In 2024, Covering Climate Now partnered with the Solutions Journalism Network to produce and publish the Climate Blueprint for Media Transformation, a collaborative effort shaped by the expertise and experience of a diverse group of practitioners. The Blueprint grew out of a jointly organized conference, Climate Changes Everything, that gathered more than 200 working journalists for two days of panels and conversation during Climate Week 2023. At the conference, participants settled on 14 key issue areas for climate journalism to work on and improve.
Since then, CCNow and SJN, which consider the Blueprint a “living document,” have hosted a series of webinars based on chapters of the Blueprint and co-published a series of Instagram carousels and blurbs about the Blueprint in our respective newsletters. More than a year later, the Blueprint site continues to see a bump in traffic.
National Catholic Reporter (NCR) EarthBeat Editor Stephanie Clary, who attended a breakout session that resulted in the chapter “Use Visuals To Tell a More Complex Story,” celebrated the Blueprint on LinkedIn. “As an editor, I did a lot of listening for how I can better work with visual journalists,” she wrote, “and I’m happy to say we’ve had some fun and successful projects at EarthBeat based on what I learned!” Inspired by the climate visuals session she attended, Clary hired an artist for an Instagram campaign and she often refers reporters who are new to climate coverage to CCNow’s resources.
As EarthBeat’s editor, she tracked what the rest of the “non-climate focused” reporters in the NCR newsroom are working on, forwarded them CCNow resources (she mentioned “steal this line” as useful because she feels confident that she has the most updated studies and research to pass on), and encouraged fellow reporters to include the climate angle in their reporting. Stephanie’s passion for sharing resources, story ideas, and climate angles with reporters who don’t focus on climate is a great example of what CCNow hopes to achieve in every newsroom.