Environment

Indonesia: Launch a Mobile Environmental News Service for Rural Communities

Harry Surjadi has recruited and trained more than 150 citizen journalists living in the most-remote areas of Borneo to send news reports via text messaging using the FrontlineSMS system to Ruai TV, a station in the provincial capital. The service also allows subscribers from mainstream media, the government, and activist organizations to receive the news reports.

Nov 112008

Knight Foundation head and young journalists discuss journalism education and media in India

Can India’s theory-heavy journalism education face the challenges from the country’s media explosion? A group of young journalists from Indo-Asian News Service discussed media education and the emerging new media with Alberto Ibarguen, the president and CEO of the John S. and James L.

Oct 92008

Newspaper Reports Change Local Government Policies

There are 14 hospitals in Pekanbaru City (Riau Province), Sumatera Island, Indonesia. Six of them have no waste water treatment facilities. All the untreated waste water from those hospitals streams out to city drain and then to the river. And seven hospitals have no incinerators to burn medical wastes. They dump all medical wastes to public waste dump site. How did media change the government policies on hospital wastes?

There are 14 hospitals in Pekanbaru City (Riau Province), Sumatera Island, Indonesia.

May 292008

Green to Greenbacks: Covering the Business of Climate Change

Climate change is not all about looming disasters. It's also about business: There's money to be made in helping fight the effects of climate change under programs known as clean development mechanism. Just one element, carbon markets, generated trades worth $64 billion (or about Rs 2,560 billion). The Energy Resources Institute and the Knight International Journalism Fellowships Program of the International Center for Journalists organized a seminar for business and environment reporters and editors on this complex subject.

Feb 222008

What the media needs to better cover climate change

Journalists at the Editors' Consultation on Climate Change in New Delhi on Feb. 9. The journalists at a recent round table that brought them face to face with key leaders who shape global climate change policies discussed the problems they face covering the issues and suggested ways to help them better cover the beat.

At the Editors’ Consultation, organized by ICFJ's Knight International Journalism Fellowships and The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi on Feb.

Feb 222008

Global leaders on climate change discuss media’s role

ICFJ's Knight International Journalism Fellowships and The Energy and Resources Institute  recently brought together key leaders who shape climate change policies and the coverage of the topic to discuss the role of the media and the problems in reporting about the subject.

Feb 32008

The Changers versus The Warmers

Move over Hatfields and McCoys. It's the Changers and Warmers – as in Climate Change and Global Warming – who are having the big feud.

Is Global Warming the right name for the phenomenon now taking place or is Climate Change the more appropriate one? Is Change just a politically motivated, watered down term meant to lull people? Or is Warming an inadequate, too narrowly focused appellation?

It's a hotly debated subject and it is relevant for me in an unusually cold New Delhi while I prepare for a meeting of editors on – well, whatever is happening to the climate, the globe ...

Dec 122007

Report from Bali: Getting developing country journalists to cover climate conference

Barely 10 percent of the journalists covering the United Nations climate change conference were from the developing countries (if those from the host country were not counted). Yet these countries will bear the brunt of climate changes, and initiatives at the conference will affect them profoundly.

Dec 52007

Training Workshop Environmental Journalism on Climate Change Program Plan

Last month, The Jakarta Post requested Jody McPhillips and I to help them develop program plan on environmental journalism training workshop on climate change issues for the Post's journalists who will cover climate change conference in Bali.