Talking Shop: 89 Percent Project Showcase

Transcript

Mark Hertsgaard: Hello and welcome to another talking shop with Covering Climate Now. I’m Mark Hertsgaard. I’m the executive director of Covering Climate Now, and also the environment correspondent for The Nation magazine. On today’s talking shop, we’ll be talking with journalists who helped launch The 89 Percent Project about what might be coming next, and how they did it.

For those who may not know, though Covering Climate Now is a global collaboration of more than 500 news outlets that reach a total audience of billions of people around the world, we’re organized by journalists for journalists to help each other do better coverage of the defining story of our time.

It costs nothing to join Covering Climate Now and there’s no editorial line except respect for the science. Go to our website, coveringclimatenow.org, where you can find a list of our partners. You can sign up for our Climate Beat newsletter, check out our resources, and apply to join Covering Climate Now, either as a freelancer or as a news outlet.

Now, The 89 Percent Project. We launched that on Earth Day in April this year, when dozens of leading newspapers, magazines, TV networks, and digital sites around the world began breaking what we think is a pretty big climate story. It turns out that, contrary to conventional wisdom, a slew of scientific studies show that an overwhelming majority of the world’s people, 80 to 89% of them, want their governments to take stronger climate action. But this overwhelming majority does not realize it’s the majority, perhaps because that fact has not previously been reflected in most news coverage or on social media.

Neither do their political leaders recognize that there is this majority out there. So this puts a whole new perspective on the climate story going forward, and going forward it shall. The 89 Percent Project continues through the rest of 2025, including a second week of joint coverage in the lead up to the crucial COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November.

The remarkable impact that the launch week of The 89 Percent Project had in April gives us confidence that there is much more to come. Let me give you a few data points. There were 73 original stories produced by news outlets in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa outlets that reach a combined audience of hundreds of millions of people. Some of those outlets include the Guardian, the Agence France News Agency, AFP, The Nation Magazine, where I’m the environment correspondent. As I mentioned, Time Magazine, NBC News, Telemundo, Rolling Stone, Drilled, ICT, formerly known as Indian Country Today, Crooked Media, The Times of India, The Asahi Shimbun, Corriera della Sera, Canada’s National Observer, Deutsche Welle, and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism.

Many more millions of people were reached when AFP stories were picked up by scores of separate news outlets that are their clients, news outlets with very large audiences, including, again, The Times of India and Yahoo News, and also when the BBC, which, of course, has an enormous global audience, discussed the 89% findings on the air.

In addition, on social media, social media posts were viewed by more than a million people on Instagram, Linkedin, Blue Sky, and other platforms. And finally, civil society leaders, I’m talking about scientists, politicians, activists, and ordinary citizens, further spread The 89 Percent Project findings via social media, and top officials from the European Union, the United Nations, the Gallup Polling Company, and others have reached out to us here at Covering Climate Now to explore opportunities going forward.

Now in today’s talking shop, we’ll discuss how our journalistic colleagues decided to join The 89 Percent Project, how they went about producing the stories they did, and crucially what the next steps might be. We’ll also post in the chat links to our 89 Percent landing page where you’ll find the scientific studies that gave rise to The 89 Percent Project. You’ll find a compilation of the stories that ran, and much more so before we get into that conversation I’ll introduce our panelists. We’ll hear from them during the first half hour, and then in the second half hour, your questions. We are looking forward to a wide-ranging, candid, and collegial discussion. Please know that only working journalists are invited to pose questions today, and when you do, please give your name and your outlet that that you work for. Or if you’re a freelancer, the outlets that run your stuff. We’ll record the entire hour, and we will post a transcript and a video shortly after we conclude, so that colleagues who couldn’t be here live can benefit as well.

Now to the panelists. First, Danielle Renwick, she’s a journalist with The Guardian US, where she has edited several series on climate change, including The 89 Percent Project, but also Big Oil Uncovered and America’s Dirty Divide. And Jenny Splitter. She is the editor-in-chief of Sentient, a nonprofit news outlet covering the impacts of factory farming. Her reporting has also appeared in New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and The Guardian. And Ben Tracy. He’s the senior climate correspondent on assignment for Climate Central, a nonprofit news and service organization. Previously Ben was the Senior National and Environment Correspondent at CBS News. Now please join me in giving all of our panelists a warm, virtual welcome.

Now, Danielle, I’m going to start with you, partly because the Guardian was the very first outlet to join The 89 Percent Project. The Guardian has been Covering Climate Now’s lead partner since we started in 2019. But I want to emphasize here that everyone listening today should know you do not have to be a CCNow partner to participate in The 89 Percent Project.

So Danielle, for colleagues on the call today, who might be thinking about urging their own newsrooms to be part of The 89 Percent Project going forward, could you talk a little bit about why The Guardian was so enthusiastic about the project? And crucially, how did your audience respond to it?

Danielle Renwick: Thanks for having us. I’m really happy to be here. So the enthusiasm came from the top. Our editor-in-chief in London, Kath Viner, was really excited about this. The week it came out, you know, she sent an email kind of talking, not only about how important the stories we published were, but also just how relevant this is to a lot of stories across the newsroom that you might not have initially thought, or you know, climate stories. So readers responded both in terms of clicking on the stories, in terms of reading them all the way through, and even in terms of, you know, being compelled to contribute because we have a reader revenue model. Aand we’ve generally found that with solution stories, people really respond to solution stories. Especially when it comes to climate.

So yeah, I think people are hungry for these helpful stories right now, and wanting to know that they’re not alone in their concern about the climate crisis is really important. And in terms of why this is important to The Guardian, I think there’s a couple of reasons. I think this is an important piece of accountability journalism, and it aligns with our commitment to covering democracy. So when politicians, even if they are democratically elected, kill climate action, kill investments in renewables when they say, “drill, baby, drill,” It’s important for us to remind the public that they’re not acting in the public interest, and they’re not even in line with public sentiment.

I think also, you know, we’re a global publication. So this framework, as I mentioned, is so universal. So you know, I might be covering a community in Queens that is banding together to create a carfree zone. In a neighborhood, that started for parks. We can talk about how this is their part of a bigger story. You know, they’re not outliers. They are people who are taking action in the way that they can. But this story could also apply, for instance, to a you know, an article about the rise of the far right in Germany, and kind of how that aligns with, like most of the public’s climate goals. So I think it’s just such a universal story, and yeah, the last point I wanted to make about why this is important to The Guardian is, I guess this project to me underscores that most people want climate action. It reminds me a little bit of efforts to include journalism, efforts to encourage journalists to know that climate change is a main problem caused by the burning of fossil fuels, like adding that line to stories, I think, is so important, and I think that this can kind of function the same way when we write about, you know, community efforts, when we write about opposition to climate action, I think it’s really important that we can just know, in these stories, this, you know, even if it’s just one line. But we can kind of know what the reality is. I think it’s really helpful.

Mark Hertsgaard: Thanks, Danielle. I love two things in particular about what you said. One is that this is bringing in revenue to The Guardian. Covering Climate Now has long suggested that leaning into the climate story is a way actually to attract audiences, not to repel them. And, second, you mentioned the democracy angle here. It’s fascinating to me that this climate majority and the public doesn’t realize it’s a majority. But guess who else doesn’t realize there’s a climate majority out there: the politicians. And so, and we’ll get into this later in today’s session, but I think one of the areas that is just crying out for additional 89 Percent reporting going forward is to talk to politicians and ask them if they understand that. Do you realize, you know, that most of your constituents want action on this? I wish we could mainline that into some of our Washington press corps colleagues who are covering the Inflation Reduction Act right now, and who are basically silent about the efforts to strip that of all of its clean energy measures.

Let me ask you one other question, Danielle, before we move on here, which is, you know, I thought that The Guardian’s coverage during the 89 Percent week, it really was very much in keeping with the paper’s long record of really exceptional high profile climate coverage. And I’m thinking, in particular, of the two anchor stories that Damien Carrington did, examining the scientific studies behind The 89 Percent Project, your own story about how the US is a bit of an outlier on these questions, and also the opinion piece that my Covering Climate Now colleague, Kyle Pope, and I did for The Guardian, urging our media colleagues to leave behind this outdated notion that climate change is a polarizing issue that people don’t care about. You coordinated all this coverage. So, bearing in mind our colleagues on this call, what advice would you give journalists at other outlets who might be thinking about getting involved, going forward, [about] how much work was involved, and how did you get it all done?

Danielle Renwick: So I wouldn’t say, I would say it was similar to any kind of journalism project, and of course there’s always moving parts in the newsroom, but we’re a pretty well oiled machine. So I I didn’t think it was, you know, it was not a huge undertaking. I think it was really helpful to think of the framing of this project in that sense of, really, we’re trying to get people to think about coverage differently and add that line, that is, you know, add that truth that you know the majority of the world’s population wants climate action. So once I kind of was able to wrap my head around that, it’s not that complicated a project, and it’s actually quite broad. That was really helpful.

And then, I think what I learned from this project, or kind of what I always think is just that partnerships are everything, you know. For The Guardian, which has a really big audience and a global reach, it’s really important for us to be able to tap the expertise of smaller, more specialized outlets, you know, like, for instance, Sentient, the publication that Jenny runs, and I can speak to that from being on the other side. Before joining The Guardian, I ran a small nonprofit climate publication and partnering with bigger outlets like The Guardian, like BBC, like USA Today, was really key for us to reach wider global audiences.

So I think on both sides, whether you’re a big publication or smaller one, focusing on a specific series and a shared goal is really one way to get the most out of your partnership. Just because you have more people to kind of, you’re exploring and advancing ideas, and you’re getting perspectives that you might not otherwise if you were only talking to people in your own newsroom. So we were really happy to participate in this, and excited to continue to participate.

Mark Hertsgaard: Great. Yeah. And I want to note that The Guardian very generously made all of its 89 Percent Project coverage available free of charge for other project participants to run with credit, of course, to The Guardian. So if you’re thinking about getting involved going forward, just know that you don’t have to lift the whole burden yourself. There will be a lot of other journalistic colleagues there with you.

All right. Let me switch over now to Jenny Splitter. She’s with Sentient Media, as I mentioned the editor-in-chief there, and you know The Guardian is really an exceptionally well-resourced news organization. You’re much smaller, and yet you nevertheless embrace The 89 Percent Project wholeheartedly for the benefit of others, with perhaps smaller resources. Can you talk about how you and your colleagues at Sentient managed to produce the stories that you did?

Jenny Splitter: Yeah, and thank you for having me. I’m really excited for this conversation. So I’ve been with Sentient for a little over two years now, and we are a small team. We’ve gotten a little bit bigger, but still a small team. And definitely, a big part of our strategy is to really be laser focused in the stories that we do publish and also to reach an audience as wide as possible, and part of that is looking for what readers are curious about. And that’s why kind of The 89 Percent Project really aligned with what I was already thinking about, which on kind of food system change for climate is just eating a little less meat, thinking about food waste. That’s, these are very powerful forms of individual household action. And so we’re often looking at coverage that just either uncovers kind of what the blockers are to that. And so part of why, what really aligned was just looking at, you know, even though a lot of media coverage often, you know, focuses on kind of what we call food fights, debates about, you know, carnivore diet, vegan diet, that kind of thing, it turns out the research is actually pretty well aligned, and a lot of people are very interested in ways to, just, you know, eat a little less meat.

So if we can just uncover how to do that, look at blockers that maybe, you know, might stand in the way for people, look for ways, like World Resources Institute had a really great piece of research that just came out of, sort of, the power of combining individual action with collective action with systemic action, or systemic change. So we’ve had coverage like that that kind of fits into the same vein, and I think that’s kind of how we, as a small one way, I guess that’d be as a small outlet, can reach as wide an audience as possible. We get a lot of our traffic from Google and Google Discover. And we found that a lot of people are looking into overconsumption. They’re really curious about that. So kind of figuring out stories that are able to reach the people who are looking for, you know, I don’t wanna over consume meat. I’d like to eat a little bit less, like if they’re looking for that information and research. We want our reporting to be right there.

I wanna also mention, piggyback on what Danielle said about this, adding one line, which also seems, you know, why The 89 Percent Project seems really aligned with all the things I was thinking about, is that’s also kind of what we are looking for in changing the media landscape around factory farm coverage. Often it’s like there’s just this one line that maybe, you know, on different stories would be helpful for readers to know, that we’ve seen is sometimes missing. So we try to get those things into our coverage and just tap into where there’s already agreement, where people are already curious. So I think that’s why, you know, those two stories that we were already kind of thinking about just made perfect sense for The 89 Percent Project. And I think we can, I can think of other stories that would also be aligned just because it’s, you know, kind of part of our strategy of really reaching as wide audiences as possible.

And actually, one more thing that I was thinking of while we were talking about sort of climate being thought of as polarizing. One of our partners is the Public News Service. It’s a group that takes written stories and turns them in audio clips for public radio stations. And they’ve actually, and they and we are able to reach like millions of listeners in rural areas that way, and they haven’t found any issue writing stories about climate, at least as far as we’ve been told and what we’ve seen with the numbers. So I think that’s also really important for other journalists and other outlets to know that actually, people are curious about climate change, about the food they eat, you know, and how it’s produced. I think there is a lot of curiosity and the word, I think it’s maybe a bit of a myth that the word “climate” is sort of like, you know, all rural readers will turn off the radio or something. We’ve not found that to be the case.

Mark Hertsgaard: That is so fascinating. Thank you for mentioning that. I grew up on a farm myself and I know that a lot of journalists, especially people who are working in cities do not really understand and have a kind of, I hate to say it, but a stereotypical one-dimensional view of them. So it’s fascinating that you’re getting that kind of reaction. You’ve kind of anticipated my second question, which was going to be, how has your audience responded to this? But could you just take one more crack at it, because one of the things you said, I think was that you get a lot of your traffic off of Google. Yeah. And you know there’s been a number of news organizations who have seen the amount of traffic they get, not just from Google, but from other platforms sharply diminish over the last months and year, so I gather that’s not been the case for you.

Jenny Splitter: Not so much with Google Search, actually. All those, though, there has been sort of this looming threat of AI summaries. We’ve not released, in fact, our traffic has increased. I mean, we are still a new outlet. So you know, as we kind of grow, that, you know may have been the case, anyway, but for now that hasn’t, you know, diminished our audience reach that way. There have been definitely changes happening in different social or yeah, social media channels and we’re kind of constantly, I was actually on a call right before this, trying to work out, you know, the right sort of things that we need to be checking to get our stories reaching audiences on Facebook and Meta. So there’s always challenges along those lines.

But, and it does require, like a lot of, you know, work and time that maybe you liked as journalists, we’d like to be spending editing and writing stories. So I mean, I think you know, it’s good to be, you know, clear eyed on that. Basically, that is a huge part of the challenge right now, just trying to make sure. Your kind of distribution plan is still, you know, working. And you’re still able to reach people. Yeah, we have different partnerships. So some of the republications for these are, for these two stories are still in the works. But PNS has been a huge partner for us and made it so that we can reach a lot of a huge new audience through radio and we also turn our stories into videos. With the reporter speaking to cameras of short videos, that kind of then link to the story. So it’s another way we reach, we get our stories out to audiences. We’re kind of always trying to make sure that one story can translate to every different channel, and reach as many people as possible.

Mark Hertsgaard: That’s Jenny Splitter. She’s the editor-in-chief at Sentient. She’s provided me with the perfect segue to our next panelist, Ben Tracy, long career at CBS stations and now collaborating with Climate Central. When Covering, Ben, you know, as you know, when Covering Climate started talking with newsrooms back in February about The 89 Percent Project, I’m pretty sure you’d already left CBS, but you had not yet started collaborating with Climate Central. But you’ve done a lot of really excellent climate stories during your career. You’re the only TV journalist on the panel today. And knowing that TV stories need strong visuals, what advice might you have for other broadcast journalists about how they can approach the 89% story. Is it a TV story, in short.

Ben Tracy: Yeah, and thank you for the context in the setup, because I do want to be transparent, that we’re just getting our project off the ground with Climate Central, so I can’t take any credit for contributing yet to The 89 Percent Project. But I will say that I’ve been very encouraged and inspired by it. I mean, Mark, you mentioned that, you know, politicians and the public might be surprised to learn that there is this kind of silent majority. But as a journalist who has, you know, worked this beat now for the better part of four-plus years, I was very surprised, and I just found it really inspiring to know that we’re kind of not alone, I think. Sometimes, especially in a large media organization, you can feel like covering climate is kind of a niche beat that you’re on an island over there, you know. Oftentimes colleagues will say things like, you know, are you still over there saving the planet? So I think, having this context, that there is this vast majority of the public that wants more climate action really should encourage us to do more.

And what I was thinking about, you know, when it comes to TV stories, I think there is this disconnect between, you know, the 89%, but then, when you give the public a list of issues and say, rank these in terms of what’s important to you, climate tends to fall way down the list, you know. I think the latest Pew study has it at about 17 on the list of things. So what we’ve always tried to do in our work is connect the dots. People say, I’m more worried about the economy. Well, climate is an economic story. When you talk about the cost of insurance, the cost of housing, the cost of food prices. People say, I’m worried about immigration. Well, climate is an immigration story. When you talk about climate refugees, people say, I’m worried about national security. Well, this is, climate is a national security story. When you talk about increased conflict over scarce resources.

So I think we just have to do as journalists, and I always think about this for myself, we have to do a little bit of connecting the dots for people to make sure that they know this isn’t just an issue that’s in a silo over here. It impacts and is impacted by all of these other issues that people say are really important to them. More specifically, to your question, you know, doing a story about the 89% on television is a heavy lift, because it’s more of a data point than it is a visual story. And the great advantage of telling stories in video form is you have visuals.

The challenge of that is making those visuals compelling. So I think it’s going out to finding the people and the places that kind of bring this to life that there is this silent majority of people, and I have found in my travels over the years even people who don’t necessarily connect this directly to climate, or you might hear a farmer or a factory worker or somebody say, “Well, I don’t know if it’s climate change, but something is happening.” You know, those people are part of that kind of silent majority that know something needs to change, and something needs to be addressed. And I think bringing those people’s stories to the fore is really important.

Mark Hertsgaard: You know, Ben, you’re reminding me that part of the reason that Covering Climate Now advanced this 89 Percent Project is precisely because it was such a tonic for us as journalists to realize, as climate journalists particularly, to realize we are operating in a very different context than we thought, and especially a different context than our than our bosses thought. Most of the people agree with us. There is not this polarization around climate that you would think there is, given, frankly, our own media coverage over the years. In my view, it’s really an unfortunate tribute to the success of the disinformation programs that Big Oil and others have been lying about climate change for 40 years now. And they’ve created this impression that there’s a polarized view of it, and it’s just not true. So it’s very helpful for all of us as journalists to have that sense of community.

Let’s dig in a little bit more on this whole question of priorities, though voter priorities in particular. And you know you mentioned that climate generally is less of a priority in terms of voting. In the US, at least, it’s rank 17. I should add, just parenthetically, in the European Union, that’s not the case. Research recently after the EU elections found that climate change was in the top 4 across most countries. So again, variations across country. But it’s a very fair question to ask. Well, if people feel that way, why aren’t they voting that way? That’s a great story to go out and report, it seems to me. How would you go about doing that?

Ben Tracy: You know, I think you could tell that a lot of different ways. One of the stories that we did at CBS was to go down into what people were calling the battery belt, this kind of area of the southeast US where a lot of these battery manufacturing plants and associated industries were sprouting up, largely due to the IRA, and we talked to workers in those facilities and people who were leaving jobs that they did not love for jobs in those plants.

And you know, these were people who you would not call, they were definitely not climate voters. They weren’t even necessarily, you know, supporters of climate action. But they loved these jobs, and they loved what it did to their community. I think you can have an entry into that sort of story by finding those kinds of examples and then talking about, you know, this silent majority and asking people real questions about, you might not call it climate change, but what are you experiencing? And what do you think needs to happen about that? And what if we don’t do anything? You know. What do you see happening in your community in your part of the country? So I think there are ways to engage people on that and kind of show that there is that silent majority. Now we will say, you know, we go out of our way to really try to frame our stories around solutions, because I’m sure we’re all aware that we often hear from people like climate stories bum me out. I’ve even heard that, you know, in the past from editors and producers. As if you know the war in Gaza and Ukraine are uplifting things to watch on television.

But so we really do try to frame it around solutions, I will acknowledge. And I think this would be an interesting part of this discussion. It’s tougher in the current context, you know, it’s easier when there are a bunch of investments being made and you can go show people. Here is what is happening here is this factory that has now been built. Here’s what they’re going to do, and this is how it relates to reducing emissions. It’s harder when there feels like there’s a bit of a dismantling to keep that kind of positive frame on it. And as journalists, obviously, our job is not to create a reality that doesn’t exist, but it does make, I think, the job of engaging people in these stories more difficult.

Mark Hertsgaard: That’s Ben Tracy with Climate Central, and I’m glad that my colleague, David Dickson, has put up in the chat the story that Ben just referenced back when he was still at CBS. Really one of the best TV stories on climate change I’ve seen in some time. I think it was called Battery Belt, and it goes down into Georgia, and just check out the opening seconds of that piece. He has a very excellent producer working with him, and they found a very clever way to make the, to marry the pictures to the message. I’m going to ask Ben one more question, but I also want to say first to everybody, please send in your questions for the rest of this hour’s discussion in the Q&A function there, and as you do, a number of people have already posted there. Please give us your name and your news outlet both, okay? Then one last thing.

It’s, you’re doing something quite innovative, I think, you and Chris at Climate Central, in terms of how you plan to be telling the climate change story going forward, which is very collaborative, with newsrooms all around the country, and maybe all around the world. So could you talk a little bit about that, and how that might fit into the 89% reporting?

Ben Tracy: Sure. And Mark referenced Chris. Chris Spinder is my producer, who is my producer at CBS News for many years, and is now doing this experimental project with me, we’re really excited. This is kind of cool, basically with the backing of philanthropy, we are collaborating with Climate Central to create fully produced, ready-to-air pieces about climate that are going to be given to media outlets around the country and the world at no cost. So, and there really is no catch, which is kind of awesome. We’ve had some preliminary discussions with folks, and the first question is, what’s the catch? Why are you doing this?

And the goal really is, you know, I think many of us on this are aware that the budgets of a lot of media organizations, large and small, are under a lot of pressure these days, and oftentimes beats like climate take a disproportionate hit when there are contractions, and so the theory, the working theory here is we need to find a way to make sure that this stuff still exists and gets out there. So we’re going to go out and try to find mainly solution oriented stories. That was very kind. David put the first one that we did as kind of a pilot two weeks ago. In there we did a story tied to the start of hurricane season about how you can better design homes to withstand hurricanes and some of the testing that goes into making our houses more storm resilient.

So we’re going to try to piggyback off of a lot of the great work that Climate Central is currently doing and the data that they put out to stations across the country, and create these pieces that then can be run by local TV stations, by national media outlets, and linked in print publications. So thank you for giving me the platform to tell people that we’re doing this, Mark. If anyone out there thinks your news organization would want to run any of this, please don’t hesitate to get in touch, and basically our stories will be pushed out through Climate Central through their Climate Matters publication that many of you are probably familiar with already.

And I love, as it relates to The 89 Percent Project, I love the idea that Danielle brought up just about, you know, kind of inserting that line into a piece. I think for so long, I was always focused on making sure we said the words “human-caused climate change,” and you know other kinds of phrases, but I think it is important as we’re talking about solutions to just reference briefly, you know, this is the kind of climate action that polls show the vast majority of the public supports. It could be as simple as that.

Mark Hertsgaard: That’s Ben Tracy with Climate Central. And Covering Climate Now will also be helping to facilitate the distribution of the stories that Ben and Chris put together for Climate Central. As some of you may know, Covering Climate Now has trained newsrooms at the owned and operated stations, TV stations of CBS and CBS, and Telemundo, and Fox and Sinclair, and others here in the United States, and we are looking forward to going back to those same colleagues and saying, here’s some first-rate climate coverage that you can run for free, you know. No catch. So okay, thank you all. And we’re going to continue the conversation here.

And I want to say also, if there’s all three of the panelists, if there’s something that you want to pick up on that somebody else has already said today, why don’t you go ahead and do that now and then we’ll get, we’ll give other folks a chance a little bit longer time to put in their questions. Jenny or Danielle, is there anything that you want to follow up with, or you forgot to say earlier?

Danielle Renwick: Not off the top of my head. It’s so interesting hearing Ben, just somebody working in a different medium and kind of thinking about how they approach these stories. So I just really appreciate kind of hearing a little bit more about that process. I don’t have a specific follow up. I can think on it.

Mark Hertsgaard: I didn’t mean to put you on the spot, Jenny, you’re not put on the spot, but if you’re interested, do speak up.

Jenny Splitter: Well, I did take a note when you were mentioning this sort of messaging that comes out from fossil fuel companies, that is sort of this false framing of kind of the way the public sees climate change, and it reminded me of some reporting we’ve done on the beef industry in particular, of kind of always making dietary change sound like this like fringe vegan thing when in reality, you know, World Resources Institute and the United Nations, like these sort of large institutions and climate research groups are not recommending that everyone go vegan, but are just, you know, urging people to cut back on meat just a little bit in the global north, I should say, and especially the US, where we consume like 4 to 5 times as much as the global average. So I think the framing is really important in food as well. And it’s just that’s a way that I think can give readers some hope of, “Oh, okay. I didn’t realize, you know, just by eating a little less meat, I would actually be, you know, participating in climate action.” So just kind of letting people know the solutions that are in front of them is really important.

Mark Hertsgaard: Great thanks very much. All right. Let me go to the questions, and before I do I’ll just remind everybody you’re welcome to put your questions in the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. Please give us not only your name, but your outlet, and I’m going to start with a question from Angela, I hope I pronounce this correctly, McNerney. She is with Cape Cod News. That’s in Massachusetts, I’m pretty sure. She says, “Thanks for a great program. Today, I’m concerned with how we, as journalists, continue to demonize humans without also telling them that they are the solution to the climate problem. Could your panelists speak to creative ways for journalists to invite public participation and groundswell on this issue without alienating people by talking about climate change as a, quote, man-made problem?” Anybody wanna volunteer to answer that one? Go ahead, Danielle.

Danielle Renwick: I mean, I think you know, we, I love community stories about solutions. So you know, one story I’m interested in. It’s like I mentioned, this story in Queens about a community that banded together to create this park. I think there’s so many lovely stories out there. But I do think it’s important to… this doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and I do think it in order to put forth solutions. It is important to be clear about what the problem is. And I don’t think the problem is like all of humanity, it is like some very specific actors who are not acting in the public interest. And so I think you can be clear on what the problem is. I think that is, again, how you produce effective solutions journalism. But yes, of course, these can be, there’s so many beautiful stories that show what people can do when they organize and come together.

Mark Hertsgaard: Such an important point. It’s not, it is manmade or human made, but it’s a very small proportion of humans who are doing the damage. And, as we all know, it’s a very large proportion of humans who are suffering first and worst, and they are the poor. They are the people living in highly vulnerable communities, who, of course, in general have emitted almost none of the greenhouse gases causing the problem. Jenny or Ben, did you want to weigh in on this?

Ben Tracy: Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, I, in our coverage over the years, we’ve really tried to not make this seem like, this is all individual people’s responsibility to fix this, or that they caused it. To really show that this is, you know… largely a lot of the solutions now are at a governmental, systems, corporation level. So we all have personal responsibility and personal choices that we can make in our lives.

But you know, for instance, like when we’ve done EV stories, you know, we never frame those, as you know, you’re a bad person if you don’t go buy an EV, and you keep driving your gas guzzling car, you know. Not everyone can afford one. They’re still very expensive. So I think it’s always kind of reframing it as to what kind of systems need to change, to allow people to make decisions that they might be inclined to make.

Jenny Splitter: Yeah, just to add to that also, in our solutions coverage, we’ve looked at very similarly in the food system, like, farmers who are maybe diversifying their crops and growing, actually becoming, you know, economically sustainable essentially, by finding new markets for lentils even, or mung beans, or something like that, or chickpeas.

It really… some of those farmer stories are incredibly fascinating. At least, I mean, I’m a dork who covers ag. So maybe I’m biased. But there’s a lot of really interesting, I think, change happening from farmers who are just, who are trying to, you know, become economically sustainable. But it just also so happens they’re also growing a lot of plants that people want to eat. Another solutions story that’s kind of cool is this idea of plant-based defaults in hospitals and schools that’s also happening in New York City. It’s happening in a lot of cities. A California school district also had a program for that. And you know, I’m sure there’s something similar in many different locations. So that’s, I think, a way that there’s a solution without demonizing people. It’s just, you know, having a slightly different nudge option, you know, available in the cafeteria, essentially.

Mark Hertsgaard: Terrific. Okay. Couple more questions here. You know I’m going to ask my colleague, David Dickson, to step into my seat here for a second. I’m sorry to say I’m suddenly feeling a little ill, so, David, could I ask you to take my spot here?

David Dickson: Of course, happy to do so. Mark, as you all have probably seen in the chat. My name is David Dickson. I’m the TV engagement coordinator and meteorologist at Covering Climate Now. Really enjoyed the past conversation over the past 45 minutes or so. Let’s kind of go into another question we have. This is from, my apologies for the pronunciation, Thuku coming from Deutsche Welle Eco Africa in East Africa. How have you measured the impact of these stories in different communities? We can pass it along between Jenny and Danielle. How have you both, in these larger and smaller outlets, kind of measured the impact of these stories that you have done with the 89%?

Jenny Splitter: Well, we have an impact tracker that we’ve been developing over the past year. And so we basically have, you know, kind of the quantitative part and the qualitative part. So we, you know, have our numbers, and we can drill down like where those numbers are coming from in different regions. But we also have, we’re still kind of fine tuning this. But we have sort of a impact tracker form where we capture, like, say, you see, someone on social media who’s, you know, a reader in a particular community? Or maybe it’s, you know, a research. It could be anyone, essentially. But they’re mentioning the story. And then we grab that and follow up, you know, quickly fill out a form, and it gets added to the tracker. So we’ve been kind of working on this for a year. It’s still, it’s about, I’d say, like 85% of the way there.

But, and also, actually, we’re happy to share. You know, we’re part of collaborative. There’s a collaborative journalism kind of movement that we’re part of. So if anyone wants to reach out, and we’re happy to share our tracker and how we do that for any smaller outlets out there, because it has taken quite a bit of time to fine tune it, but I think it’s really great once you once it all comes together. And you see, oh, here’s who read that story, and you know where they are and what they thought. So, yeah.

Danielle Renwick: That’s, I love that, I think for us. You know we track readership. We track, like I said, you know, who feels compelled to donate afterward. And I know that on social, our stories have gotten a lot of pickup and so there’s certainly a lot of engagement. I think we take a long view. I mean, this is still, you know, a pretty new project. But our comms team takes the long view of who’s, yeah, who’s picking these kinds of stories up, weeks, months, even years, down the line. So you know, we’ll definitely and and our comms team is is great at really scouring what’s out there and seeing kind of how these stories travel.

David Dickson: Thanks for the input. I want to highlight one thing that Mark has mentioned a little bit earlier. The 89 Percent Project is not done. We envision it as a long-term, year-long project that we are going to only continue to amplify these stories and tell more stories of who exactly is this 89%. And what can be done as newsrooms, as journalists, to highlight this point.

So I wanted to ask all of you, what type of stories do you want to kind of see explored over the next six months in the future, highlighting this climate majority? We’ll start with you, Ben. What are you hoping to kind of highlight, especially in your ongoing relationship now with Climate Central?

Ben Tracy: I think what this is kind of inspired me to look more closely into this disconnect between people saying that they want more climate action, but then how they actually vote, or how they see issues when they’re stacked, and how we can do a better job. As I said earlier of kind of connecting those dots and making people realize how much climate intersects with all these other issues that, you know, if they’re ranking them, they would say, are more important.

I’m just very curious as to, you know, if 89% say that they want stronger climate action from their governments, you know, in the US. It was a fairly stark choice this time in terms of, you know, what you were voting for. You kind of knew. So I do wonder how that falls so far down the list that people can hold that feeling, but then kind of vote in a very different way. So that’s something that I would find. I don’t know how you get into that effectively and do it so it doesn’t feel overly partisan or alienating to people. But I do find that interesting.

Danielle Renwick: One thing I think about a lot. Oh, sorry. That’s okay to jump in. But one thing I think about a lot, and one thing that to me is most alarming on a visceral level is when I read about rollbacks on clean air regulations or rollbacks on things that might affect my drinking water. And I’ve been thinking about focusing more on some of these really immediate impacts that I don’t think everybody necessarily connects with climate change. But just kind of making that connection between, kind of, yes, if you can’t like, if you can’t breathe the air outside, that is connected to the same… it’s the same culprits that are making the planet warmer.

And so I’ve been thinking a lot about just how to tell more stories that lead a little bit with public health and things that I think really do keep people up at night and feel more immediate than perhaps, you know, a slightly warmer, I mean, not slightly, but you know, I’m seeing this fluctuation and temperatures. That might not be as alarming as like, no, this is gonna shorten your life. So that’s something I’ve been thinking about lately.

Jenny Splitter: Just to piggyback off both of you. Actually like, yeah, we, so one of our newest accountability journalists is from Iowa. So basically reports out of Iowa a lot. And it’s, I’ve been, I mean, just having reported on ag for a while. But I was never, you know, never in, didn’t grow up in Iowa. So I was sort of like, I had this suspicion like, it seems like something’s happening there. People are really upset about their water quality. You know, people who are conservative, who maybe are farmers, are really pushing back about a lot of things, but including industrial animal ag, and it, you know, I asked this reporter, and she’s like, yes, it’s happening.

So part of… and we found that that coverage, you know, has been really compelling, leading with the quality of water. Because, yes, people just want clean, either drinking water also, just like the water they grew up for recreation and fishing, and all this stuff is now, you know, polluted and again, it’s just, I think, kind of as Ben said, like getting these like, it happens to be a clean water story, but it’s also a climate story. Or you know, it’s an economic story. If, say, you know, folks are losing jobs, related to kind of meat packing, or that kind of thing. So we try to connect those dots with maybe just getting that one line in there. But that’s, you know, I think a way to kind of reach audiences that maybe don’t necessarily immediately go to the climate section or environment section. But they are interested in these issues. Because it impacts their backyards, and literally.

David Dickson: That’s exactly right. One of the core tenets that we always speak about at Covering Climate Now is nothing is just a climate story. You know, climate touches so many things, it has its fingerprint on so much of our lives, so kind of sneaking in, I don’t even want to say sneaking it in, but since it touches so many different beats, it’s not going to be explicitly there for people that might only seek out climate stories, it’s there for people that are seeking out agriculture stories, technology stories. I want to piggyback on this because we do have a question from Amy Opran from Detroit, talking about social media, specifically social media influencers, tech have been so deeply influential in the news and how information is disseminated. Based on someone who worked in TV, I know this is exactly the case, especially in local news. So the question is, how can we ensure that we start to reach new demographics, namely, those who aren’t very plugged into the news, but do engage with social media every day? And these are likely demographics that are part of that 89%. Anyone want to try to tackle that first?

Jenny Splitter: I’ll just say, it’s just been really on my mind to actually start working with influencers. It’s been coming up at a few different conferences. So I’ve been trying to figure this out, mostly just figuring out, like, you know, who we’re sort of aligned with and who would make sense. But I think it’s like I’m open. I’m not resistant to it, I guess, like some journalists are. I feel like the, you know, a lot of influencers are reaching just a lot of you know, who could be our readers who could be our audience and need this information. So I’m very interested in sort of connecting the dots here and making it work. Sorry, but I didn’t mean to jump in.

Ben Tracy: No, I was going to say the same thing. You know, we’re not very far down the road on that topic, but I do think it’s important. You know, our goal is to get as many eyeballs on the content as possible. So if there are people out there who are willing to help spread it. That’s great, you know, and I think some of it, too, is just being where people are at all of our stuff is going to end up on Youtube, because, you know, there’s a lot of folks there. Now, how you get people to watch some of that stuff is its own black box at times.

So we have to figure that out. But yeah, it’s definitely a different, it’s a different paradigm. And it’s not as simple as just getting it on a newscast, even though that is a nice place to reach people who are already somewhat engaged.

David Dickson: Think we have time for just about one or two more questions. We have one question coming from our colleagues over at the Xylom. This is Arpan, and it’s very timely here in the US. We’re already having conversations about the Inflation Reduction Act and solar tax credits going away very, very soon. And with this boom of what we have heard a lot from the current administration of “drill, baby, drill” not only in the US.

But we’re also seeing the booming of minerals downstream in Asia as well, they’re mentioning this there. So while the 89% of the public wants governments to do more to address climate change, the country’s policies from the Global North and including the Global South are the opposite of what the public wants. So the question is, how effectively should this be reported as a story? And how do we as journalists bring this in to become part of the larger global people’s movement? Danielle, you might, maybe you want to tackle this one.

Danielle Renwick: Yeah, yeah, that’s such a good question. And I’d never, I’ve read about the minerals boom in in Southeast Asia, and like, have never made that connection. So it’s so interesting. I am, I do think, solutions stories that we’ve in… I would say, solutions stories that talk about local economies that talk about, I don’t know. It’s tricky, though, because, yeah. But I think I think solutions stories, I think, you know, obviously, stories about public health impacts of mining. I mean, all this being said, this is one of the big contradictions of, you know, electrifying everything is that a lot of electrification relies on minerals that are not always sustainably mined. So I think it’s a really tough, it’s a really tough story. And yeah, such a good question. I don’t fully know the answer because, but it’s such an interesting comparison. It’s something I’m going to be thinking about for a little while.

David Dickson: And that’s the point of this conversation, this webinar today, we’re not exactly going to have the answers for everything. We’re exploring this, as all of us are, and hopefully as journalists, as this community, we can start to work out some of those harder questions and solutions. Just wanted to let everyone know just in case you might be wondering, Mark checked in and he is okay. So that’s great news. But we’re going to wrap things up in just a few moments.

But before we do, wanted to ask each of our panelists if there is just one more thing, just a quick elevator pitch for folks that have not yet contributed to the 89%, or want to continue contributions to the 89%. What have you found to be the most insightful thing that you have seen with this coverage so far? And what potentially do you hope to see in the near future? We’ll start it off with Jenny and your coverage over first.

Jenny Splitter: Yeah, I might be repeating myself here. But I guess I feel like, you know, a lot of what we aim to do is just kind of connect the dots for people on solutions that are right in front of them or, and maybe just like, add one more layer to it. Which is this kind of, you know, connecting individual actions that are very effective, that could be even amplified with systemic action. So you know, I think, part of what’s so appealing about The 89 Percent Project is, it’s like, what are the solutions and stories that people are already curious about and already want?

So it’s just kind of like this no brainer, in a sense of, people want to take the step forward and are interested in climate action, you know. This might mean different things to different readers. I mean, it clearly does. But I think just what’s so appealing about it is, we know there’s this on ramp. And so I think, like just getting the stories out there that sparked that curiosity, you know, for us, it’s kind of ways to eat just a little less meat. Who’s addressing that effectively? What’s standing in the way? Trying to kind of lock into what people are already curious about. So I guess that’s kind of what we’re thinking about when we’re kind of planning our stories.

David Dickson: Ben?

Ben Tracy: I’m gonna say, you know, I’m probably in the same boat as a lot of people on the Zoom that, you know, we’re just getting ramped up, and we’re just gonna hopefully start contributing to the larger effort here. I’m gonna take this as just kind of a confidence boost that, you know, we can be a little more confident in our reporting and know that there is this vast majority of the public that actually is interested in climate action, and maybe we don’t have to tiptoe around things as much as we think we should, or be a little gun shy about alienating folks. Especially if we’re coming at it from a standpoint of solutions. So I would just say, I’m grateful to know that this, you know, this data point, and I think it will help make our reporting more confident.

David Dickson: And Danielle, last thoughts.

Danielle Renwick: No, I just am excited for this to become a kind of common best practice to, when writing about, you know efforts to stymie climate action that hopefully, more and more, we’re going to just see a simple, even if it’s like an aside in a sentence that, like, “Even though most people support climate action…” I hope that we see that more and more, just like we are seeing more and more references to manmade climate change, manmade climate change, you know, caused by the burning of fossil fuels. So I hope that we see more and more of that and we’ll know that you know, a big part of that was because of this project.

David Dickson: This has been a truly insightful hour. I’d like to ask everyone to join me in thanking our panelists for joining us here today and their contributions, both past and future, to the 89%. Remember, The 89 Percent Project continues through this year. If you are interested in continuing this collaboration and perhaps even joining, head to 89percent.org. At the end of this webinar, you’re going to be asked a very short survey. Just go ahead and fill that out, if you don’t mind. Your valuable feedback really does help us here at Covering Climate Now and our current and future programming. With that I think we will just about wrap it up.

Thank you so much again, all of you, for joining us here today, and I look forward to seeing what new content we all have to discover. If you have any questions about how to participate in The 89 Percent Project, you can do so by heading over to that website and sending us an email, and with that have a great rest of your day and hope you continue great climate coverage.