Journalism & Media

 By MARCUS R. DONNER 

First the bad news: It's not the camera's fault the picture is bad. In the years I've spent looking at photos taken by reporters, the unfortunate truth as to why the photos weren't good was invariably operator error, not a problem with the camera. Today's point-and-shoots, and consumer digital SLRs, are very good at getting photos properly exposed and in focus.

Now the good news: There are a few simple things you can do to make your photos better.

 Kenneth R. Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling of the Los Angeles Times are the 2007 winners of the $75,000 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment for their five-part series "Altered Oceans."

Grantham Prize jurors said the July 30-Aug. 3, 2006, series "gives life to all those generalities about the decline of the oceans in a way that should grab the imaginations not only of politicians responsible for taking corrective steps but also of ordinary readers."

By JACKLEEN de LA HARPE

By BILL KOVARIK and KEN WARD JR.

A young Virginia Tech scientist is standing up in a canoe, gesturing at the river around him. "Imagine this," he says. "It's 300 million years ago. There are no trees – just giant ferns. There are no birds or flowering plants. There are no dinosaurs – they won't show up for many millions of years. Everything about the landscape is utterly different. But in the river – the fish – are the same then as they are today."

 By BUD WARD 

"Generational." 

The term comes to mind in the context of the global climate change challenges and opportunities we all face.

By TIM WHEELER

A journalist's job is to follow the facts and call them as they appear, no matter which side of a debate they may favor. In the past year, as president of the Society of Environmental Journalists, I've often found myself explaining to various people and groups that the only cause for which SEJ advocates is more and better coverage of the environment.

By Devra Davis

Basic Books (2007), $27.95
Reviewed by JenniferWeeks

In 1971 President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, formally launching a war on the second-leading cause of death in the United States. The legislation promised more funding and targeted government support for cancer research. "The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease," Nixon urged in his State of the Union Address earlier that year.

By Steve Nash
University of Virginia Press, $22.95

Reviewed by Christine Heinrichs

Environmental change manifests in ways so different, its fragments can seem unrelated. Steve Nash's 15 feature articles, brought together in book form, stitches the fragments together, telling a dramatic story of the changes rippling through our world.

By Mark Schapiro
Chelsea Green Publishing, $22.95

Reviewed by Susan Moran

In the quagmire of the Iraq war, the United States has lost credibility as a world leader. In Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products, investigative journalist Mark Schapiro offers another version of the erosion of American leadership. In this case, it's how the U.S. government has gone from one whose environmental laws and regulations were once a model for other nations to one whose standards have fallen so far below those of even some developing nations.

 By CASEY McNERTHNEY

Every story has moments that get left out in the retelling. Sometimes those moments are what reporters remember most, but have a hard time describing in a print news story.

Because of the Internet, those moments—both in images and audio—now can be shared with the readers.

The inflections in a source's voice, the photos that help explain, the odds and ends you collect that would normally be buried on your desk – those now have a place in an online slideshow.