What to Make of The Guardian's New Climate Change Series?

In 2009, the New York Times launched "a new, crack environmental reporting unit that will pull in eight specialized reporters from the Science, National, Metro, Foreign, and Business desks in a bid for richer, more prominent coverage," as the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) detailed. It seemed like a smart, innovative approach: Environmental issues have become increasingly complex, with crosscutting scientific, economic, and political angles. Climate change, seen by many as the story of the century, is the poster child for this complexity. So efforts "to push the story forward, to give it greater energy and focus," as a NYT memo described at the time, were largely applauded by journalism watchers. Alas, the experiment didn't pan out to the Times' liking; in 2013 the paper's management abandoned the environment "pod." The Times, of course, is still actively covering environmental stories, particularly climate change. Whether it is doing so with the kind ...