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Environmental Journalism

On monday 28 august I joint an event held by an organization in my city. It's called 'Citizen Journalism Through Social Media' which in fact we discussed more about environmental journalism. The speaker comes from Montana University, his name is Matthew Frank. He is a journalism lecturer and also an environmental journalist. As my promise in my instagram, here I want to share what I've got from the event combining with my idea. The speaker comes from US, so he doesn't speak Bahasa. I don't speak English very well though and can't understand a hundred percent what the speaker said. Just probably eighty percent. Still, according to my opinion, language is not only about the sound made by the speaker but also the gesture and the willing of the people in conversation to understand each other.
Actually there was one interpreter who helped! Yay!

The definition of environmental journalism I quoted from wikipedia, "Environmental journalism is the collection, verification, production, distribution and exhibition of information regarding current events, trends, issues and people that are associated with the non-human world with which humans necessarily interact. To be an environmental journalist, one must have an understanding of scientific language and practice, knowledge of historical environmental events, the ability to keep abreast of environmental policy decisions and the work of environmental organizations, a general understanding of current environmental concerns, and the ability to communicate all of that information to the public in such a way that it can be easily understood, despite its complexity." It clearly describes the meaning of environmental journalism. The object is the environment. It means that almost everything we find around us could be the object of this field. River, forest, food, water, health, ecosystem, energy, creatures, and a lot of other things.


Nowadays summer comes earlier and longer in Montana. It makes ice melts and even the forest gets fire. It causes many problems. I think many places in the world get the same condition because Global warming issues. There was a picture of a lake shown by Matthew, that lake is getting bigger years by years. Experts also said that in 2050 there will be a sea level rise of up to 90 centimeters which could drown 2.000  islands in Indonesia. I can't imagine.

Lets talk about a journalist profession. A journalist in Montana got freedom to access many places and Matthew never covered himself not as a journalist just to get the data, because he has the permit. It's different with this country, and he respects journalists in Indonesia. As technology becomes more shopiscated, we could find blurry future for journalist. People want everything freely and instantaneously, possibly no more buying newspaper. There is no new bussiness model yet in this field. But Matthew said he's more exciting rather than scary because new technology means new tools. People could doing things easily with technology, including collecting data and it will help you make your work easier.


How do we tell a good environmental stories? There are several points we have to notice; scenes, places, people, data, why it matters, context, and empathy. According to Matthew, we may not only sit in the office, we should experience it by going to places, meeting people, collecting data, and realizing the matters. One more important aspect is empathy. For example, if we could make a story from inhabitants angle which describes society's feeling, it's better. Empathy could make stories become more interesting.

This is also one content of the slide that given by him, "Our ultimate pursuit needs to be truth, intelectual honesty." It's impossible to be purely objective, but it's possible to be as honest as we can

Environtment is deeply important for people. It attaches and can't seperated from our lives. Hence it's humane to care. In reality, many people do not give attention because they (we) are too busy to make money for their (our) lives. It's basic character of human which is want to survive. I think that's all I can write and share about environtmental journalism that I got from a more or less two hours discussion, and I'm very new in this topic. Hopefully you can find it useful.

Thanks for reading, and double thanks for enjoying this post!



Picture:
https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/05160240/gettyimages-510935639-800x533.jpg
https://www.edx.org/sites/default/files/prod-land-pg/banner/information_technology_767x400.jpg
http://www.eoc.org.cy/assets/images/NewsSeptember2016/15.jpg

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