In the 12 years I have covered environmental issues for newspapers, news services and magazines I have rarely spoken to elected officials who head state, provincial or federal environment departments. Instead I leave a trail of unanswered messages or play phone tag with government PR folks who know little about their department or aren’t willing to comment.

That’s my North American experience 95 per cent of the time.

So today I phone Baghdad.

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Working on story about E-waste and global efforts to deal with what is an environmental pollution issue and depletion of limited natural resources issues. Wrote about problem of billions of mobile phones being discarded previously but this looks at all electronic waste.

It’s a complex issue with new European laws, lack of laws in US, the Basel Convention, China/India as giant scrap yards while generating their own e-waste.

As in most writing and journalism the challenge here is what to leave out and still be able to tell a complete story. And those decisions should be in service to the story not to a particular POV. Often my fave bits of a story, interesting facts or important issues have to be pushed aside.

Also working on another story about new research on connection between droughts, civil wars and climate change.

This is the first of a hopefully a daily conversation about the stories I am working on, the process of researching and covering environmental and other issues and probably some rants. Ok, that’s what everyone does in the blogosphere. Turned out to be a big deal for me because even after six months of agonizing over it I remain ….

A Reluctant Blogger.

Why?

Like many journalists, I am more than a little shy of revealing what I am doing and how I do it. Not sure why this is exactly, so we’ll see what happens here. Also not keen either on sharing my opinions beyond family and a few friends, unless I am getting paid for doing op eds or columns.

That brings me to the real sticking point.

As an independent journalist, I have supported my family by the paid word for the last 12 years. Writing about environmental issues is one of the steeper paths in the very challenging career of freelancing so it’s hard to write anything for free.

Hard as Granite

Why now?

Interconnections. So I can get your input on what I am doing, and hear your ideas, sources of information, contacts etc. I have already received some thoughtful feedback which has improved my work I hope. And I will try to answer your questions about environmental issues, journalism and media. When ever I do talks there are usually lots of media questions such as why was that story is on the front page or lead item on a TV newscast and not another.

I’d really like to make this a conversation. I hope you do too.

Cheers
Stephen