By JOSEPH A. DAVIS
That old feeling of helplessness is gone. The news media and public no longer see erosion of the First Amendment, the Freedom of Information Act and disclosure requirements in many environmental laws as inevitable ... and worse, unimportant.
Or so a recent vote in Congress signaled.
There we were, 21 environmental reporters, freelancers, students and professors, all huddled and shivering in an unheated blind on the Platte River.
We were waiting in the breezy, 20-degree cold for thousands of lesser sandhill cranes to return from feeding in the corn fields and roost for the night on protective sandbars. Each spring, the cranes leave their southwest wintering spots and stop in central Nebraska to rest and eat before heading out to their Arctic nesting grounds.
By PERRY BEEMAN
Some years ago, a board member or two suggested SEJ change its name.
Why? Because the phrase "environmental journalists" seemed to suggest "environmentalist journalists" to some, especially those who suspect the group has some sort of environmental agenda akin to the Sierra Club's.
By VINCE PATTON
In Miami, NBC-6 reporter Jeff Burnside thought he had a great story about the restoration of bountiful seagrass beds. But managers weren't interested.
"Later," Burnside says, "I pitched a story about steep fines for boaters running aground." That story they liked.
"The thick, milky white liquid looks like Elmer's glue, though it's greasy to the touch. It has a sweet, alcohol smell. It's not your father's heating oil, to be sure. But it will do the same job, says Cary J. Claiborne, and a lot more cleanly.
Claiborne is president and chief executive officer of New Generation Biofuels, a Florida-based startup that's producing fuel from vegetable and soybean oil at a small production plant it set up this year in southern Baltimore.
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