Test Tube Tales: Turning chemicals into copy

By Kathy Summers

    
Writers on the beat say green writing has been lost in the corporate wilderness, but harsh policy changes from the White House stirred a backlash and, of course, Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth shook up everyone's thinking about environmental issues. That means caring about the chemicals in our environment may once again find a place in print. Translation: opportunities for freelance writers to write about environmental health. If you have an urge to ferret out the falsifiers, shame the charlatans and debunk the disinformation specialists, your services are needed.
    
While more staff reporters now cover the environment, for some reason not so many freelancers. So, what could be the problem with writing articles that lead to better food, cleaner water, and fresher air on a safer planet?  If only it were that simple. 
    
The word from the trenches is that writing even the most basic environmental story poses enormous challenges, which may be why only the most passionate and diligent freelancers even bother. Not everyone can translate test tube results into a form that’s not only accurate, but reader friendly. Taming an environmental tale requires cutting through a tangle of science (even if you’re not a scientist), evaluating the risks (even if you're not a statistician), and knowing the territory (even if you're not a political analyst). Then you have to screen for bias and identify conflicts of interest, realizing that corporations, the government, and special interest groups often distort or selectively quote scientific findings.  
    
Columbia Journalism Review writer Jane Hall praises the prospect of “more stories, better play, and more airtime for environmental topics.” Staff reporters will produce most of these, with full access to their publications' resources. Staffers usually work on tight deadlines, though, producing topical and timely, but often carelessly thrown together articles too technical or superficial to be helpful. “Another difficulty for environmental reporters is that many issues are more intractable and complex than the current page-one shootout between two administrations,” says Hall.
    
Even without tight deadlines, freelance writers risk falling into the same traps if they take the same shortcuts. The world needs more writers willing to delve into topics they believe in. By their very nature, freelancers have the freedom to explore the possibilities, the autonomy to market their ideas to publications likely to print controversial opinions, and the self-determination to find unique angles. That doesn’t have to mean angry activist stories told to provoke guilt and shame, without suggesting practical solutions (although there is a place for that, too).
    
Readers need stories that transform environmental uncertainties into action plans. They need explanations of their rights and responsibilities, so they can make better decisions, or at least know when something is being decided for them. That requires writers willing to explore the details and put them into context—the forest and the trees. While green writing may not be the route to bigger paychecks, it's a step toward environmental enlightenment. It helps readers understand how even the most outrageously false claims sometimes contain a grain of truth. For that kind of writing, there will always be outlets, and millions of readers waiting.  

Tips for cleaning up environmental stories

1. Choose your topic and market carefully. The connection between environmental factors and illness and disease offers a myriad of topics and markets to choose from. 
     You could, for example, write about the controversial subject of cancer clusters. Or, you could write about how asthma, the most common chronic disease among children in the US has doubled since 1980, and could double again in the next 20 years. That subject alone has triggered a national effort to track chronic diseases. You might follow the trail of pesticides banned in the United States, which are consequently sold overseas to farmers--who then export their contaminated fruits and vegetables to American supermarkets. 
     Propose your story to magazines specializing not only in health, but also travel, in-flight, outdoors, parenting, science, and general interest magazines. Don't overlook international or regional reprint markets.

2. Spend time in the field and the lab. Talk to scientists, environmental activists, national, regional or local health departments, government officials, public and private agency specialists and industrial sources. Ask about vested interests and quality of evidence. Find out who is doing the research, what else they believe, what else they have done, and whether they have tested their own claims.

3. Ask specialists what they really mean. Even if you think you get it, ask specialists to tell their stories to you in simple language. That will make your quest for clarity easier and, as a bonus, you’ll spot any evasiveness or manipulation you might otherwise miss if you have to decipher jargon. Keep asking the tough questions and don’t let people get away with bad answers.

4. Strive for clarity. Avoid jargon and buzzwords. “Quite often over-used phrases are in fact little understood by the general public," says Professor Sharon Friedman, director of the Science and Environmental Journalism Program at Lehigh University. "So when someone uses a catchall like ‘health and safety standards,’ ask specifically what these standards are. Likewise with ‘acceptable risk factor.’ Find out exactly which risks are acceptable and why. Never take a turn of phrase at its face value." says Friedman.

5. Give readers some scientific background. Readers are more engaged when given enough facts so they can turn the problem over in their heads themselves. Even when it’s just basic science, refresh people’s memories so they can better evaluate the issues that some day may be a matter of life and death. Don't leave out the immediate and future social and economic costs of any alternatives considered. Also, give editors suggestions for illustrating your stories, whenever possible, with graphics, tables, pictures and diagrams.