(photo: flickr/Alan Levin CC:BY-SA)

For a lot of journalists, dealing with numbers and math can be a little scary. There’s a reason many reporters will say they went into journalism instead of finance or engineering. It’s a love of words and language.

But journalists need to have a grasp of the basics since working reporters deal with math pretty much every day. Numbers make up the foundation of many stories – the municipal project is over of under budget, the politician is some percentage up or down in the polls, violence rates this year are over or below the ten-year average. So there’s really no choice but to get your head around some fundamental math concepts.

onMedia’s Kyle James, for whom math can be a struggle, offers this quick summary of a few calculations you need to know to do your job well and where you can go online to get help when all those numbers just start swimming in your head.

I fell out of love with math early on. It started in elementary school when I had a lot of trouble memorizing the multiplication tables. Then it was kind of downhill from there. The killing blow to the troubled relationship came in high school calculus. Oh, the dread I felt walking in that classroom door every day.

While journalists generally don’t need to know all that much about logarithms and differential equations, we do need to know the most obvious, such as knowing how to add and subtract, multiply and divide. But it’s also important to  be able to calculate percentages, find an average, and do a few other things.

Let’s go through some of them here. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it simple enough so even I can understand it.

Percentages

(photo: flickr/Leo Reynolds CC:BY-NC-SA)

Percentages, representing a part of a whole, make frequent appearances in news stories. They describe relationships between numbers that might be hard to grasp if just the raw data is presented. For example, it’ll be easier for people to understand the results of an election if we report that Sally Smith won almost 56 percent of the vote instead of just writing that she won 14,337 votes out of the 25,689 cast.

Problem: What is 13 percent of 50?

Step 1:

The basic formula is: the percent multiplied by the ‘of’ number  = ??

13 percent x 50 = ??

Step 2:

Change the “percent” number into a decimal. To do that, divide the number by 100.

13 / 100 = .13

Step 3:

Do the math laid out in Step 1.

.13 x 50 = 6.5

Answer: 13 percent of 50 is 6.5. Easy, right?

Let’s change it up a little. How can we work out the percentage?

Problem: What percentage of the total vote did Sally Smith get in the election?

Step 1

Calculate the total (the sum) for the category of numbers of your choice (in this case, the total number of votes cast). That’s 25,689.

Step 2

Divide the value of a particular case (votes received by Sally Smith: 14,337) by the total value.

14,337 /25,689 = .558

Step 3

Multiply the result by 100 (or move the decimal point two places to the right) to convert from decimal to percent.

Answer: 55.8 percent.

Not so bad, huh?

Percent Change

Percent change is also often used in news stories, since it helps illustrate how a set of numbers – such as time or prices – has changed over time.

Problem: The price of a yearly bus ticket went up from $110 last year to $125 this year. What percent did the price increase?

Step 1:

The basic formula is (new value – old value) / old value = percent change

(125 – 110) / 110 = ??

Step 2:

Do the math

15 / 110 = .136

Step 3:

Multiply the answer by 100 or move the decimal two places to the right to get the percentage.

Answer: The price went up 13.6 percent.

Averages

Averages present a picture of a group of numbers, giving us a central value or a “central tendency”. When people talk about averages, they’re often lumping a few different things together. Let’s go through the two used mostly in journalism—the mean and the median.

Mean

The mean is the average people are most familiar with. It’s easy to compute. Just add all the numbers up in a group and divide by the number of values in that group.

(photo: flickr/Eric Allix Rogers CC:BY-NC-SA)

Problem: What is the average price of a house on Main Street? The five houses on the street cost $125,000, $110,000, $95,000, $105,000 and $120,000?

Step 1: Add the values together.

125,000, 110,000, 95,000, 105,000 and 120,000 = 555,000

Step 2: Divide by the number of values.

555,000 / 5 = 111,000

Answer: The average price of a house on Main Street is $111,000.

Median

But sometimes the mean can be misleading. What if there were one very expensive house on Main Street with a price tag of one million dollars? That “outlier” figure would push the mean much higher, and we wouldn’t have a good representation the general price of most of the houses there.

So in these kinds of instances, you might well want to find or calculate the middle of a collection of numbers containing an extremely high or low value. That’s the median, the middle value in a group of numbers. As an example, let’s use our house prices again.

Problem: What is the median price of a house on Main Street?

Step 1:

Rewrite you list from low-to-high or high-to-low (with the million-dollar house)

$95,000, $105,000, $110,000, $120,000, $125,000, $1,000,000

Step 2:

Take the middle number in the list. That’s your median.

But wait! We’ve got an even number of houses in our list. In this case, we would take the average of the middle two.

Answer: The median here is $115,000.

While these are a few of the most common math tools journalists should be comfortable with, there are more. The Poynter Institute journalism training school lists a few others, such as a familiarity with statistics, ability to calculate percentages, ratios, rates of change, and other relationships between numbers, an understanding of “margin of error” in polling and an ability to translate numbers into terms that your audience can understand.

Oh, but you should! (photo: flickr/Sean MacEntee CC:BY)

Some good resources

If you’re stuck, or just want to double-check your work, go to some of the links below to get help or even a refresher course in some basic math concepts.

Statistics Every Writer Should Know. Author Robert Niles has put together a handy that puts basic statistics concepts in plain language.

Math for Journalists: Help with Numbers. Poyner has a free refresher course to get up to speed. Very helpful.

Percent Change Calculator. If you want to double-check your percent change calculation, do it here.

Newsroom Math. Here’s a handy slide show with the basics laid out.

Newsroom math cheat sheet. It’s not all that pretty, but this one page sheet lays out the most common calculations reporters need.

Mathematics Competency Test for Journalists. If you’re feeling confident in your math know-how, here’s a place to test yourself.

Happy calculating.

Written by Kyle James, edited by Kate Hairsine

(photo: flickr/Quinn Dombrowski CC:BY-SA)

Almost every news or feature story – whether it’s for print, broadcast or online – benefits from having good quotes, voice clips or sound bites.

Quotes directly express the views of the people you talked to, lend credibility to your story, and liven up your writing. Quotes are like a spice that adds flavor and zest to your story. Without them, while your piece might well have a lot of informative facts, it can be pretty bland.

But figuring out exactly which bits to pull from your interviews and put in your story can be challenging even if you are an experienced reporter.

onMedia’s Kyle James has trained radio, print and online journalists in countries around the world for years. In this post, he offers a few guidelines on keeping an eye out for what’s quotable and what’s not.

What should a quote do?

Quotes add the human dimension to the news, even in hard news stories. They give authenticity to a story, telling readers (or listeners or viewers) how people involved in the story think or feel – in their own words. Quotes can make issues more concrete and understandable, and put flesh and blood on abstract ideas.

(In the interest of brevity, I’m mostly going to use the word “quotes” in this post. But it will also refer to voice clips, sound bites or whatever term your particular medium uses for relating direct speech.)

A quote from a single mother hit by a reduction in social welfare benefits can show have a tax cut might affect the poor. A quote from a small-business owner on difficulties she’s having in the face of stricter government regulations can illustrate the impact of new legislation.

(photo: flickr/Eelco CC:BY-NC)

Quoting people also lowers the risk that you, the journalist, might misrepresent what someone says. If you broadcast their exact words, you’re more likely to stay out of trouble if that person isn’t happy with what you reported.

Good quotes should make your listener sit up and take notice, and should be more likely to stick with people after the story. (This is especially true in broadcasting, where we hear someone’s actual voice, and maybe even see their expression as they’re speaking).

Maybe the single mother’s voice choked when she talked about having a hard time buying groceries. Maybe the business owner’s eyes flashed with anger at the thought of the money she’d have to spend satisfying new regulations.

Now, a couple of terms:

Direct quotes – these are exact transcriptions of what a person said. In print stories, these go in quotation marks.

“Their ultimate sacrifice is yet another example that freedom is not free. In fact, sometimes it comes at a great cost,” said US General Roger Brady, speaking at the ceremony honoring fallen soldiers.

Indirect quotes/paraphrasing – these reflect the meaning what a person said, but the wording is not exactly the same. No quotation marks are needed.

Speaking at the ceremony honoring fallen soldiers, US General Roger Brady said the servicemen’s sacrifice was an example of the high cost of freedom.

What makes a quote good?

Interviews you do are going to contain some information which is quotable and probably a lot which isn’t. So how do you decide? Below is a list of what makes a sentence or two a good quote candidate.

–It contains an opinion

Traditional news style says neutral reporters are not supposed to let opinions into their newswriting unless they’re attributed to someone or represented in a quote. It’s even better if that opinion is expressed in a strong or memorable way.

“I am so fed up and angry with this government,” said Heng Chunly, a nurse who had joined the protest. “I came here to see justice done since I am sick of all the injustice in Cambodia.”

–It expresses feeling or emotion

A memorable quote can communicate the emotions felt by a person involved in the story. In the best cases, it also reflects the speaker’s personality.

I pulled the two clips below out of an interview with Eleanor Howard, an American woman whose husband Bill died during the Berlin Airlift in the late 1940s. The clips reflect the emotion she still feels, more than 60 years later, when she thinks about her late husband. Plus, her southern American accent is simply delicious.

Eleanor Howard:

“[Bill was] such a fine Christian man, and so good lookin’!”

“And I saw the base chaplain. And I literally turned to stone. I knew something had happened. And so I opened the door to a sea of sad faces and they told me Bill was gone.”

–It’s an eyewitness account

Our readers/listeners get a front-row seat, in a sense, at events we weren’t at. For example, in the Berlin Airlift story, I also interviewed a woman who lived in Berlin during that time.

“Our enemies who had once dropped bombs on us were now bringing us food, and coal to heat our homes with,” said Erika Demitrowitz, who was 24 when the airlift began. “I can remember the day the airlift was over, we picked all the flowers we could and took them to the Americans. That was our ‘thank you’.”

She takes us back to a time long ago and marvels at the sudden switch in circumstances as the once-hated enemy becomes a savior of sorts. It’s good stuff.

What makes a weak quote?

–Background or factual information

While this kind of information is crucial for any news story, it’s not the best material for quotes.

If there are lots of numbers and statistics, it’s probably best to paraphrase (photo: flickr/MervynChua CC:BY-NC)

Why should we quote an analyst telling us that job growth last quarter was one percent, and is expected to increase by 0.3 percent next quarter and then fall slightly after that? It might be solid information, but it’s a pretty boring print quote and absolutely deadly for broadcast.

Paraphrase the analyst instead. Put his or her comments in your own words. You can probably write them more succinctly and save valuable print space or broadcast seconds for the more meaty quotes.

–Unclear or confusing speech

While professional speakers might know how to consistently express themselves in crystal clear quotes and sound bites, the rest of us mangle things occasionally. If someone expresses something in a manner that’s unclear, we need to use an indirect quote or paraphrase it.

–Jargon/specialized language

Many fields, even journalism, have their own specialized language that is mostly unknown to outsiders. That means when you hear someone speaking in jargon, you need to politely ask them to use terms familiar to the general populace.

I did a lot of business reporting for radio at one time and would come up against this problem frequently. Economists tend to speak their own rarified language, which can be pretty incomprehensible to non-specialists. I would often have to ask them to rephrase something in a simpler way. If they couldn’t or wouldn’t, I’d rewrite the information in easier-to-understand terms, attributing it, of course.

How many quotes should I use?

Remember that quotes are the spice that livens up the story. They give it color and authenticity while adding the human element. But just like in the kitchen, too much spice can make a dish inedible. So use quotes, don’t abuse them. Don’t string a bunch together just because you have them in your notebook.

This is even more important with radio or TV, where you usually only have a short period of time to tell your story. You need to be especially careful to only use the most powerful clips/sound bites that meet the criteria laid out above.

Can I ever change quotes?

Good journalists are very careful with quotes. The cardinal rule is simple: you should never change the meaning of something someone said.

Now, let’s say you’re recording an interview and someone starts off a sentence you want to use, then goes on a long tangent before looping around to finish off the thought about a minute later. In that case, I would say it’s OK to cut out the superfluous information in the middle, or delete all the “you knows” and “likes” scattered about, to end up with a concise, strong quote/clip. The crucial thing is that the quote reflects what the interviewee meant to express.

In print this is easy — maybe too easy. With digital editing systems, it’s not all that harder, in many cases. But be careful, if you accidentally change the meaning of something someone said, it can easily turn out to be a body blow to your own credibility and will only hurt you in the long run.

To print out a one-page summary on good and not-so-good quotes, click here.

Written by Kyle James, edited by Kate Hairsine

Whether your interviewee is being deliberately evasive or has gotten so excited about something else that they have forgotten your question, your job is to get them to respond to the question you asked. Don’t be afraid of interrupting and posing the question again. There are many ways of doing this politely and respectfully.

Ask and ask again

Probably the most famous example of persistent questioning is BBC’s Newsnight reporter Jeremy Paxman who asked former British Home Secretary, Michael Howard, the same question 12 times. While this is a bit over the top, it’s worth watching the interview to see how Paxman keeps asking without seeming rude or bullying. (As background information, Paxman was asking Howard about a report critical of Howard’s handling of the prison service following the escape of several prisoners. Paxman then asked Howard whether he had threatened to overrule Director of Prisons Derek Lewis.)

I have often made use of the very same phrases Paxman’s uses as a way of leading the interview back to the issue at hand.

“I note you are not answering the question, did you threaten to overrule him?”
“I am sorry, I am going to be quite rude but did you threaten to overrule him?”
“With respect, that is not answering the question of whether you threatened to overrule him.”
“With respect, you haven’t answered the question.”

On a similar vain, take a look at this interview conducted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Mark Colvin with Australia’s then environment minister, Peter Garrett. Colvin asks six times how long Garrett had known about a report outlining problems with the government’s home insulation scheme.

Seek specifics

Many experienced interviewees, especially politicians, are very good at giving general answers or making general accusations. You need to follow up and ask exactly what is meant and get specific examples. Your job as a journalist is not to give people free air time. Rather, it’s to provide information to your listeners.

I once sat in on an interview a reporter did with a Ghanaian politician about his pre-election promises:

Politician: “When I am voted in, the first thing I will do is fix the problem of power outages.”
Journalist: “What else will you do”

WRONG. The politician has said nothing about how he is going to fix the power problem (the biggest issue in Ghana’s last election). Your job is to probe further. The interview should like something like this instead:

Politician: “When I am voted in, the first thing I will do is fix the problem of power outages.”
Journalist: “How exactly do you plan to do that”

Followed up by:
“Do you have an estimate of how much this will cost?”
“If you are voted in, how will your government pay for that?”
“How long will this take?”

I also heard an interview conducted after an incident at a polling booth during elections in Sierra Leone:

Protester: “The police used excessive force and it was the minister’s fault – he wanted to intimidate voters.”
Journalist: “Do you know how many people didn’t vote because of the police action?”

WRONG. Firstly, you need to establish exactly what happened, which is why you are interviewing the protester in the first place.

Protester: “The police used excessive force and it was the minister’s fault – he wanted to intimidate voters.”
Journalist: “What exactly do you mean by excessive force?” or “Can you describe what happened?”

Again, Jeremy Paxman provides a good example. In an interview with minister Barbara Roche, he asked her to substantiate her claim that big firms were threatening to quit London if Ken Livingstone were elected as mayor. Her asks her several times to be more specific.

Understand the answer

As a radio program editor, I once sent out a journalist three times to interview the same expert. The journalist was supposed to be doing a background interview about how hydro-electric power worked. The first two times she came back with the interview, I didn’t understand the expert’s answers because they were too scientific and full of jargon. She didn’t understand his answers either but hadn’t thought to ask him to make his responses more simple “because he was the expert and knew what he was talking about.”

But if you, the journalist, don’t understand, then the majority of your listeners or viewers won’t understand either, which pretty well defeats the purpose of broadcasting something in the first place.

There are a few strategies you can use to get more simple responses. If you don’t understand an answer, come straight out and say so. Depending on the culture you are working in, you can also try a bit of flattery so that the person isn’t offended.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t quite follow, can you tell me how it works in plain English.”
“I’m sorry, I’m a bit confused here. Can you describe how it works more simply.”
“Some of our listeners don’t have the benefit of your education – can you explain what you mean in simple words.”

Another ways I have gotten people past the jargon is to ask these kinds of questions:

“Imagine you are talking to a room full of children – how would you describe it to them”
“Picture it in your mind and describe it to me”
“Can you give me a specific example of who uses this / how it is used”

Be polite no matter what

At times interviewees  are offended by journalists’ questions. Sometimes their anger is genuine but sometimes it’s a ruse to put journalists off and stop them asking the question again. Don’t buy into this. Take a deep breath, and ask politely again. It’s your job.

Last year, US film director Quentin Tarantino lost his temper an interview with British journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy, at one point telling the Channel 4 news anchor, “I’m shutting your butt down.” Guru-Murthy stayed calm and polite throughout. You can, too.

Written by Kate Hairsine

Photo: flickr/Nic McPhee

These days, journalists have fewer editors looking over their work. Some media outlets have almost done away with copy editors all together. That means it’s more important than ever for journalists to learn how to self-edit, and turn in clean, accurate copy. onMedia’s Kyle James has some tips on finding your inner editor. 

Journalism has always been a fast-paced profession. But since the advent of the internet, it’s attained light speed. Getting content up fast is more important than ever, but that can mean that there are fewer sets of eyes going over content before it’s published. Plus, there are fewer copy editors around these days than there used to be as newsrooms trim their staffs due to financial pressures.

The result: more mistakes are slipping through. While sloppy copy is embarrassing, it can also damage a journalist’s or outlet’s credibility and drive readers to the competition. No one wants that.

That’s why learning how to edit your own copy instead of depending on others to clean up your mistakes is more important than ever.

Studies have shown that it’s very, very easy to miss errors. Our brains have the brilliant ability to straighten out messes they encounter. I bet you don’t have that much problem reading the jumble below.

It dseno’t mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm.

Photo: flickr/Terrance Heath

Let’s hope none of your writing turns into looking like that. Still, it’s likely that there will be a few typos or inaccuracies that sneak through. No one’s perfect, after all, so as I like to say: To err is human; to self-edit, essential.

Here are a few tips you can use to make sure that the work that goes out under you’re (oops, that should be “your”) byline is error free and crystal clear.

Print out, step away, proof

If I’ve got the time and have a printer handy, I like to print my stories out. Then I’ll go get a coffee, play with the dog or even call it a day. I need that break from the computer screen and my words to put a little distance between the story and me. How long I stay away depends on what my deadline is. I like to sleep on it and look at it with fresh eyes in the morning, but that’s not always possible.

But reading it on paper instead of the screen I wrote it on gives it a new context, and you’d be surprised about the things you’ll catch. Some people like to change context to going to a different location, such as a chair in the living room or maybe a park outside—anywhere but the desk where you wrote it. This gives things a new perspective.

Change the format

If printing it out isn’t possible or you’d prefer to save paper, try changing the font in your word processing program. You could also bump up the font size from 12 to 16 points. Or, try changing your computer settings so instead of reading in black and white, you’ve got a light blue background and dark green letters. (I wouldn’t make this change permanent!) The key it to fooling the mind into thinking it’s looking at something new, not the article it’s been slaving away on.

Read it aloud

Photo: flickr/Jeff Daly

As a radio producer, this is an essential for me. But even for print or online pieces, reading your text out loud can help. It can make sure that the words flow smoothly through the piece, and when you stumble over something, like a difficult word or phrase, that’s a good clue that maybe it should be rewritten. Also, I think you’re more likely to catch spelling and grammar errors when you’ve got to pronounce what you’re reading. It slows you down a little and the eyes don’t fly over the page as quickly as they do when you read silently.

Read it backwards

This is mentioned in several sites and posts on self-editing, although I don’t have first-hand experience with it. But apparently, if you read your copy backwards—the last sentence, then the second-to-last sentence, etc.—your focus beams in laser-like on each individual sentence and you catch errors. You’re going against the flow of the narrative, and don’t skip over information. It’s also effective for fact checking, many say.

Use spellcheck (but don’t trust it 100%)

Getting the spelling right is important and not always easy. That’s especially true for those writing in English, whose spelling is notoriously illogical. But, an artical ful of speling mistakes is going to maike you look careles or mabey even plane dumm. (Yikes!) See the two onMedia posts by Kate Hairsine on the importance of getting the right letters in the right order. Your credibility is on the line here.

Luckily modern technology helps us out here, the oh-so-useful spellcheck. Still, you’d be surprised about how many people don’t use it. I edit a magazine, so I know. Please use it. You might want to run a grammar check as well, if your program has one. There are some online options as well, as Kate points out.

But, a word of warning, don’t depend on these features because they don’t catch everything. Sometimes you need a dictionary on hand, online or analog, to make sure you’ve written discreet when you meant maintaining silence about something sensitive, and not discrete, which means separate, distinct.

Make every word count

Photo: flickr/Dan Patterson

Now, you’ve got all the spelling and grammar correct, what about your text? Does it move along briskly at an expeditious pace that will maintain your readers’ interest, or is it weighed down by a surfeit of adjectives and adverbs populating long, leaden, convoluted sentences bursting with ponderous, recondite, Latinate words? (Like this one.)

Space comes at a premium, even on websites. Readers’ attention is not what it used to be. Online, studies have shown people read even faster, often scanning. If your prose lies there inert, it’s likely a click of the mouse will take them to another piece whose words almost jump off the page. (Or, maybe a cat video.)

Go through your text and take a scalpel to it. Cut out all the adverbs and adjectives that aren’t absolutely necessary. Use short words that carry a punch when you can. Keep the rhythm changing and resist the temptation to add three subordinate clauses with five commas to your sentence.

We are not Proust. Cut the fat!

Do the math, check the names

Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. Shall I say it again? Accuracy. You’re responsible for it, not your copyeditor, even if you have one.

Photo: flickr/lilife2012

Most Journalists aren’t math whizzes. Maybe some are, but if we were great with numbers, wouldn’t we be working in finance or as actuaries? We’d certainly earn a lot more. This means we have to work extra hard to make sure our numbers are right. But it’s essential. Recheck your math; plug the numbers in the calculator again. Or, find someone who can figure out that percentage for you.

Double-check the names in your articles—your sources, companies, all that. Get titles right, check them. Maybe you’ve got someone’s business card, have another look at it. When you can, find another source—maybe a credible website—that has a firm’s name, especially these days when companies love unusual spellings (Tumblr, Yahoo!) or word spacing (PricewaterhouseCoopers).

You might want to consider this excellent accuracy checklist by Craig Silverman of The Poynter Institute’s Regret the Error blog. It contains a list of things that journalists should be sure they got right. You could print one out for every story you do and then go down the list, checking off what you’ve done to ensure your story is as accurate as it can be.

Checklist. Craig Silverman. Regret the error

Divide and conquer

Some people still have a hard time catching everything in one read-through. And in fact, it’s a lot to ask. One strategy is to read through a piece at least three times, taking a different approach each time.

On the first read, concentrate on the story’s structure and make sure it’s clear and easy to understand. A second read should look at spelling. During a third go-through, you should be on the lookout for any grammar errors that crept in. Do your subjects and verbs agree?

Dividing the focus like this can improve your chances of catching errors, and keep those headaches at bay.

Written by Kyle James, edited by Kate Hairsine

Photo: flickr/United Nations Photo

Climate change was once a niche topic; now it’s as big as the world. And, it’s a challenging one for journalists, especially for those without a science background. But since climate change could well be the story of the century, it’s important to cover it well. In this two-part series, Kyle James has tips on how to approach climate reporting, make your stories appealing to the general public, and avoiding common mistakes.

Last year, I was sent to India to teach a workshop for print journalists from around southern Asia on climate change reporting. It was an exciting assignment, and a daunting one, given the complexities and controversy surrounding the issue.

Luckily, I was teamed up with Alex Kirby, a former BBC journalist and co-founder of the Climate News Network. These posts largely come out of our presentations and discussions during our weeks in Chennai, with each other and a group of talented, engaged journalists.

Reporting on climate change poses particular challenges, and the best of us get it wrong sometimes. Recently, even the BBC has come in for criticism from lawmakers about allegedly giving the same weight to scientific fact and lobbyists’ opinions.

Some reporters may think climate change reporting is simply too difficult and throw up their hands. There are so many voices out there, often talking at cross-purposes, powerful interests backed up by loads of money, deceptive campaigns and information, and the kind of jargon-filled speech that would be hard for anyone without a PhD in climate science to make heads or tails of.

But climate change reporting is crucial, especially for the developing world, where the issue is often under-reported even though these countries are particularly vulnerable to its effects, such as rising sea levels, higher temperatures, changes in monsoon patterns, droughts, floods, violent storms, etc.

While you don’t need an advanced degree to report on the climate, you do need some basic knowledge and tools to get you on your way. Plus, it’s helpful to have some strategies to make sure people get past the headline or first sentence of your story. For many, climate change seems either boring, alarmist, or maybe not relevant to their day-to-day lives. It’s up to you to convince them otherwise.

Let’s look at how we can do that….

Photo: flickr/woodleywonderworks

Understand the issue – With climate change reporting, a good knowledge of the basics is essential. If you don’t have a good grasp on things, your audience won’t either. Remember, no PhD is necessary, but if you’re scientific knowledge is limited, it’s time to brush up. You’ll need to know about the greenhouse effect, the sources of greenhouse gases, the differences between risk and climate and weather, adaptation and mitigation, for starters.

If your head is already spinning, luckily there are some excellent online resources such as the News University’s Covering Climate Change online mini-course or various environmental journalism toolkits. Of course, you’ll ask the experts the really tough questions, but you need a good foundation going into your interviews.

Make it understandable – This is good advice for any journalistic endeavor, but especially relevant here. We’re dealing with complex matters that even scientists don’t fully understand, so we need to make sure we’re not adding to the confusion.

A good strategy: K.I.S.S. in every aspect of your writing. That is, Keep It Short and Simple. Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs will keep your audience following along. It’s unlikely that anyone will complain that you’ve made something too simple.

Drop the unfamiliar language/jargon – So, you’ve been reading the literature and following the news, and understand what IPCC, REDD and UNFCCC mean. It’s very likely your audience doesn’t. Stay away from the alphabet soup of acronyms or at least explain them clearly. Don’t assume previous knowledge.

Photo: flickr/gavin llewellyn

Also, scientists tend to use a lot of jargon. They’re not trying to be unclear; it’s just the normal language they use in their work. I’ve often had to ask interviewees to explain something again, more simply. One trick is to ask them how they’d explain it to an 18-year-old. I personally use the mother test, and am always asking myself: “Would Mom get what this guy is saying?” If the answer’s no, I ask again.

While you might feel uncomfortable asking these very smart people to simplify, most experts would much rather do that than have you trying to figure it out yourself and possibly getting it wrong.

Photo: flickr/USDA

Be visual – Because the issue is complicated, visual aids help a lot. Pepper your stories with charts, graphs, maps, powerful pictures, or other multimedia elements. Sidebars help break up text and present info in easier-to-digest ways.

How about a graphic showing how rooftop solar panels can help feed Nepal’s electricity grid? How about a time-lapse video that shows the melting Artic ice cap? A slideshow about the effects climate change is having on traditional communities in Greenland? A picture is often worth a thousand words, and showing how rising sea levels could affect a coastline can be more powerful than writing four paragraphs on it.

Humanize the story – Try to give climate change a human face whenever you can to make it both more understandable and more relatable. Most people care about the wellbeing and future of their families and, we hope, their fellow human beings. So, how are humans being affected by the change in the climate? Talking about the people involved on the ground brings the topic out of the realm of abstraction and into the real world we’re all familiar with.

Photo: Kyle James

During the workshop in India, we visited factories that were pumping pollutants in the air and massive dump sites, both of which had devastating effects on both the environment and the people living near them.

Instead of just talking about temperature forecasts and rainfall patterns, write about how changes in the climate are affecting tea producers in India, the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh or coffee growers in Nicaragua. These stories show the human cost of changing weather patterns.

Make it local – While writing about international climate conferences in far-off capitals is important, you can make the issue more relevant for your audience by saying how climate change is affecting them or their neighbors. Readers in land-locked Nepal, and Nepalese editors for that matter, are likely more interested in bursting glacial lakes than rising sea levels.

And while it’s the poorest communities that are often the most at risk, and have the least ability to adapt, we don’t hear from them enough. It’s important to give them a voice.

Follow the money – Climate change is about billions and billions of dollars, be it regarding the energy industry, government strategies for adaption, or attempts at mitigation. Who stands to gain financially from the issue at hand? Who will lose out? When you find out where and how the money’s flowing, you often discover motivations and get yourself a good story.

Look for new angles – Climate change is not just for the science section, it’s a political, business, human rights, energy and tech topic as well. Look for different angles and how climate change ties into what lawmakers are proposing, how it’s related to a new technology being tested, what it means for business and the national/local economy. In fact, it’s a good idea to have your climate change glasses on 24/7. Look at any new development through these lenses and you’d be surprised at what you might find.

Photo: flickr/epSos.de

Report on solutions – Many climate change stories are dark tales of doom and gloom. While there is cause for real concern, it’s important for journalists to report on ways to mitigate or at least adapt to climate change. Otherwise, your audience is likely to throw up its hands, and move on to a story that doesn’t leave them wanting to jump off a bridge. I’m not talking about sugarcoating, but talk about solutions instead of ONLY about problems.

In the next post, we’ll take a look at some of the things you want to avoid when reporting on a changing climate. Like I said earlier, there are traps that are easy to fall into and the more you know, the better you’ll be able to avoid them.

Author: Kyle James