S5E11: Help Us Preserve Deep Desert Reporting

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:00 - (Chris Clarke): 90 miles from the desert Protection Podcast is made possible by listeners just like you. If you want to help us out, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate or text needles to 53555.

0:00:25 - (Joe Geoffrey): Think the deserts are barren wastelands? Think again. It's time for 90 miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast.

0:00:45 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you Joe and welcome to 90 Miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast. I'm your host Chris Clarke and today's episode is a bit shorter. There's a lot going on around the studio that has made it hard to schedule longer recording sessions, but I wanted to take some time in a brief gap between construction noises to talk about the fellowship for desert reporting that we have launched and why we've launched it. And now this isn't an entirely fundraising pitch-oriented episode.

0:01:15 - (Chris Clarke): If you do want to support the fellowship, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com Fellowship but mostly I want to put a finger on a dynamic that I'm far from the first person to notice. So it has been a constant through line in my work now. I started in journalism around 1990, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth and the landscape for news consumption was radically different then than it is now. Now I was working at a small circulation monthly newspaper tied to a nonprofit in Berkeley doing environmental work.

0:01:47 - (Chris Clarke): The previous editor had turned it from a PR outlet into something more educational with themed issues on transportation, fibers, native rights, that kind of thing. When she stepped away in 1992, she hired me to take over. Back then, people got their news very differently. About two thirds of Americans watch broadcast TV news every day. 58% read a newspaper daily, on paper, not online. One in four read a weekly news magazine like Time, Newsweek, or if they were fancy people and slightly conservative, the Economist.

0:02:24 - (Chris Clarke): Since then, over the past nearly 40 years, those legacy media outlets broadcast news, newspapers, magazines, even cable news have declined in viewership and in number dramatically. There are a couple of major reasons for that. First, legacy media was slow to adapt to the Internet Craigslist alone, and somewhat famously gutted classified ad revenue, which had been a major financial pillar for newspapers.

0:02:56 - (Chris Clarke): At the same time, investors like Alden Global Capital began buying up media companies, or at least increased the pace at which they were buying up media companies. And instead of developing them, helping them succeed and expand and do the job that they wanted to do, those investors started stripping the media companies for parts, layoffs, reduced publication frequency, cost cutting and interference in editorial processes to maximize profits.

0:03:27 - (Chris Clarke): And we are still seeing that go on today. Now those two factors, the Internet and late-stage capitalism constituted a double whammy, especially for smaller papers that were already operating on thin margins. The numbers are pretty stark. Since the early 1990s, at least 3,500 US newspapers have closed. Many were small weeklies in rural areas without the reserves to survive downturns. But some were larger.

0:03:56 - (Chris Clarke): The Rocky Mountain News in Denver closed in 2009, leaving Denver a one newspaper town. The Tucson Citizen closed that same year. And it's not just outlets. The number of newspaper journalists in the US has dropped by more than 45,000 over the past few decades. There has been similar consolidation in TV and radio, with companies like Sinclair and Clear Channel acquiring stations. At the same time, audiences increasingly expect news to be free.

0:04:27 - (Chris Clarke): Link to an article that has a paywall. People will complain at you like you've done something wrong. The result has been a brutal environment for actual journalism, because real journalism takes time, it takes money, it takes patience, and it takes a corporate culture that values career development. There is a split here between shallow journalism and deep journalism. Shallow journalism focuses on individual events.

0:04:59 - (Chris Clarke): Deep journalism focuses on systems and structures. A useful example, because it's relatively non-controversial, is the phenomenon of dramatic desert wildflower blooms, often called super blooms, which is a term I don't particularly love. An abundant bloom is an event, and the media that remain are quite good at covering events within limits. Coverage usually explains that blooms follow heavy rainfall, highlights where to see them, and may include a warning about staying on trails to avoid damage. And that's generally where that coverage stops. There's little appetite for going deeper.

0:05:38 - (Chris Clarke): How could you go deeper on a super bloom story? Well, you could discuss how the same rainfall that produces spectacular blooms can also accelerate the spread of invasive grasses like red brome and cheatgrass and splitgrass. You could explain what actually happens when people step off trail, how long the damage from their footsteps persists. You'll sometimes see the word years in a throwaway sentence. In many cases, centuries would be more accurate.

0:06:04 - (Chris Clarke): But that kind of detail complicates the feel good narrative. It yucks the reader's yum, so it often gets left out. Now, I want to say despite the structure of modern day journalism, there are still excellent journalists doing important work, often with very limited resources. There are reporters like Henry Brean at the Tucson Daily Star, Alan Halaly at the Las Vegas Review Journal, Amy Alonzo at Nevada Independent, Ian James with the LA Times, Shondiin Silversmith at Arizona Mirror, organizations like Inside Climate News, the aforementioned Nevada Independent, the Arizona Agenda, and its subsidiary the Tucson Agenda, El Paso Matters.

0:06:52 - (Chris Clarke): They're doing outstanding work, often with very little in the way of resources. But they can't make up for the loss of tens of thousands of journalists. And even the best reporters working today often lack the institutional support and job security that once allowed journalists to spend years building deep local knowledge, developing the context necessary for truly informed reporting. The endless months spent in planning commission meetings or reading environmental impact statements, talking to people on the ground over and over again, developing that fat Rolodex, to use an obsolete word, of sources throughout the community.

0:07:33 - (Chris Clarke): And that loss matters because the desert isn't a collection of isolated events, it's a system. Now, I've been reporting on energy development in the desert since around 2010, and one of the things that struck me early on was how much mainstream coverage of individual projects could have been lifted directly from industry trade journals. Uncritical acceptance of developer claims. No context or little context.

0:07:58 - (Chris Clarke): Minimal grounding. If you want a current example, the Green Link West transmission line in Nevada, which would run between more or less Reno and Las Vegas to move solar generated power northward. Coverage of Green Link west has addressed some land use controversies along the route, but it's difficult to find reporting that discusses what the project enables. To wit, a likely surge of solar development proposals along the corridor.

0:08:23 - (Chris Clarke): Transmission infrastructure drives development. Without that line, places like Esmeralda County would be far less attractive to solar developers. You can't understand one project or one event without understanding the system it exists within. And to be clear, this is not a failure of individual journalists, at least usually not. It is structural. Editorial constraints, time pressure, limited resources, deadline driven production all work against deep contextual reporting.

0:08:58 - (Chris Clarke): The solution isn't easy, but it's straightforward. Give journalists the time and space to develop expertise, to build institutional memory, to internalize context so they don't have to rediscover it from scratch on every story. Now, the Fellowship for Desert Reporting isn't going to fix that problem on its own, but it's a step. We want to bring new voices into the Desert Advocacy Media Network and into this podcast. We want to broaden a range of stories we cover that benefits you, the listener, and it benefits me by giving me the space to work on longer term planning.

0:09:39 - (Chris Clarke): But maybe more importantly, it'll also give aspiring journalists a way to build that institutional memory, to develop internalized context, to do deep dives into issues, and to build clips. Journalists live and die on clips when they're trying to find work. I'd like to eventually be able to bring people on full time, but even if we succeed that much, this isn't something we or the fellowship alone can solve.

0:10:07 - (Chris Clarke): The good news is there are a lot of small and mid-sized efforts in the desert and elsewhere trying to move deep journalism into the 21st century. We just want to be part of that. Now there's another piece to this whole thing that's a little bit more personal, depending on how you count. This is somewhere around our 137th episode, and over the last couple of years the show has settled into a few familiar formats.

0:10:31 - (Chris Clarke): There's the Something's Bothering Chris episode, which is basically a reported brand with some sources. There are interviews with people doing important work, whether they're authors or scientists or advocates, or maybe all three. And every so often there are field episodes where I take a mic on the road. The Timbisha Shoshone episode earlier this year is a good example. All of those kinds of episodes are valuable and they're all fun to do, but I've been listening back to some of the earlier episodes when there were two of us working on this podcast, and I think there was more creative experimentation then, partly because there were two people, partly because we were publishing less frequently by choice, and partly because we were learning what the hell we were doing.

0:11:19 - (Chris Clarke): So that gave us room and the necessity of playing with format, to improve production values, to layer in music, to experiment with transitions, to be more creative in how we put the episodes together. And I'd like to get back to more of that. Not abandoning interviews or field reporting or the occasional rant like this one here, but having the time to put more into each episode. And that's where the fellowship comes in.

0:11:47 - (Chris Clarke): If we can bring in fellows to help with writing, editing and voice work that opens the door to doing things that have been on hold. Like the more ambitious production that I mentioned, but also the less visible work that keeps an organization running, fundraising, event planning, grant writing. There's also a structural benefit. Bringing in journalists who are rooted in desert communities and know them better than I do helps address one of the biggest weaknesses in environmental reporting. And it's a weakness that we are part of.

0:12:21 - (Chris Clarke): We share this the parachute model. That's when a journalist drops into a community, does a solid or even excellent job covering a story, and then crosses a couple of state lines to get to the next assignment hundreds of miles away. Now, that work is necessary. A lot of stories wouldn't get told otherwise, but that model also contributes to a lack of continuity, a lack of context, a lack of follow through.

0:12:50 - (Chris Clarke): And the stories don't stop. In just the last 24 hours, I've seen updates on multiple issues we've covered. The Big Bend Border Wall campaign has reached a new threshold, with the center for Biological Diversity and others filing suit against DHS to force the release of planning documents. In California, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors has approved a parcel merger that clears the way for a massive data center in a frontline community.

0:13:15 - (Chris Clarke): There are constant developments in the renewable energy field, in the wildlife field. We could do regular update segments following up on stories from the last year or two when necessary, but it takes time. And time is exactly what we don't have enough of right now, because right now it's just me and our board. A couple more hands would change that. So this was supposed to be a short episode, and I've clearly blown past that. If you'd like to help us get the fellowship for desert reporting off the ground, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com

0:13:49 - (Chris Clarke): Fellowship Our initial goal is 10k. We're about 13% of the way there with matching funds that stretch that a bit further, but we still have a long way to go. If you'd rather support our general fund, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate if you can't make a financial contribution but you want to help out with the work that needs to be done, give me a buzz. There are many ways that volunteers could help us out, whether that's organizing events or helping with editing, doing some recording at demonstrations and public meetings and things like that.

0:14:25 - (Chris Clarke): Or if you're really enthusiastic, applying for membership on our board of directors, it'll all help. Now, we don't have new donors to thank this week, but I do want to thank all of you who are already supporting us. We currently have just under 75 recurring donors. That's down from about 110 at the end of our first season. So that's a little concerning. The average donation has increased, which helps, but there's still so much more we could do with broader support.

0:14:54 - (Chris Clarke): If you're listening and you've been thinking about contributing, now would be a great time. And I do encourage you to get in touch about volunteering. My email is chris90miles from needles.com in the next episode, I'll be talking with Ruth Nolan, local writer, about some deeply problematic reporting in the Los Angeles Times and how that reporting risks further hollowing out communities around Joshua Tree.

0:15:18 - (Chris Clarke): Ruth's been on the show before. She was part of our hundredth episode celebration. A longtime friend, one of the first writers I met when I moved to the desert. She's a firebrand and a lot of fun to talk to. She walks her talk. I think you'll enjoy it. And of course, I think it should go without saying that we're watching the events surrounding the war on Iran with horror and outrage, and our thoughts are with the regular people of Iran.

0:15:46 - (Chris Clarke): I've spent a lot of time working with Persian people, other people from Iran. I have never regretted a moment spent with anyone from that part of the world. And I'm thinking about you and your families and your nation. Take care of yourselves. The desert needs you. I know.

0:16:07 - (Joe Geoffrey): And that brings us to the end of this episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. You can find show notes for this episode along with links and background@90miles from needles.com we're also on social media. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and Threads. Just search for 90 miles from Needles and if you'd like a more direct line, you can reach us on signal at HEY90MFN.67.

0:16:42 - (Joe Geoffrey): If you'd like to support the show, you can make a donation of whatever size and frequency feels right to you at 90miles from needles.com donate listener support is what makes this podcast possible. Our voiceover is by Joe Geoffrey. Podcast artwork is by Martine Mancham. Nature sounds are recorded by Fred Bell. Our theme song, Moody Western, is by Brightside Studio, with additional music licensed from Independent artists.

0:17:28 - (Joe Geoffrey): 90 miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.