ?I was in a school for disturbed children where the place was so restricted that 
we weren?t allowed to read newspapers. So for a long time I didn?t know what was 
going on in the world. I sort of became skeptical. I was also very critical of the press 
because sometimes when I?d see stories, they had nothing to do with reality. I 
experienced injustices...and truth in the world not being what [people say] it is. 
?[Investigative reporting is] not a very lucrative way of making a living, but 
it?s a way to be a good citizen. It?s a way of using my ability to help improve the 
world,? Pekow said. ?I get a little money, but more importantly I get the satisfaction of 
knowing I made some contribution, and I hope that?s it?s for a better, more livable 
world for me, too. If I can maybe in some small way get people thinking about making 
pipeline safety better, it protects the environment for me, too.?
 The Future of Environment Reporting
 ?The environment beat is probably going to continue to be fractured in the 
sense that a lot of it is going to be done by specialized publications ? a newsletter 
covering sludge hauling or propane, for instance. So the only people who will be 
reading it are people with a specialized interest in that one particular area. The 
environment is not a big story for he mainstream press, unless it hinges on another 
beat: war, politics, etc. It?s still somewhat of a lower level in the mainstream media. 
Unfortunately, I don?t know that that?s going to change. In the mainstream press now, 
I see a smaller quantity of reporting on the environment.?
 Pekow also cited media ownership concentration as presenting a conflict of 
interest when it comes to reporting about the environment. Several large owners of 
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 media conglomerates are ?in the energy business or the land use business. Does this 
mean they?re going to pull their environment stories? What it may mean is shying 
away from environment stories. Is ABC going to want to cover a land use story 
[fairly] when Disney (which owns ABC) wants to knock down trees and open a theme 
park? Synergy will definitely become a problem. General Electric owns NBC as well 
as energy and engineering businesses that affect the environment.
 ?How is Westinghouse going to cover an energy crisis? It?s something [the 
media and the public] are going to have to keep an eye on. Is the environment beat 
really overblown? Should it be discussed? How clean is clean should be debated. And, 
how do you communicate risk? What environment stories do you cover? 
?I am willing to accept criticism about why I am writing stories about 
recreational trails. I consider that environmental because it has to do with 
transportation. Why am I concentrating on stories for bicyclists as opposed to 
something else? Because bicycling is an interest of mine, and because [some of] my 
clients are bicycling magazines. What?s saleable has a lot to do with the future of 
investigative reporting about the environment.?
278
 TOM MEERSMAN
 Background
 Tom Meersman, 53, talks about righting wrongs, crusading for justice, and
 playing fair. He has spent more than two decades reporting about the environment, 
natural resources, and energy issues in the Upper Midwest, currently for Minnesota?s 
largest newspaper and previously for Minnesota Public Radio. Coverage has included 
air and water quality, pollution, nuclear power, forestry, agricultural feedlots, garbage 
and recycling, wind energy, motorized recreation, deformed frogs, state and national 
parks, Lake Superior, the Mississippi River, lakes and streams, endangered species, 
and other topics. Meersman?s work has been recognized with several awards.  
He is knowledgeable about how the legislature is organized and how its 
committees function. He knows the makeup, authorities, jurisdictions and procedures 
used in Federal, tribal, state and local agencies that deal with health, environmental 
protection, and parks. His legal knowledge includes the basic tenets of environmental 
law, Freedom of Information Act, Minnesota Data Practices Act and the state?s open-
 meeting law, as well as ?ex parte communications? rules. He can distinguish between 
what is legitimate, peer-reviewed work, and what has become known as ?junk 
science.? Meersman is comfortable with numbers, including how health risk 
assessments and computer modeling can be used as factors in determining 
environmental policy. He is also familiar with the history of several advocacy groups 
and trade associations, their leadership, constituencies, and major concerns. Meersman 
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 has been a reporter for 23 years. He has no desire to be an editor. As part of his beat, 
Meersman does occasional investigative projects. 
A native of Spokane, Washington with Belgian ancestry, Meersman?s interest 
in United States-Canadian relationships relating to the environment led him to do his 
first reports about the environment. His first exposure to investigative reporting that he 
can recall came though television with ?60 Minutes,? which he watched for years and 
years.
 Meersman holds master?s and bachelor?s degrees in English, and a secondary 
education teaching certificate. Before becoming a reporter he taught high school, was 
a live-in counselor in group homes for emotionally disturbed adolescents in San 
Francisco and Madison, Wisconsin, and visual arts administrator for the Metropolitan 
Cultural Arts Center in Minneapolis. Deep into his career as an environment reporter, 
Meersman became a member of the Central European Environmental Journalism 
Program Advisory Committee of the National Safety Council, a program that brought 
environment writers from former Communist countries to the United States for tours 
and training. After four years he shifted to the National Advisory Board for he 
Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources, a non-profit organization based on 
Missoula, Montana that organizes field tours and workshops for journalists so they 
may better understand cultural, economic, and environmental dimensions of forestry, 
fisheries, mining, agriculture, water use, and other issues. He is a founding board 
member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and currently a member of the 
National Advisory Board of the Ted Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism 
at the University of Colorado. Meersman also has taught environmental journalism at 
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 Gustavus Adolphus College. Although reared Catholic, he claims no religious 
affiliation at this point. 
View of Investigative Reporting
 ?My perception was it would involve a fair amount of time, collection of 
considerable documents, that you have to be organized enough to be able to categorize 
those documents and be able to get at them over a period of time. You?d have to have 
yourself together and know what you have, and be able to organize it and focus it,? 
Meersman said.
 He continued, ?I knew that before I did any investigative reporting because I 
had seen other investigative reporters? files and boxes that they?d have for certain 
things. I knew that you?d have to collect a lot of stuff and that it would probably take a 
while, that you might need to use the Freedom of Information Act or other tools to get 
some of the information. There?s a certain amount of discovery with investigative 
reporting. You collect as much information as you can to try to figure out what the 
facts are.
 ?Much good reporting is investigative. When I think of something as 
investigative, it?s doing a lot more interviews and spending a lot more weeks pretty 
solidly on a story, even though it is not a six-page project or a series that takes three 
months or six months or a year to do. I like to think investigative reporting is not 
something that is only done by two or three people on staff, Meersman said, adding, 
?Many reporters who want to look at something seriously will do a circumscribed but 
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 nonetheless investigative look at something, within a certain scope, in order to write a 
good, solid story that the paper would be proud of and someday run on 1-A.
 ?I want to make a distinction here,? Meersman says. ?I?ve always been 
interested in journalism that gets at things that are not obvious. I think of that as 
enterprise journalism. Spending just two weeks looking at something ? I consider that 
to be enterprise reporting [even if] it involves getting documents and doing quite a few 
more interviews than you might normally do for a story, and might be a bigger picture 
look at something than just a narrow set of facts. That?s a form of investigative 
reporting. 
?Obviously there are some things that take much longer to do, and you have to 
have clearance in order to spend a large amount of time on a project. So those 
[projects] are clearly investigative, where you are off on a project and unavailable for 
most other assignments. In our shop, if something is a project it?s an investigative 
piece of journalism. And in some cases reporters are physically removed from where 
they normally work to go work with a project team in a particular area of the 
newsroom. And they are generally off-limits for [other] assignments. It takes two or 
three months to do a project.  
?I do a lot of reports that are not three or four month investigative projects but 
are enterprise stories, where you take something that is interesting and you do 
something with it,? Meersman said. ?So I consider enterprise reporting to be 
investigation over a very short time span. But it?s not line-by-line, word-by-word 
editing like a project that might involve six to 10 people weighing in at different 
stages. But it [takes] close editing like any story would. Also, we may or may not take 
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 it to a lawyer. We [wouldn?t] do a lot of the other things we do with some 
investigative reports, like have the option of carefully packaging it with details 
graphics and lots of photos. If it?s a two-week story you can do some of that, but you 
don?t have the luxury of time to consider alternative packages and designs.  
?Investigative reporting is not an either-or. I see a whole range of reporting 
where you can use investigation in a very limited way. You scope it right away, you?re 
not searching through tons of stuff, you?re basically trying to set a good story in 
context, and to broaden it, and make it more significant to people instead of This is 
Just One Place, one area, These People Have a Problem. Too Bad for Them. 
?Investigative reporting might [locate] 10 similar situations and look at them 
all and maybe find out that the people responsible have disappeared and there?s no 
money in the kitty anymore because...? Meersman said, letting the words hang. 
?Investigative reporting is when it?s all part of the same continuity. Some things 
require a good, hard look separately. An awful lot of environment reporting is 
investigative. If you see the promise, and look to what the story is and develop it 
thoroughly without over-reporting or spending too much time, there?s a lot of potential 
there for stories to be much broader than they were without having to be major 
investigations that come up with some big ?Gotcha!?
 ?Investigative reporting is thorough and inclusive, and it doesn?t take cheap 
shots, and it doesn?t go with unsubstantiated allegations. It?s the opposite,? Meersman 
said, alluding to traditional muckraking reports. With investigative reporting, ?You are 
working your head off to get as much documentation as you can get from a full variety 
of sources.  Muckraking, to me, also has the connotation of being quick turnover, not 
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 necessarily something that is deliberate and carefully done. I have this sense of 
muckraking as kind of superficial. It?s easy to take shots at people in reporting that 
doesn?t get nearly as deep as it should. You don?t just put somebody on the spot or 
publicly embarrass them.? 
On the inside, investigative reporting takes its toll on the reporter as well as 
everyone else in the reporter?s life due to the emotional stress involved, Meersman 
said. ?You have to prepare other people in your life when you?re working on a project 
or enterprise report and say ?I?m not going to be around much in the next couple of 
weeks.? Or ?I?m going to be missing a lot of dinners.? Inevitably there comes a crunch  
time on a project to get everything perfect. It?s 16 hours a day, and it?s not pleasant, 
because you?re working toward something you believe in. People understand it, then, 
when you?re grumpy and cranky because you?re not getting enough sleep. You have to 
give up your other life for a while.
 ?One of the things that I may find in investigative environment projects is that 
the reporter writes with more authority. You don?t have a preconceived notion of the 
story, you investigate, you let the facts lay themselves out for you, and that?s what the 
story is. You don?t try to spin them like somebody may in what I think of as advocacy 
journalism. On the other hand, when you present facts, by doing so you write with 
authority about something and sometimes that?s not a topic or those findings are not 
something that anybody else has assembled. So you don?t need to just call up 
somebody and get their opinion about something and contrast it with somebody else?s 
opinion and say that b-c maybe nobody has an opinion about the new facts that you 
have discovered.? 
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 As an example, Meersman talked about a story about all- terrain vehicles he put 
together. ?Nobody knew how much damage was being created by the vehicles on 
public land. We went out and viewed a significant number of those lands and wrote 
with authority about the extent of the damage. Some people might call that advocacy 
journalism because you don?t have any authority other than yourself to make those 
conclusions. But you become the authority by doing the leg work and presenting those 
conclusions to the public. 
?That is investigative reporting in general. Some people might interpret that as 
you taking sides and you being an advocate, but in fact you are testing the reality to 
find out what?s true. You have these occasions where there?s an open question out 
there that everyone claims to have an opinion about, but nobody really has any defined 
answers to.?
 Attraction to Journalism and Investigative Reporting
 ?I do a lot of enterprise stories. I?ve always been attracted to stories. This is 
what actually got me into journalism. I saw public radio as an alternative to other 
broadcasting. I felt it was different. It was freer. You could get into things deeper, you 
could be more playful with your issues. It was interesting to me, and it?s what got me 
into journalism. One of the things that drew me there [to Minnesota Public Radio] was 
that you could do [reports] that you wouldn?t normally see elsewhere. I?ve always felt 
that a mission of journalism is to break new ground, to raise issues that are not being 
raised elsewhere, to shine a light on something that hasn?t had it before.
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 ?That?s always been an important thing to me in journalism. It connects my 
previous life as an educator with my life now. I feel that I?m still a teacher as a 
journalist, and feel that I educate a big audience on specific issues. I?m essentially a 
teacher. To be a good teacher, I?m not rewriting press releases or reporting things that 
are already being taken care of. I need to take a look at issues in terms of the bigger 
questions, sometimes, and sometimes in narrow slices. I like to spend more time 
looking at something that any  reporter might be able to file a story about on deadline. 
Sometimes there?s a lot more to it. I might do a follow-up with concerned citizens, 
whether they be whistleblowers or regular people who [say something is being 
ignored] and, ?Isn?t this an issue of some concern to you?? For example, a reporter 
writing about an oil pipeline leak (which happens pretty frequently here), the reporter, 
instead of just writing six stories over two years about pipeline malfunction should be 
able to discern that they?re all coming from the same company and that there might be 
something more going on there with regard to that company?s performance or its 
inspections or its infrastructure or its equipment, and whether it?s upgraded or what. 
Instead of always taking [a story] in bit by bit, trying to realize what?s going on and 
see the bigger issue, to be able to step back and do a full blown story on it, that?s what 
attracts me to journalism.
 ?I?ve always been interested in educating about things that I think are 
important. A lot of that involves hard work, thinking, and reading, and paying 
attention to people who come to you with information, and making time to check up 
on those things.? 
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 Criteria for Moving the Public
 ?You don?t need a degree from a prestigious university  to do investigative 
reporting. You just need to be curious and care about what you?re writing about. You 
can have the degree and not have those things, and you won?t be good. The work is 
what you make it. That?s true in spades in journalism.? 
To move the public in journalism, let the facts lead to the conclusion instead of 
starting with a conclusion and trying to work things around it. News journalism is 
reporting, he said, not persuasive writing. ?There is a lot of journalism that is 
persuasive writing ? editorials and op-eds are journalism, but news journalism is 
reporting and not opinion or persuasive writing. 
Investigative Reporting Procedure
 ?Before I get into a project, I try to write down a handful of questions that I 
want to answer, so that I don?t learn too much and forget about what a regular person 
might want to know about this. And maybe some of the questions might be pertinent 
as I learn more. [This step] provides me a reality check to go back to. [It gives me a 
marker for saying] these are questions at that point that I thought a regular person 
would want to know in terms of information. You can?t neglect these things. You can 
go deeper if you want to, but you have to get these things first because these are the 
things that would come to any reasonable person?s mind when you bring up the topic. 
?So when I?ve answered all those questions, and taken it further and found new 
things, a way I know I?ve got as much as I think I?ll get is if in additional interviews I 
start to hear the same thing. [When that happens, I say] I think there?s truth to this so I 
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 don?t really need to go that much further. Its a hard thing to figure out if you?ve left 
some stone unturned. You get tired of it [interviewing] when you start hearing a lot of 
repetition. You just have to make a judgment call. If your editor is following the story 
very closely and hearing from you, sometimes they?ll raise the question of whether it 
might be time to start writing.? 
Why Environment Reporting?
 Before Meersman became an environment reporter, he perceived the beat as a 
lot of news about pollution and parks and forests. ?There seemed to be a lot of stories 
about air quality and water quality,? he said. The reports, he recalled, seemed to have 
the same qualities as other reports, that is, not emphasizing one argument over 
another, such as favoring advocacy organizations. 
The big attraction of reporting about the environment for Meersman hasn?t 
changed over time. ?I felt it had an impact on people, and on health, and on our 
general well-being. That there were a lot of problems and they weren?t necessarily 
getting resolved. It didn?t seem like a lot of reporting was identifying those problems. 
It seemed to me to be important to our welfare to pay attention to some of those 
problems. Not just for people?s welfare, but for ecology and wildlife. It seemed like it 
would be interesting because there seemed to be a lot of problems that needed 
attention. 
Advocacy and Environment Reporting
 Meersman believes all life has an inalienable right to clean air, clean land, and
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 clean water, but adds a caveat. ?With that right,? Meersman said, ?comes a 
responsibility for us to help achieve that [clean air, clean land, and clean water] as a 
goal. In other words, I don?t think people should have the right to demand clean air 
and then do whatever they want in their private life that would sabotage that goal. 
With he rights to those things, we also need to take responsibility to help achieve 
them, instead of just demanding it and not giving anything back.?
 That said, Meersman regards what has become known as advocacy journalism
 with some caution. ?I view it with some caution because a reporter is playing a role in 
the story,? he said. ?I like documentaries, and if that?s advocacy journalism, well, I 
like the idea of television in particular, like Nova. I like the idea of an in-depth look at 
things. Some people might say that?s advocacy by nature of the fact that you?re 
picking a topic and doing a show on it. It doesn?t necessarily [address] whether that 
show is balanced or not. Is doing a show on pesticides advocacy journalism? I?m in 
favor of advocacy journalism is that?s what it is, simply by topic. I?m not in favor of 
advocacy journalism if it is unfair or unbalanced within the context of the report that?s 
done. 
?To be journalism, it has to be balanced. That?s what journalists are supposed o 
do. Fair and balanced. That to me is legitimate journalism. Anything is fair game as 
far as topics. [If a report] is biased, it doesn?t seem to me to be journalism.?
 Meersman added that stories offering an answer to a problem can go too far. 
?First of all, I?m not sure it?s the truth. Secondly, it may propose solutions that are not 
solutions at all. If there?s a controversy or something that?s hard to solve, if it was easy 
to solve just like that, it would have been done! So the problem I have with advocacy 
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 journalism is that it might be someone who lets their feeling get in the way of getting 
as close to the truth as possible, with the result that you mislead people and may 
actually propose solutions that are counterproductive.? 
He added that some advocacy groups target a couple of issues while a regular 
environment reporter deals with dozens and dozens of issues. A reporter, he stressed, 
has a much broader set of responsibilities than just a single issue. ?Sometimes 
advocacy people call you and don?t understand that,? he said. ?They are working on 
an issue 24/7. They don?t necessarily have a perspective on the other important issues 
that environment reporters also need to pay attention to.
 ?The very fact that environmental issues get into the newspaper ? and that 
some people don?t want to see there ? causes them to brand the journalist who wrote 
the story ? to kill the messenger ? saying you must have an agenda to be able to write 
about this in a way that is critical. For example, all terrain vehicle advocates (ATV) 
might have thought that their point of view was correct when it disagreed with the 
facts that I reported. Our facts showed there was widespread damage from ATV use, 
and the advocates said it was their opinion that only a few people were doing the 
damage, and that we were exaggerating how widespread it was. Our conclusion was 
based upon reporting and physically viewing and photographing damage in all four 
corners of the state,? he said. 
Investigative Reporting and Advocacy Journalism
 ?Both [investigative reporting and advocacy journalism] are the same in that 
they raise issues of legitimate concern. The purpose of raising issues is to get them 
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 into public discussion. They could lead to action. Different advocacy groups do their 
homework. Some produce some wonderful reports. For other groups, that?s not true. 
But for journalists it has to be true all the time. You have to document what you do, 
and talk to a lot of different people. So there are similarities in terms of issues that are 
important. But the approach is different. 
?The journalist doesn?t take a side. You can come to conclusions and use 
research and facts to say his is a significant problem, you can somehow quantify that, 
but that doesn?t mean you provide a solution. My job is to identify and document and 
portray and put out there an issue that should have public attention, then let people talk 
about it, and let other people decide what needs to be done. To me, it?s enough.
 ?Advocacy is taking a bunch of data from EPA and putting one?s own spin on 
it to say what you think the data says in two pages, and it doesn?t necessarily say that 
at all. 
Personal Lessons from Environment Reporting
 ?It?s what we make it. I?m kind of an independent guy. I liked teaching 
because it was relatively independent. You make it your classroom, you control the 
class, you have a curriculum you follow, but generally you have a fair amount of 
freedom in how you approach things and teach kids. 
?I feel that way about my situation at this paper, and previously at public radio. 
Its not top-down. People rely on me to be smart enough and creative enough and 
attentive enough to come up with good stories and news stories and interesting stories.  
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 Personal Lessons from Investigative Reporting About the Environment
 ?Every word needs to be right. Those who are unhappy with the report could 
seize on any shortcoming or error no matter how small to try to discredit the entire 
effort,? he said. ?If there?s anything about it that?s not solid or absolutely right-on, if 
you are raising issues that maybe some people don?t want to hear about, there may be 
someone who tries to discredit the overall report. I did write a report one time where 
one small thing was not correct. It wasn?t a project, line-by-line fact-checking, but one 
small thing was not correct. The person who was the focus of the report came to the 
paper months later and wanted the paper to retract the entire story based on this one 
minor error. He had served on some panels that helped distribute funding for 
researchers. I had written something like that he served on boards that help distribute 
funds for research. He looked at that as a major flaw and was trying to discredit the 
entire piece which was raising a whole series of questions about his activities and his 
ethics that the article had laid out,? he said. ?People always say to fact check, fact 
check, fact check. But there are people who will come in and say the reporter turned 
out a bad piece of journalism if it isn?t absolutely perfect.?
 Realities of the Environment Beat
 ?It?s like this beat is new all the time,? Meersman said. ?The diversity of 
topics, and the people. The practical matter that you get daily stories, enterprise 
stories, and investigative stories. It?s not like the crime beat where you have to do a 
story every day because there?s crime or an investigative team that may only write 
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 three stories a year. There are a lot of topics, incredibly interesting people, scientists 
learning new things all the time. 
?Some people have told me they got tired of the environment beat because they 
kept covering public meetings about opposition to landfills or NIMBY (Not In My 
Back Yard) this or that. But I think wherever you live there?s always something pretty 
interesting.? Meersman gave an example of a juicy story with wide appeal and local 
angles in many states, a story easily overlooked.
 ?There?s a strong interest in Minnesota in the environment and the outdoors 
and nature,? he said, providing an example where one can see the educator at work.  
?There was a story I did about a Superfund site in Ashland, Wisc. on the shore of Lake 
Superior earlier this year. We could have done that story in two days, just doing six 
interviews and saying this is a new Superfund site in Wisconsin and there aren?t many 
new ones on the list. Here?s the problem, here are the parties, here?s what they say, 
blah, blah, blah.
 ?But we spent a couple of weeks on it and turned it into an enterprise story 
because the nature of the pollution was that it came from an old coal gas 
manufacturing plant. They used to make natural gas out of coal on the outskirts of 
many cities around the country. They would manufacture this gas and use it in the 
street lights before there was electricity. And because there were no pipelines until 
WWII, when natural gas really became an industry, our natural gas in a less pure form 
was manufactured on the outskirts of towns. So there are hundreds of towns in the 
Midwest that have areas of pollution from these old coal gasification plants. 
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 ?In this example, that?s extremely problematic because a lot of the residue 
from this particular coal manufacturing plant in Ashland got into Lake Superior and is 
just beneath the sediment going down about a foot and covering about 40 acres. And 
they don?t know how the hell they are supposed to get this contaminated sediment out 
of the lake. It?s a multi-million dollar cleanup effort and they?re debating how to do it.
 ?We could have done the story in 12 inches. But we ended up doing a front 
page story that jumped to the inside and that had a full page with it and it had maps of 
Wisconsin and Minnesota and showed the known sites of all these old coal
 gasification plants, and it provided a geographic context as well as a historical context 
that this legacy people 100 years ago left to us and we?re having to clean up in some 
cases. Ashland is a good example because it?s a very expensive cleanup because it 
involves Lake Superior. And there were all these lumber plants that were operating 
there at the turn of the century, so there were liability questions about how many of 
them, what did they use for creosote, how much came from coal gasification, how 
much came from the way they treated lumber. 
?So this environment story turns into a historic story, just an interesting period 
story. We felt it was interesting enough to spend two weeks on it and have some nice 
maps. It was worth it.? 
Meersman said he considers that to be an investigative piece because ?we got 
databases and looked up historically what is known, how many sites are known, how 
many have been cleaned up, how many are not cleaned up. We [focused] on this 
narrow window of pollution problems of the past and did a very thorough report. And 
a lot of people thought it was very interesting. Although the Superfund site was in 
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 Wisconsin, the company responsible for the cleanup had its headquarters in 
Minneapolis, providing Meersman with a strong local tie. 
Meersman has not had difficulty getting stories about the environment 
published. The position he landed at the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis was highly 
coveted, he said, going into some detail that will not be provided here. Suffice it to 
say, in Meersman?s words, ?It is a very competitive, sought after position.?
 Although he came to the job with a background in environmental reporting, his 
previous job at Minnesota Public Radio didn?t require him to have any special 
background that qualified him to cover the environment. The Star-Tribune did. ?They 
wanted an environment reporter who could hit the ground running,? Meersman said. 
Initially he covered the environment part-time for radio. Then it evolved into a full-
 time beat, he said. Initially, ?because it was such a busy beat it was difficult to define a 
chunk of time, and to convince editors that a particular story about the environment 
was so important, and to focus on it, and let other stuff go to cover it as best as we 
could. It was a pragmatic decision. As long as you can produce a story a day for our 
local audiences, we?re happy if most of them can be environment. But it wasn?t like a 
business decision, like them figuring out what listeners want, should we create an 
environment beat. it was fairly young in Public Radio?s history when I started. As it 
grew bigger, it could afford to have people doing one or two beats each, instead of 
everybody doing general assignment. It wasn?t a big decision that we have to cover the 
environment. They just wanted quality news. I was doing a lot of stories on the 
environment and it evolved into a full-time beat because there was just so much to 
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 write about. And they were interested in having good regional stories on the air,? he 
said.
 What Makes Environment Reporting Meaningful for You?
 ?I have this strong emotional and physical connection with the next generation 
that gives me a stronger feeling about passing it on,? Meersman said, referring to a 
healthy and thriving planet. ?Maybe it?s because I?m a parent, and also have taught 
younger people, whether they are your own kids or classroom kids. I tend to feel very 
strongly about keeping the quality of the environment as good if not improving it. It is 
absolutely important because you have to behave in a responsible way. Those are my 
values. You don?t take an action that will spoil things for the future. There needs to be 
respect. Ultimately it comes from that you?re gifted to be alive. You?re even more 
gifted to be in a country like this. Because we are gifted doesn?t give us the right to 
despoil the good natural resource base that we inherited from other people. We don?t 
have the right to wreck it.
 ?I don?t trace this to my background but I can certainly relate to it: In this part 
of the country, there are a number of Native American reservations. Their attitude is to 
behave and live for the seventh generation ahead of you. That would have played 
absolutely no role in my values as I was growing up, but I think that philosophy 
reinforces what I already believe. That overall spiritualism ? that there?s a reason for 
you, and that you?re living in whatever period you do and have to behave this way; but 
there?s also responsibility that the people who came before you and especially the 
people who come after you keep the world in reasonably good shape.?
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 Getting back to his dedication to teaching, Meersman said, ?You can do stories 
that educate people about nature.? He talked about a story he wrote about lynx coming 
back to Minnesota. ?They have 30 confirmed, based on DNA analysis, and there 
seems to be a breeding population. A lot of them are in the Superior National Forest. 
And there are some theories about why they are coming back. 
What Makes Investigative Reporting Meaningful for You?
 Meersman said investigative reporting gives him the satisfaction that he?s 
doing what journalists are supposed to do, which to him is to be critical and 
thoughtful, pick important questions and project them and educate people about them. 
In addition to educating people, with ?investigative reporting you get something extra 
special, which is shelf life. People will keep referring to it. Two years later people will 
ask for a copy. It has lasting significance. People will think about it and remember it 
much more than a regular story. You hope that will happen. 
?If you do a strong investigative piece, it will have legs, so-to-speak. It will not 
be a story that people will read, say that?s interesting, and that sort of goes away. In 
my case, investigative journalism, where you really take a look at something, has 
made significant changes in terms of bringing bout discussion, and changing policies. 
So, occasionally your work can actually change things in a way that you can see, in 
addition to educating. 
Journalism in General
 Meersman said it is a reporter?s task to not only quantify things but also
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 qualify them. He said, ?Qualify means to put them in context. Why do people care 
about the land? It?s basically a value story. And also the issue of respect. Can 
motorized use of public lands co-exist with traditional recreational uses of the land, 
such as hiking and fishing and camping and cross-country skiing? In certain areas, 
nobody wants those areas any more for those types of purposes if they?ve been 
invaded by motorized vehicles, because it?s noisy, it?s dangerous, it?s unpleasant. The 
story is much more about values and how do these machines and their increasing 
popularity fit into the quality of life, the quality of recreational opportunities that the 
state has traditionally had and now, in some areas, are under siege due to lack of 
control.?
 The Future of Investigative Reporting and Environment Reporting
 ?I think there will always be investigative reporting. It?s time consuming, but I 
think most newspapers realize it?s part of their franchise. Newspapers have a special 
responsibility to have the longer, more involved, bigger sorts of things that get put 
before the public. It?s part of newspapers? key mission, that they have extended, well 
documented issues explored as part of their regular mix. It?s one of the hallmarks of 
newspapers and what I think they will continue to do.
 ?I think the future for environmental journalism is equally positive. The 
environment has matured as a subject over the past few decades. It may have been 
thought of just as parks and pollution in the pat, but now I think it?s much more 
realized as the sustainability issue. Environment means air quality, which means 
something having to do with the way we design our roads and policies [concerning] 
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 fuels and vehicle emissions. It has to do with the way we produce our electricity and 
what our utilities have in terms of sources of fuel and power. It has to do with public 
health issues in terms of food safety and water safety. And it has to do with 
agricultural issues in terms of how much round water is used and who gets to use 
water anyway in areas where there?s a water shortage. And it has to do with 
greenfields and brownfields and where we?re going to be able to grow ultimately, and 
what seems to make sense, and what kind of pollution insurance is needed and how we 
deal with the legacy of the past when we are a society took some actions or allowed 
some behaviors that we now realize were not so good for the environment and need to 
be cleaned up. 
?So environment is more a theme than a beat. It crosses many beats. There will 
always need to be a fair amount of reporting that is related to the environment, 
especially air and water quality, and transportation ? whether you have an 
environment beat or not. It?s part and parcel of all that?s going on in the news about 
growth and development and how we change and what we get rid of and what we 
move toward, whether it be transportation systems or electric systems. The whole 
infrastructure of society has its roots in the environment. There are environmental 
considerations brought to bear on the choices we make. 
?So the beat is safe, even if we don?t call it a beat as such. It?s a real important 
area that will continue to be there.?
 To be safe, Meersman has always been skeptical of his sources and kept them 
at arms length rather than forming friendships with them. Over time advocacy groups, 
he said, have become more sophisticated, and his skepticism of them ?has matched 
299
 their growth,? he said. ?I think they raise good issues, but I see them for what they are: 
an interest group. Early on environment reporting would take what some of the 
environment groups had said and might not be as critical of what was backing up those 
kinds of claims. 
?But the beat itself is more sophisticated now. Reporters know what questions 
to ask. [The beat] requires environment reporters to be a lot smarter to keep up with 
the science and the quantitative stuff and try to make some judgments: What does this 
mean? Is this a matter of concern? 
?What we need to be more skeptical of is whether the government is doing its 
job and whether environment groups are playing it straighter than people were in the 
early days when we were looking at these gross physical problems in the ?70s,? he 
said.  
300
 APPENDIX C
 INTERVIEW PROTOCOL 
* Get samples of their favorite investigative reports about the environment bearing 
their bylines. Also, get samples of other investigative work they have done outside the 
environment beat.
 Biographical Information:
 Media outlet:
 Job title:
 Beat:
 Length of time on beat:
 Number of years as a journalist:
 Number of years as an investigative reporter:
 Number of years writing about the environment:
 Age:
 Gender:
 Education:
 Mid-career journalistic fellowships, etc.:
 Formal science courses taken in college or after:
 Formal investigative reporting courses taken in college or after:
 Location of elementary school (place):
 Location of high school (place):
 College:
301
 Year graduated:
 Major:
 Graduate work at:
 Year graduated:
 Degree:
 Field of study/emphasis:
 Journalistic career: Get a resume.
 Job experience prior to journalism:
 Political affiliation (if any):
 Religious affiliation (if any):
 Place of birth:
 Ancestry:
 Interview questions
 First Interview ? focuses on the subject?s past experience with investigative reporting.
 1. Tell me what you knew about investigative reporting before you had any experience 
with it.
 2. Tell me what attracted you to investigative reporting.
 Probe: What did you think about the information collection methods?
 Probe: What led you to that thinking?
 3.  Tell me how you perceived news about the environment before you began 
providing it yourself.
 4. What attracted you to environment reporting?
 5. What did you know about advocacy journalism before becoming a reporter?
302
 6. How did you regard it?
 7. Before becoming a reporter, how did you respond to advocacy in the media?
 Probe: What led you to feel that way?
 Probe: How strongly did you feel about that?
 Second Interview ? focuses on subject?s present experience with investigative 
reporting and the environment beat.
 1. How did you become an investigative reporter?
 2. What approaches work best in environment reporting when it comes to investigative 
work?
 Probe: Why?
 3. Please describe what you do when preparing an investigative report about the 
environment and compare that with what you do when preparing an investigative 
report in another realm.
 Probe: How is that different from what you imagined?
 4. What distinguishes what you do from what an activist does?
 5. What is the difference between investigative reporting and all other kinds?
 6. How is investigative reporting like advocacy?
 Probe: How does it differ from advocacy?
 7. What is the difference between investigative reporting, environment reporting, and 
advocacy journalism?
 8. What would lead people to confuse investigative reporting with advocacy 
journalism?
 9. What do you do when someone claims you are on a witch hunt, or have some sort 
of personal vendetta in play in a story?
 Probe: What do you do when you are accused of advocacy?
 10. How do you define advocacy journalism?
 Probe: What are the characteristics of advocacy journalism? 
Probe: What are the characteristics of investigative reporting?
 11. What are the variables for advocacy?
 12. What do you think constitutes advocacy?
303
 13. What, if any, rights do you believe we have to clean air, clean land, and clean 
water?
 14. What led you to that kind of thinking? 
Probe: How strongly do you feel about that?
 Probe: Where is that coming from?
 15. What interests you about the environment beat?
 16. What kind of relationship do you have with the environment beat?
 Probe: What do you love about it?
 Probe: What do you hate about it?
 17. What kind of scrutiny are you under from other reporters as an environment 
reporter?
 18. How do you deal with the stereotype that goes along with covering the 
environment?
 19. How do you decide whether to self-censor?
 20. At what point do you make sure you don?t upset readers so that they stop reading?
 21. How do ethics differ when you?re dealing with mainstream publications, a trade 
press, or when doing something for a publication with a viewpoint?
 22. What about publications for a specialty audience? 
Probe: These are going to audiences not necessarily with a special viewpoint 
but with a special interest. And these are consumer magazines as opposed to 
trade publications. What are the ethics of writing for a publication like that? 
How do they differ?
 23. How do you balance what your audience wants to read vs. what you think they 
ought to have?
 24. How are journalism ethics evolving? 
Probe: What are they evolving into?
 25. Please describe a situation in which you can do things that would normally be 
considered unethical. 
26. What is the deciding line between when its OK to rely on anonymous sources and 
when it is not?
304
 27. How did you get the environment beat or opportunity to cover the environment?
 28. How competitive was it?
 29. What kind of obstacles did you encounter in trying to get environment stories to 
your audience?
 30. What kind of money was available to you for your reports, compared with those on 
other beats?
 31. How coveted is the beat?
 32. At what age did you begin covering the environment or get assigned to the 
environment beat?
 33. What kind of background were you required to have before covering an 
environment story?
 34. How do your editors regard environment stories in general?  
35. Is it easier to get money for an investigative report on another beat than for one on 
the environment beat?
 36. What kind of aptitude is required for investigative reporting?
 37. What kind of education is required for investigative reporting?
 Probe: For investigative reporting on the environment beat?
 38. Auto-driving probe: (Show the respondent two investigative reports ? one on the 
environment and one from another realm) What is the difference between these two 
stories, other than subject matter?
 39. What might make it OK for a journalist to advocate a position? 
40. What other news outlets do you compare your work against?
 Probe: Why them?
 Probe: Which ones do you editors compare your work against?
 Probe: Why them?
 41. How many environment reports have you written?
 42. How many of those are investigative pieces?
 43. How many investigative reports have you written altogether?
305
 44. How much time do you spend on an investigative report?
 Probe: On other types of stories?
 Probe: And when the investigative report involves the environment?
 45. Please name someone who would be a good role model for someone who is 
interested in becoming an investigative reporter on the environment beat.
 Probe: Why is this person a good role model?
 Probe: Can you name another person who would be a good role model? [try for 
three] 
Third Interview ? focuses on synthesizing meanings and essences of the experience of 
being an investigative reporter doing environment reporting, or vice versa.
 1. What is the difference between activism, advocacy and investigative reporting?
 2. What do you get out of investigative reporting?
 Probe: What is the value of it for you?
 3. What do you get out of investigative reporting when you write about the 
environment?
 Probe: What is the value of it for you?
 4. How is that different from what you imagined?
 5. What does it mean to be an investigative reporter today?
 6. Thinking back, what did it mean to be an investigative reporter before you joined 
the ranks?
 7. What value do you place on investigative reporting?
 8. What value do you place on environment reporting?
 9. What value do you place on advocacy journalism?
 10. How do you imagine the environment beat in the future?
 11. What difficulties do you anticipate, if any?
 12. What openings, gaps, obstacles, or opportunities do you see for environment 
reporting, particularly where investigative work is concerned?
 13. What have you learned about yourself from investigative reporting?
 14. From doing it in the environment reporting arena?
306
 15. What effect has covering the environment had on you?
 Probe: On your health?
 16. How passionate were you about investigative reporting at the start?
 Probe: And now?
 17. When it involved environment coverage, did that make a difference?
 18. How committed were you to investigative reporting at the start?
 Probe: And now?
 Probe: Why?
 19. How committed were you to the environment beat at the start?
 Probe: And now?
 Probe: Why?
 20. How do you regard the environment beat now that you?ve contributed to it?
 21. What do you know about investigative reporting that you didn?t know before you 
did it? Or that you wish you knew before?
 22. What do you think the future holds for investigative reporting?
 Probe: For the environment beat?
 Probe: For advocacy journalism?
 Probe: For any combination of the three? 
23. What have I missed?
 24. What haven?t I asked that you think should be included in this study? 
307
 GLOSSARY
 DDT ? Dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (DDT) is a pesticide widely used in the 
United States on crops and to control insects that carry malaria and similar diseases. It 
is still used and recommended for use in Third World countries for malaria control. 
Rachel Carson?s 1962 book, Silent Spring, first reported how DDT accumulated in the 
food chain, causing cancer, genetic damage, and reproductive dysfunction among 
exposed species. Birds exposed to DDT laid eggs with weak, think shells that were 
easily broken, resulting in significant decreases in their population. In 1972, DDT was 
the first pesticide to be banned by the United States Environmental Protection Agency 
(West, et. al., 2003)
 Dioxin ? Dioxin has been called the most toxic chemical known to humans. In the 
1970s it was linked to Agent Orange and adverse health effects among United States 
soldiers in combat in Vietnam. Most recently, the international community has called 
for the worldwide elimination of dioxin and other persistent organic pollutants. Dioxin 
is an umbrella name for a class of chemical compounds that contain carbon, hydrogen, 
oxygen, and chlorine. Dioxins are part of a larger class of compounds known as 
polycyclic halogenated aromatics. Dioxin is highly stable and insoluble in water. It 
adheres to clay and soot and dissolves in oil and organic solvents. Once released into 
the environment, dioxin remains for many years (West, et. al., 2003). A lethal dose of 
dioxin fits on the head of a pin.  
Chlorofluorocarbons ? Also known as CFCs, these are halocarbons, which are by-
 products of foam production, refrigeration, and air conditioning. In the stratosphere, 
CFCs contribute to the depletion of the earth?s protective layer of ?good ozone? 
(West, et. al., 2003).
 PCBs ? Stands for polychlorinated biphenyls, which persist in soil, sediment, water, 
waste disposal sites, and are found in some existing capacitors and transformers. Since 
they persist, they can be taken up from the soil by organisms and transferred through 
the food chain or accidentally leaked from electrical equipment. Their toxicity varies 
with the degree of chlorination and the actual position of the chlorine atoms on the 
basic structure. Some fish have been found to contain high levels of PCBs, which are 
transferred to humans when the fish are consumed. Poisoning from PCBs is associated 
with acne, respiratory distress, and liver damage (West, et al., 1995). 
Genetic Modification ? Genetic modification (GM) refers to the modifying of an 
organism, crop or animal by altering its DNA in some fashion, such as recombining its 
characteristics into a pattern not found in nature. 
Global Climate Change ? This concept refers to changes in weather patterns scientists 
have attributed primarily to air pollution and the decay of the earth?s protective ozone 
layer. 
308
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