Looking at how low-carbon living can play a role in renewing growth in local media, this example of a focussed campaign from the Des Moines Register caught my eye. It has a couple of flash pages that analyse temperatures (summer and winter), precipitation and global trends:
It starts out with its strap “a look back and what could be ahead”, noting that Iowa has warmed by about 2 degrees over the last 135 years (with two cold snaps). As the Society for Environmental Journalists says, its focus is on Iowa “while giving enough national and global context to provide perspective.”
Look at the article that follows the graphs, and you’ll see 201 comments (at time of writing), many of those aggressively sceptical, as is usual on comment boards, some supportive, some overwhelmed by the problem of climate change.
It’s an excellent piece of regional media coverage on the issue of climate change, at a time when (thanks to Adrian Monck for the link) the US metropolitan dailies are suffering. This from Toronto’s Globe and Mail:
…metropolitan dailies, especially in the ultra-competitive U.S. market, are suffering. The losses have put some media organizations on the brink. The Tribune group, whose holdings include the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, is weighed down by $13-billion in debt, and advertising revenues declined 15 per cent in the first three months of this year. Some analysts question whether the company can survive beyond mid-2009.
(The same Baltimore Sun both credited and ‘busted’ for breaking and following a story on the Mayor’s questionable dealings… worthy journalism, but in danger of going under).
As I’ve been writing about this week, local media franchises with low-carbon living as one of they central pitches may be a way for the media of the metropolis, either in the US or UK, to renew and grow. And that may go hyper-local. This story in the US shows how suburbia is surviving, despite the high oil prices. Maybe the article’s premise (that people need to be near the city centre) no longer holds as we choose to go local, work from home, and live a lower-carbon life (either by choice or through high carbon/fuel costs). Worth thinking about.
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