Abstract

Exactly what constitutes environmental journalism has become more difficult to define in today’s crowded multimedia and social media landscape. While environmental journalism is a relatively new reporting specialty, having started in the 1960s (Friedman, 1999, 2004; Wyss, 2008), within its relatively short span, it has undergone many changes. These changes continue today at a faster pace, driven by journalism’s changing business model, media convergence and the rise of the Internet. This chapter discusses many of the changes that have affected environmental journalism over time in the United States. It focuses on the United States because, while some of these changes also have occurred in other countries, different media structures, ownership histories and styles have provided varying results in other nations. For example, while a decline in the traditional newspaper business model has been evident in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, it does not seem to be affecting large Asian countries such as China and India, where newspaper readership is expanding. And no journalism crisis was felt by science journalists—who often cover environmental issues—in Latin America, Asia and North and Southern Africa, in contrast to science journalists’ crisis concerns in the United States, Europe and Canada (Bauer et al., 2013).