The Reporter’s Environmental Handbook

When an environmental news story breaks, the first place to turn for background on the issue is The Reporter’s Environmental Handbook, now available in an updated and expanded third edition. Here, journalists can find the first facts they need to cover complex and controversial environmental health stories accurately. The book features twenty-nine briefs on topics identified by journalists as the most important environmental issues in their communities-from indoor and outdoor air quality to sprawl to bioterrorism. Each brief provides succinct background information, pitfalls to avoid in reporting, important points for researching each issue, and sources for additional information, including valuable Internet sites. Arranged to facilitate easy use, the Handbook explains where to find unbiased experts, ways to track down a company’s record, and how to make sense of the language of risks and hazards. Additionally, this new edition features chapters placing environmental stories within a larger social context, including a chapter on the challenges journalists face when covering today’s complex and frequently contentious environmental issues, ranging from community misunderstanding to the lack of editorial support for environmental stories. Other chapters discuss who sets the environmental agenda and the future of environmental policy and regulation. Each article has been reviewed by representatives from both environmental and industry groups to insure balanced coverage. The book is a critical resource for reporters, editors, students, librarians-and anyone who wishes to better understand the who, what, where, why, and how of the media reports on the environment.