Climate collaboration: The Climate News Task Force brings 12 newsrooms together on climate journalism

Meaghan Parker is the executive director of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. She also co-directs the efforts of the Climate News Task Force.

What we are working toward is a set of recommendations for establishing a pooled fund where foundations and other donors can contribute their money and then fund climate journalism outlets.”

Meaghan Parker

A new task force aims to bridge 12 newsrooms that focus on climate journalism.

The Climate News Task Force (CNTF) was created earlier this year to elevate collaboration for sharing content, evaluating impact and raising and sharing revenue, among other opportunities.

The CNTF was formed in January through a collaboration of the Council for Advancement of Science Writing (CASW), the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism and Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom focusing on climate news, to facilitate copublishing of climate news across newsrooms. It was announced publicly in March. The group is beginning discussions about priorities and logistics. Not all the entities involved in the task force exclusively cover climate content. Some branch out into other areas of journalism, but all of them produce and share climate content.

Kat Duncan, director of innovation at the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the Missouri School of Journalism, Floodlight (a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on climate news) Founder and Executive Director Emily Holden and Meaghan Parker, executive director at the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (CASW), are directing efforts behind the scenes as a partnership. 

Emily Holden, founder and executive director of nonprofit Floodlight, is co-directing the Climate News Task Force.

“I've realized that actually within climate media, it's very common to partner and collaborate, to redistribute each other’s stories, to work on reporting together,” Holden said. “But we didn't really have one core place for newsrooms to talk about how they do that. We aim to improve that. It's pretty clear we're all getting value from working together, but we didn't have this space to have higher-level coordination about doing this even better than we already do. And so that's one of the goals of the task force. But the second one that's intertwined is aiming to increase the overall level of philanthropic support for climate media.”

Parker explained that climate news organizations depend largely on donors. Some smaller news operations might not have access to larger donors, making fundraising difficult. The task force could serve as a way to connect larger philanthropists into a pool that helps all the members of the task force. How that will work exactly has not yet been decided, but the concept and future execution could have implications for the wider journalism industry, Parker said.

“What we are working toward is a set of recommendations for establishing a pooled fund where foundations and other donors can contribute their money and then fund climate journalism outlets,” Parker said. “So instead of the long, challenging and often difficult process of one funder, funding one news outlet, we want to create a topical pooled fund, like Press Forward, for climate journalism.”

There may also be some interest in creating an ad network for the separate entities.

Another central initial concept for the CNTF to consider is a way to track impact. While many of the 12 climate-based news operations already share their work, it's difficult to quantify the reach of shared content. This is a challenge facing any nonprofit newsroom that shares content.

There are many other opportunities and solutions, such as generating funds for legal representation, to be found within the parameters of the task force. The task force will discuss platforms and technology. 

The overarching goal of the CNTF is to provide support for climate journalism during a time where there is a “firehose of news,” Holder said. “I think that there's a real risk that people's care and consideration of the climate crisis falls to the backburner … Funders are being pulled in many directions, and it could be really challenging to newsrooms trying to produce environmental news.”

The entities involved in the task force are: Canary Media, Drilled, Floodlight, Grist, High Country News, Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, Mother Jones/Reveal, Mountain West News Bureau, Planet Detroit, Sentient, Wisconsin Watch and The Xylom.

Bob Miller has spent more than 25 years in local newsrooms, including 12 years as an executive editor with Rust Communications. Bob also produces an independent true crime investigative podcast called The Lawless Files.