in a conversation in late july, fears walked me through his experiences covering the environment and his pulitzer prize-winning work. he also gave insight on the decadeslong issue of excluding people of color in both the conservation movement and in newsrooms. <\/p>\n
this interview has been edited for length and clarity. <\/p>\n
q: when did you decide to pursue environmental journalism? <\/strong><\/p>\n a: i came to the post from the l.a. times and came in as a general assignment reporter. and a year after that, i started writing about race and ethnicity and that evolved into a number of things from criminal justice to immigration\u2026a colleague of mine, david fahrenthold, who was covering the environment, decided that he wanted to cover congress and david left a void on the desk. <\/p>\n i had expressed interest \u2014 just really sort of a passing interest \u2014 in covering the environment and an editor of mine remembered it and he thought i would be a good fit. i didn’t know at the time that i would be. and so i would say the long answer to your question is…i was assigned a position that i had a passing interest in. and i’ve been doing it now for 10 years because it has become one of the loves of my life.<\/p>\n q: was there a vocabulary or learning curve that you had to navigate when turning toward environmental journalism?<\/strong><\/p>\n a: yes. scientists speak in an entirely different language from the rest of us. that was a huge learning curve to sort of understand how these research papers work, and what they were meant to say, and how they can inform journalism \u2014 and then how you had to sort of figure them (out), to read them, so that the average reader could understand that stuff. because you look at the papers we write about and you look at the stories and it couldn’t be more different. the other challenge was getting some scientists to speak in plain language about what they were saying, because scientists speak to other scientists. they don’t necessarily speak to you and me.<\/p>\n q: how did you overcome the challenge of taking scientific language and making it something absorbable for your audience?<\/strong><\/p>\n a: lots of time. so, it would take me a long time to read these studies. i would spend lunch hours and time after work understanding not just the summary and the conclusions of the studies, but also the guts of them, the explanations for the types of lab work and models they use to make their case. and all of that reading sort of went into forming questions. when i approached the scientists \u2014 this is the thing \u2014 that i would find the authors, of course, and not just one author, but two authors and i would talk to at least two authors for each study and then talk to a scientist who wasn’t involved in the study to sort of inform me about what actually the study is trying to say. <\/p>\n some scientists are patient, some aren’t, but \u2026 you have to be willing to look really stupid to them because these are very smart people. but you’re trying to answer (the) questions you have. i really didn’t care that some scientists might think that i wasn’t a scientist or i wasn’t up to speed with certain things. i needed them to break down their information as much as they possibly could. sometimes, the scientists were surprised at their answers and were surprised at how they were explaining the science. they began to see that there was another way that they could explain what they were trying to say. so, it was a bit of give and take. it was sort of symbiotic. i would say that (it) took at least six years before i was truly comfortable with reading studies. i think i’m much better at it now. <\/p>\n q: how would you describe your own experiences as a journalist of color covering this particular beat?<\/strong><\/p>\n a: when i started on the beat, obviously, i went to numerous engagements hosted by conservation groups and i was astonished to find that the sector, this field of conservation, was even whiter than my own industry, journalism, which is pretty white itself. but conservation was really white and i found that intriguing. and i think that two or three years in, i was like, i just can’t believe that. i can’t believe that african americans and latinos and asian americans aren’t interested in the environment. <\/p>\n so what’s happening here? and that led to my first story about diversity within green groups. and through writing that story, i learned a lot more about the environmental justice movement and how people in that movement had seen long before, that these groups weren’t just white, but they were racist. and they were sucking up (funding), and the foundations that basically gave them their marching orders and funded them also sort of left these groups without funds. <\/p>\n when i went to the society of environmental journalists \u2026 you could almost count the number of black environmental reporters on your hand \u2014 on one hand, not both. and, that is itself frustrating because white journalists just weren’t writing about these communities, and although there’s an explosion of interest in environmental journalism because of the environmental justice issues now \u2014 because of this racial reckoning we\u2019re in \u2014 those stories are few and far between. i don’t recall any. i couldn’t find any story when i wrote about diversity in these green groups. <\/p>\n i couldn’t find that any white journalists had even thought to write that story. and that sort of tells you right there that they\u2019re not engaged in these issues. they’re engaged in the way that these groups are engaged. it’s like, you know, we care more about the buffalo than about some area in some black community or latino community in los angeles that’s a heat zone, or that doesn’t have any green space, a park where children can play. so, those types of things, i think that that’s why black journalists or black environmental journalists are important because we see those things right away \u2014 those things that aren\u2019t apparent to white journalists. <\/p>\n i don’t want to disparage all white environmentalists or conservationists or white journalists. it’s just, they have serious blind spots and they don’t see everything and they don’t write with urgency about some of the things that people of color care about. \u2026 environmental justice is about to get some serious coverage. and i’m glad that i’m going to be a part of that.<\/p>\n q: can white journalists be effective storytellers now that this trend has been increasingly discussed and covered?<\/strong><\/p>\n a: yeah, i think that they can be. i think that white journalists are fully capable of telling the story once they are engaged. and i think that they are capable of empathy and understanding, and i think that they can write good stories when they ask the right questions and follow the right signs. so, i think that nowadays, that is possible. so if we’re talking about right now, i believe that they can, but they have to first be engaged. they have to first care. and i think that they are coming around to that, but slowly.<\/p>\n q: you had mentioned the article<\/a> you wrote in 2013 about the lack of diversity in the conservation movement. you recently wrote a story<\/a> about the terrible history of the sierra club and many other organizations. how do you feel in this moment the conversation has progressed?<\/strong><\/p>\n a: bob bullard said it best: it’s like baby steps. i think that the conversation right now around those stories that i wrote \u2014 the conversation around the story i wrote in 2013 is no different now than it was then. so these groups said that they would do more outreach and environmental justice work in 2013. the problem is they didn’t know how. they didn’t even know how to treat the employees. they hired black employees to come in and do the work. and so i think that they need to look at that. <\/p>\n i think that the sierra club is drawing a straight line from its lack of diversity to its origins in white supremacy. and so, if that’s not enough to get you going, then nothing can. so, this is just a start. i know i’ve spoken to people who have no confidence that the sierra club will change. and the only way the sierra club can give them confidence is to change \u2014 a dramatic change. as michael brune, the executive director, said, \u201ctransformational change,\u201d and that’s not just the sierra club. it\u2019s the national wildlife federation, it’s the nature conservancy. it\u2019s all these gigantic groups that get billions of dollars a year to do work that they do and cut black and brown people out of that. and so they have to learn that, one, their workforce needs to reflect the country, and two, that they have to learn how to do the work and give these people space to do the work. if they can’t, then they need to give the money to the groups that can.<\/p>\n![\"darryl](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/img_6690.jpg\")