Bringing Together Journalists and Researchers—in Boston and Berlin—to Tell the Climate Story

The biggest news story of our lifetimes may very well be the climate crisis. People around the world are losing their loved ones, their homes, and their neighborhoods to deadly wildfires and disastrous floods. (The costs to recover and rebuild after such catastrophes are climbing as well.) Killer heat waves are on the rise, too—causing more deaths, nearly half a million people globally each year, than any other weather-related catastrophe. Here in New England, extreme precipitation events are also becoming more frequent, making our winters wetter and icier. This region is also warming faster than the rest of the world, which is driving up tick populations—and tick-borne diseases. 

Yet even as the problem intensifies—affecting all of us in ways big and small, public and private, micro and macro—the media’s coverage of climate change has become compromised due to funding cuts, shrinking budgets, and the widespread shuttering of serious news outlets. All of that means fewer people and fewer papers have the resources to provide serious environmental reporting: A recent survey by the Earth Journalism Network found that 76 percent of environmental journalists reported that their work was hindered by lack of funding and training. 

In an effort to bridge the gap, the Schiller Institute recently launched a series—in partnership with the Environmental Studies and Journalism programs at BC and funded by an Institute for the Liberal Arts grant —to help climate change experts on the BC faculty build relationships with journalists. Reporters-in-training are included in the effort: The initiative is supporting a microsite that features articles and photography by BC students—like Genevieve Morrison ‘27, Madeleine Mulligan ‘27, Antoni Bańkowski ‘26, and Jordan Minev-Jones ‘27.

The yearlong program, "Climate Is Every Story,” was also created to emphasize how much climate change is now a factor in every major category of news, including business, national security, health and healthcare. “This is exactly the kind of important interdisciplinary conversation that the institute and this space was created to explore,” Schiller Institute Executive Director Laura Steinberg said, while introducing the program’s inaugural event. “The Schiller Institute is also deeply interested in connecting the research work of our faculty and students to public discussions and to connect the research results of our faculty and students with policy. We are particularly interested in doing this in the areas of climate change mitigation impacts and adaptation.” 

For the launch, The New York Times Economy Editor Patrick McGroarty, BC ‘06, moderated a panel about how climate change increasingly affects health and well-being—including mental health. One of the discussants, Praveen Kumar, from BC's School of Social Work, talked about his work looking at how communities in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are affected both mentally and physically by warming weather, and how they respond. Another panelist, Summer Hawkins, a social epidemiologist at the School of Social Work, discussed her research about how extreme heat affects pregnant women. The final panelist was the seasoned National Public Radio (NPR) correspondent Jason Beaubien—a Peabody Award-winner who has reported from 60 countries around the world. 

The next panel—the climate crisis is local news—will be moderated by New York Times Senior Editor Amber Williams, BC ‘10—who works at the center of The Times newsroom called the News Desk, helping to set coverage priorities and vet stories. Coverage of the event and its participants by BC student journalists will be added to the program’s microsite.

Beyond being part of every story these days, climate change is also the most urgent story of this moment in time. That’s only because global warming is already so broad and devastating in its impact. It’s also because all that we do and don’t do right now to curb emissions will dictate the severity of our future weather emergencies. 

I feel so strongly about this, personally, that in recent years, I’ve begun to spend more time as a journalist reporting on the environment—both through my work for SchillerNow and by way of freelance stories for outlets like The Boston Globe. This summer, my interest in climate helped me win acceptance to an intensive “communication laboratory” for journalists and scientists in Berlin. The program, called The Communication Lab (ComLab), brought together twenty scientific researchers and twenty journalists, representing countries around the world, to participate in three days of intense workshops, break-out sessions, and lectures. Similar to “Climate Is Every Story,” ComLab’s aim was to help the selected journalists develop a stronger list of scientific contacts and story ideas, and the selected researchers develop a better understanding of what news editors look for, and better ways to talk to non-specialists about their work. Germany’s Humboldt University, a world-class research institute, runs the program—now celebrating its tenth year—in cooperation with International Journalists’ Programmes (IJP), a non-profit organization that sponsors journalism exchange programs around the world. 

“At the heart of the exchange is the transfer of skills for both sides,” says Dr. Stephanie Siewert, Programme Director of The Communication Lab and Team Lead for Communications at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. “Scientists receive training in storytelling techniques and media literacy; journalists are provided opportunities to expand their scientific knowledge and to engage with experts from science.” As she points out, the work “also entails an honest dialogue about different working styles, principles, and use of language.” Dr. Siewert’s co-host for ComLab, Martina Johns, Head of Science Projects and Advisory Board Member for IJP, would agree. “Fact-based journalism brings science closer to people,” she points out. “It transforms data and discoveries into stories.” What’s more, as she says, better dialogue between scientists and journalists make “societies feel more secure.” 

The theme of this year’s ComLab #10 was longevity—in terms of not only the human lifespan but the future of the planet. During my trip, I learned about some remarkable ongoing research—like how cover crops, which farmers use to enrich soil in the time between harvest and replanting, might be used to remove pollutants from arable land, work led by Dr. Pooja Sharma, a researcher in the Plant Biogeochemistry working group at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, Germany. Thanks to Dr. Sharma’s experiments, sunflowers might one day become common tools for drawing metals like cadmium out of soil—and beyond that, may also become sources of the valuable elements that they extract. 

Another ComLab #10 scientist, Dr. Patricia Marques de Farias—a Humboldt Postdoctoral Researcher at the Sustainable Packaging Institute of Albstadt-Sigmaringen University, in southern Germany—has developed a process for turning coconut husks that would otherwise be discarded into a so-called “bioplastic,” a material similar to Saran Wrap. Another participant, Samrat Deb, studies peatlands in the Indian Himalayan region to develop policy recommendations related to how peatland conservation can help India achieve its Sustainable Development Goals. Dr. Marina Pivatto—an industrial engineer, currently a German Chancellor Fellow at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg—is looking at how innovative European companies are making solar energy even cleaner; at least one is beginning to use AI robots to sort recyclable trash, while another is developing high-tech treatments (that rely on laser ablation and thermal and chemical processing) to make the separation of silicon, metal, and glass easier and cheaper.

ComLab was invaluable to me, as a journalist, not only because I learned about so much compelling research. I also received exceptional mentoring and encouragement from the trio of senior journalists who helped lead ComLab#10—Damian Carrington, Environment Editor for The Guardian; Jens Radü, head of multimedia productions for DER SPIEGEL; and Gemma Terés Arilla, the director of the taz Panter Foundation. Another mentor, Australian journalist Carl Elliot Smith, of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, also addressed the group, discussing how his participation in ComLab #8, in 2023, helped him build an award-winning radio program about climate resilience in both Scotland and the U.S. My interactions with this generous, inspiring group helped me to re-charge—providing me with a great source of sustainable energy during a challenging time for journalists. It also reminded me that not only Schiller’s faculty but hard-working brilliant people are racing against the clock to solve the climate problem.