{"id":11445,"date":"2020-08-28t19:31:54","date_gmt":"2020-08-28t19:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dpetrov.2create.studio\/planet\/wordpress\/expert-qa-the-washington-posts-darryl-fears-on-covering-the-environment-and-his-experience-as-a-journalist-of-color\/"},"modified":"2023-03-07t19:36:10","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07t19:36:10","slug":"darryl-fears-environment-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.getitdoneaz.com\/story\/darryl-fears-environment-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"expert q&a: the washington post\u2019s darryl fears on covering the environment and his experience as a journalist of color"},"content":{"rendered":"
darryl fears has been a reporter at the washington post for 20 years and has been covering the environment for the last decade. <\/p>\n
born and raised in tampa bay, florida, fears attended a segregated school until sixth grade and studied art at st. petersburg college. he fell in love with journalism once he joined the school\u2019s newspaper but found that there weren\u2019t many opportunities for a young african american man to become a reporter in florida. in 1981, fears began studying at howard university where he majored in journalism and minored in both english and history. <\/p>\n
fears has covered wildlife, climate change, natural disasters, environmental racism, and so much more. he also has written about race, immigration, and the criminal justice system for the washington post, bringing extensive experience from his work at the los angeles times, the detroit free press and as the city hall bureau chief for the atlanta-journal constitution. recently, he and the team of climate journalists at the washington post won the 2020 pulitzer prize for explanatory reporting for the \u201c2\u00b0c: beyond the limit<\/a>\u201d series, which breaks down how quickly the planet is warming and the resulting consequences. fears\u2019 story focuses specifically on australia and how rising temperatures are threatening not only essential natural resources but an entire culture struggling to survive after centuries of persecution. <\/p>\n 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