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March 11, 2008 The Green Family: Run a 10k 
Science journalism tends (like most journalism) to be sensationalist and not particularly deep. It's a limitation of the medium. My new favourite example is a news story I read a few months ago that said a study proves men and women like their kisses different, which just goes to show you that men are looking for sex sex sex and women just want a stable provider. If you're thinking, 'say what?', exactly. Looking deeper into the study in question found that yet again there was far more similarity than variability in how the two sexes answered the questions presented, which probably indicates that men and women are looking for mostly the same things, but that doesn't make for a good news story. It's the same thing with environmental journalism. Facts are often obscured in the pursuit of a good story. Environmental blogs, while generally run by scrupulous and well-informed people, have the compunction of brevity, which makes it difficult to get a good handle on any particular issue. So this month's assignment is to read a book. Any book on an environmental subject, so long as it's not a good-news book (and that's not because all good-news books are bad, but that there is a tendency of anti-environmental crusaders to publish books that claim to be good-news books and which really are thinly veiled screeds about how all environmentalists are idiots). You're free to just walk into a bookstore or library and pick something interesting, but here are some titles I can recommend over the last year or two: Field Notes From a Catastrophe Bonus points to anyone who reads, or at least skims, the IPCC report on Climate Change. If enough of you do, maybe we can have a discussion about what it actually says, as opposed to what the newspapers tend to claim that it says. Posted by Andrea at March 11, 2008 9:00 AM under The Green Family EMAIL this entry (comments fields are below this section) Comments This is great. I think I'm going to check out The Omnivore's Dilmna first. Thanks! Posted by: cinnamon gurl at March 11, 2008 9:03 AM
good going, sister. TOD is on my bookshelf already! Must pull it out. Posted by: jen at March 11, 2008 10:54 PM
On the topic of journalism, though, have you been watching the series in going green that's been on the National all this week? It's been quite good. They've been doing routine, in-depth looks at climate change for a few months now and I've been impressed. Posted by: Mad at March 13, 2008 8:32 AM
No--no cable! But I'm glad to hear that someone's doing a good job of environmental journalism. Posted by: Andrea
I wanted to comment on this when I first read it but the server was down, or something -- I couldn't leave a comment. I love this idea. I'm not sure what I'll read. You should set a deadline for us, we can all come back then to discuss. Posted by: Jennifer at March 13, 2008 6:15 PM
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Change is God (Octavia Butler, Parable Series) "To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself" Soren Kierkegard Email Frances! frances AT athenadreaming DOT org You can email her mother too (that's me):
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