We’re excited to update reporters and newsrooms about our upcoming events, including plans for our next week of joint coverage, September 21 to 28. Our theme that week will be climate change and the US elections, but coverage should connect to today’s other big stories as well, especially Covid-19, its economic fallout, and racial justice protests. So please share this message with everyone in your newsroom who might contribute to such coverage, particularly your colleagues on the politics desk.
As we’ve written recently in The Climate Beat, the climate crisis must be a priority for newsrooms this campaign season. That doesn’t mean getting partisan — it means taking climate science seriously and informing audiences that their voices and votes matter to having a livable future on this planet.
Here’s what we’ve got planned — we hope you join us!
Climate Politics 2020 “Talking Shop” webinar
On July 30th, CCNow kicked off our Climate Politics 2020 initiative with a Talking Shop webinar to discuss best practices on how to make the climate story central to 2020 campaign coverage. Panelists include Justin Worland of TIME, Bill Weir of CNN, Jane Spencer of The Guardian US, Al Ortiz of CBS News, and Savannah Sellers of NBC News. Watch the webinar or read key takeaways from the event.
First-Time Voter Youth Takeover Day, September 21
To kick off the Sept. 21 to 28 joint coverage week, The Guardian, VICE Media Group, NBC News, NowThis, and other CCNow partners are elevating the voices of the young people whose lives will be most shaped by the climate crisis – and by how the next US president and Congress handle that crisis. All CCNow partners are invited to join this initiative, as Noticias Telemundo, Teen Vogue, Columbia Journalism Review, The Nation, Grist, WNET’s “Peril & Promise,” and WURD’s “ecoWURD” already have. Participating outlets will invite first-time voters and other young people to collaborate with newsroom editors on projects including reporting stories, making videos, producing radio, podcast or TV segments, contributing social media posts, writing opinion pieces or simply being interviewed. Each newsroom will choose the form of collaboration that best suits it. More info here.
Climate Politics 2020 Joint Coverage Week, September 21 to 28
Together, we can make sure the climate issue doesn’t go missing from this year’s campaign coverage. What’s more, we can make it front and center.
We hope CCNow partners will run at least one climate-politics story every day this week, and give those stories prominent play. We also hope that everyone will amplify their own and other CCNow partners’ coverage on social media. We’ll be here to help, with custom graphics and more. As always, we hope you’ll use the hashtag #CCNow, as well as #ClimatePolitics2020.
We encourage all newsrooms to run as much original content as they can, but we will also facilitate content sharing. And we’re making it easier!
To save time for all you busy editors out there, we’re refining our content sharing protocols: We plan to curate a “baker’s dozen” of Climate Politics 2020 stories that are especially worth your consideration for republication or rebroadcast. These stories will be provided by CCNow partners; we urge all partners to run as many as possible. Of course, we will also maintain our current Sharing Library of all of the stories CCNow partners make available for other partners to run.
We’re working directly with some partners already, but if you’d like to offer a story your outlet has planned for the “baker’s dozen,” please send a one paragraph description of it by Sept. 1 to editors@coveringclimatenow.org. Final copy of the stories will be available around September 16 or 17, so editors can give them a read and consider republishing some before the joint week begins on the 21.
The Guardian launches ‘100 Days’ project
On Monday, The Guardian US launched a new project counting down to November 4, the day the US is scheduled to leave the Paris Agreement — one day after the election. “100 Days to save the earth” a large bar on the homepage now reads. So far, the ‘Climate countdown’ coverage includes an explainer on what it means for the US to leave the Paris agreement; a story on how the global climate fight could be lost if Donald Trump is reelected, by The Guardian’s Oliver Milman; and an op-ed by former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon calling Trump’s decision to leave the agreement “politically shortsighted, scientifically wrong and morally irresponsible.”
Each of these stories is available for republication by CCNow partners, and as the countdown continues, more pieces will come available, which we’ll distribute via The Climate Beat. Visit our Sharing Library here. And keep an eye on The Guardian’s coverage here.
We’ve got a few more ideas in development, but for now please plan on the above. And drop us a line if we can help you brainstorm. The stakes this November could not be higher. Together, let’s make sure the climate story can’t be missed this election season.