Climate Reporting Is Changing

Welcome to Inside Climate, a new podcast from the staff of Inside Climate News. As the ICN newsroom grows and expands, so is its reporting.

For the show’s debut episode, co-host Kiley Price sits down with ICN founder and publisher David Sassoon to talk about how ICN has changed since it first launched in 2007. Sassoon gives the inside scoop on what it was like winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2013, and how the newsroom aims to adapt moving forward. Finally, co-hosts Kiley Price and Jake Bolster talk about launching the new show and what to expect in the episodes to come. 

Listen and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeart.

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KILEY PRICE

Welcome to Inside Climate, a new podcast from the staff of Inside Climate News. I’m Kiley Price, a journalist based in New York City. In addition to co-hosting this podcast, I’m also ICN’s conservation and biodiversity reporter and the author of the weekly Today’s Climate Newsletter. 

For those of you who haven’t heard of us, Inside Climate News is the oldest and largest newsroom dedicated to climate reporting in the nation. The newsroom was founded in 2007 and has grown to include a staff of 43, reporting from bureaus all across the country, as well as parts of Europe and the Caribbean.

We also won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for national reporting, but more on that in a moment. 

Inside Climate will take listeners and viewers behind the headlines we publish, talking to reporters about the biggest climate and environmental stories that impact your world. For our loyal audience who have been following ICN Sunday Morning, this new show will replace that one as we work to expand our efforts beyond printed bylines and into other digital spaces. 

At a time when newsrooms are eliminating climate reporters, ICN is growing, which is why I’m excited to talk to our founder and publisher, David Sassoon, who has been here since the very beginning. We’ll talk about how the newsroom got started, the challenges facing climate coverage, and how winning the Pulitzer Prize attracted a lot of attention, even from people like Stephen Colbert. 

STEPHEN COLBERT

You are the founder and publisher of something called Inside Climate News and three of your reporters won the Pulitzer Prize.

KILEY PRICE

A little later, we’ll talk to my co-host Jake Bolster, who has been on assignment in California. So let’s get started with our very first interview on Inside Climate.

An Interview with Founder David Sassoon

KILEY PRICE

David, thank you so much for joining us for the very first podcast episode. So there’s a reason that we asked to have you on first, and that’s because you have been here since the beginning. Can you take me back those nearly 20 years ago and talk a bit about what it was like to get ICN started?

DAVID SASSOON

So great to be here. Sure. 2007. It was another world, right? It was in 2006 that Facebook and Twitter launched. It was in 2007 that the iPhone launched. And it was a time when blogging was exploding. So I became interested in the climate issue. I had been doing a lot of contract writing and learning about climate change.

And I went to the COP in Montreal in 2004 and I wanted to be useful as a journalist and a graduate of Columbia Journalism and trying to figure out how to do that. It was also a time when the corporate world was bragging about reducing emissions because it saved money. And the

thrust in Washington was that we were heading toward federal climate legislation. Both parties were pushing toward that. So to me, it also looked like the biggest business story in the world. The transformation of the global energy economy. Here we go. And I really wasn’t coming at it from a green point of view. I was coming at it from, “This is the biggest story on the planet right now,” and so that’s where we started and that’s how we got going.

KILEY PRICE

So can you walk back to what those first few years were like getting things off the ground and how many reporters you had and where they were based, especially given how many reporters we have now?

DAVID SASSOON

Gosh, there were very few of us. And initially we started with blogging, so I wouldn’t exactly call us reporters. We were derivative. And where we’ve ended up now is the most difficult, expensive kinds of projects you could imagine. So it’s been quite an arc. In 2013, when we won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a project we did the year before, I think we were six people on staff. Yeah.

KILEY PRICE

So six people doing impactful work like that just blows my mind. Maybe you can talk to me a little bit about when you knew that you had something special that you were creating.

DAVID SASSOON

I’m not sure I had a sense we had something special. I felt like we had something necessary. Especially when you saw the Obama administration not talking about climate at all. And the atmosphere after Waxman-Markey died in 2010, the federal bill that I thought we were headed toward when we started in 2007, that disappeared and the climate became a four-letter word for a while. So that made me feel like it’s more necessary than ever to be doing this, but I’m not sure we had a sense that we could do a lot about it because we were so small.

KILEY PRICE

What did it feel like when ICN won the Pulitzer? And maybe you could give a little window into the behind the scenes of everything that came before that big moment.

DAVID SASSOON

One of the people who was mentoring me was Dick Tofel at ProPublica. And he suggested that because we had so few resources, he said, “You wanna do a story and you wanna own it. You need to find something that will show what you can do.” It was very general advice and soon enough a story came along, which was Keystone XL and this massive pipeline that TransCanada wanted to build carrying the densest, dirtiest kind of oil from the tar sands or oil sands of Alberta. 

People were afraid of what would happen if there was a spill. So Lisa Song, who was working here at the time, she’s now at ProPublica, said, “Well, let me go find the science of what is known about how this heavy kind of oil reacts in water.”

And it turned out there was no science.

And we found out that an oil spill that had happened in Kalamazoo, Michigan, was actually oil from the tar sands. It was an enormous oil spill into a river. And we figured that out. The oil didn’t sit on the surface of the water, it sank to the bottom. It was really hard to clean up. 

And so we developed a project with Susan White, who was our executive editor at the time, to look at what happened and also look at pipeline safety, where the pipelines that you know we had in place at the time, could they handle this kind of oil safely? And so that was the revelatory work that we did that year that gained the attention of the Pulitzer committee.

So you want to know what it was like to win the Pulitzer?

It was really being struck by lightning in a certain way. I really had no preparation for the attention it would bring to our small operation. Like I said, we were six people and we became the headline of that year’s awards. The attention we got was enormous all over the world. We even had crews coming from Korea, Japan to interview me in my office. And my office, you have to understand, was a room I was renting in a small law firm. And so it was all very shocking.

And then I was invited by Stephen Colbert to go on The Colbert Report. And that got as much attention as the Pulitzer Prize win. You know, that happened a month later. And that was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.

KILEY PRICE

David, you need to share more about your experience on Colbert talking about climate change.

DAVID SASSOON

So we go to the studio and walk into the green room and my wife came with me and Colbert comes into the room and I’m getting nervous, of course, because I’m about to go on camera—I don’t know what to expect. So he finally turns to me and he says to me, “The character I play is an idiot. And you have to disabuse me of my idiocy.”

And I didn’t—you know, “OK?” And they put makeup on me and they spray my hair and I’m seeing the show on the monitors, and they finally put me right on the edge of the stage, and I almost fled out the back door. My mind went blank really in that moment. And then they brought me out and they seated me at a table.

And he’s finishing up his bit over there and he’s gonna come over to where I am and I look out at the front row and there is my wife.

KILEY PRICE

So you nailed it.

DAVID SASSOON

Yeah. So I was home and yeah, it was pretty unforgettable.

STEPHEN COLBERT

Why do we have to talk about it? If you ignore the environment, if we ignore the environment, won’t it just go away?

KILEY PRICE

ICN has grown so much, including me being able to join the team, which I’m really grateful for. And now we are restarting this podcast. So how do you feel about where things are now and, yeah, this level of growth?

DAVID SASSOON

Yeah, now I’m on your show. Right? So there is a step that is important to highlight, which is that in 2018 we opened our first local bureau in Louisville, Kentucky. James Bruggers opened it for us and we got started going local and trying to figure out how to do that well. And then COVID happened.

And so on. So there was a whole—you know, I look at it as the first 10 years was building a national news organization. Small as we were, we had earned the respect of our peers and had done some really good work and won some great prizes. And then since then, the second 10 years, we’re gonna be 20 next year, really is about the local story, about building our local bureaus. And that story really wouldn’t have happened without Vernon [Loeb], when he came. 

And I said, “How do we do this?” And we tried all all kinds of things and we’ve gotten to the point now where we know that with just one reporter or two reporters in a state that we can change the conversation around environmental news, in many cases bringing consistent coverage that didn’t exist at all or that had been skewed or, you know, surrounded with misinformation or whatever. So I think we’re onto something really important.

The other backdrop here is that the industry around us has been collapsing. So many layoffs, so many closures, environmental journalism is suffering also, you know. So, for us to be able to make a contribution like this to the whole media ecosystem and create, you know, what do we have, 42 people in our organization now, that’s 42 new jobs and the trend is going the other way. We started with two. So it’s enormously gratifying.

KILEY PRICE

And where do you hope the Inside Climate podcast fits into this?

DAVID SASSOON

Well, I think we are a newsroom that very heavily leans into print and depth. And we know that the consumption of news is moving away from that. So I see the podcast that we’re doing as a way for us to take the work we do with depth and with a lot of words and put it in a different format. We’re not gonna stop, right? We’re not gonna stop doing what we do because we do it well and it’s needed. But it needs to find new bodies, new forms, new ways of letting people access the important topics we cover that are existential.

KILEY PRICE

David, what do you feel like are the biggest challenges that Inside Climate News faces right now?

DAVID SASSOON

There are lot. I don’t, I won’t talk about AI. I’m sure you’ll do many programs about that. I think you know the context of the denigration of science and the dismantling of environmental protection that made America the envy of the world. Together with that comes enormous investments in misinformation of different kinds.

And so we’re gonna keep doing what we do, but we’re being surrounded by technologies and propaganda and destruction of things that are helpful, you know, to the health and well-being of everybody. So that is, I think—that is the biggest challenge.

KILEY PRICE

Yeah, so you mentioned that we’re going—next year is the big 2-0 for ICN, 20 years of the publication. I’m gonna ask you a hard question. What do you hope out of the next 20 years?

DAVID SASSOON

Twenty’s hard. Let me give you the next five. 

KILEY PRICE

Fair enough. 

DAVID SASSOON

I think the next five is that we want to fill out some desks and start new ones that cover topics that are undercovered. Our approach is to cover the full complexity and depth of the climate issue, which touches everything, and energy. 

So if we do that, what happens? We, you know, we didn’t talk about the collaborative model that we have, which is that in a world of scarce resources, we don’t think a nonprofit like ours should do anything but collaborate. Let readers have free access, let other newsrooms use our work to reach their audiences because they may not have an environment reporter. So we’re able to reach all kinds of audiences right now, at least in print, pretty soon with a podcast and many other things, right?

And so, imagine that every community is informed about what is going on in their own backyards to their air and their water and their land, and they’re holding their regulators and policymakers accountable and they’re armed with the best science and the best information and that’s accurate and fair. And you know, establishing an environmental conversation like this country has never had in the media. You know? 

And it’s a fundamental piece of civic and social infrastructure that we need and that we’re building, not just by ourselves, right? We have hundreds of media partners. That’s what we need to do to strengthen a free press and do the work we need to do.

KILEY PRICE

Well, David, I have learned so much just from this conversation, and I’m a reporter here, so I’m so excited to be part of this journey for our listeners to hear more about ICN and some of the work that we’re doing. Thank you so much for being our first guest here. We can’t wait to have you back, hopefully, at some point. But yeah, thank you for joining.

DAVID SASSOON

Thank you for honoring me that way and having me on your show.

A Chat With the Co-Hosts

KILEY PRICE

Jake, it’s so great to see you. I am so excited to be co-hosting Inside Climate, this new podcast, with you. I know you’ve been really busy the past few weeks, though, so maybe you could start by telling us what you’ve been working on.

JAKE BOLSTER

Sure. Last week I was up in Siskiyou County, California, doing some reporting on a topic you and I have actually covered before, which is wolves and their reintroduction and some of the reactions from rural communities. So for Inside Climate News, I cover the West. Typically that means I’m out in Wyoming or Colorado or Montana. This was actually my first time in California for ICN, but I’m regularly traveling out there and reporting on all things climate and the environment.

But yeah, then at the back end of that trip was actually really exciting: My girlfriend joined me and we got engaged at the end of the trip out in the redwood forests. And it was just a magical place. If you haven’t been there, you absolutely have to go. The trees are stunning and the beach is beautiful, and we had a really good time. So it was a great trip. 

KILEY PRICE

Wow.

JAKE BOLSTER

Yeah, yeah. But I’m happy to be back. 

KILEY PRICE

Busy!

JAKE BOLSTER

Yeah, very busy.

And I know I missed a lot, while I was gone, so maybe you can catch me up on some of the things you’ve been working on.

KILEY PRICE

Yeah, well, so many congratulations to you and your new fiancée. 

JAKE BOLSTER

Thank you. 

KILEY PRICE

Yes, I’ve also been busy, but I’m based here in New York. Right now most of my reporting has been digital, but it’s been incredibly busy because my wonderful colleague Katie Surma and I recently published an investigation about a facility in Florida that was importing dozens of sloths for a planned tourist attraction.

It turns out that a lot of those sloths were dying. And the facility never opened, actually. After our piece published, there was a lot of fallout, a lot of pushback from the community and also policymakers who have flagged that, you know, there are gaps in the system. I cover conservation and wildlife for ICN. So that kind of story is right up my alley. We’re gonna be reporting more on the global wildlife trade, which is massive.

But beyond that, I also write our Today’s Climate newsletter, which is about all sorts of things across the board. For example, this week I wrote about extreme heat and how that affects wildlife and this new forecasting tool that’s aiming to help with that. So as you can imagine, this summer is gonna be a lot of extreme heat coverage at ICN, I think. But yeah, I’m so excited to be adding to my plate this Inside Climate podcast.

How are you feeling about it?

JAKE BOLSTER

I’m really looking forward to it. You know, before I became a journalist, I was all over the map. I was doing a bunch of different odd jobs. And one of the things I was doing was acting, not so successfully, but I was trying. And you know, the thing I really enjoyed about acting, as an undergrad, I was a theater and literature major, but it it felt like, you know, you had this loosely planned conversation with somebody and obviously there was all this dramatic scaffolding built around it, but that conversation is really what drove the action. And journalism, oddly enough, feels similar in that you’re going out, you’re meeting people, you’re having these unplanned, loosely structured conversations, and you need to show up and have, to a certain degree, you know, be able to match people’s energy. And I think hosting this podcast is going to be even more like that.

And I’m just really thrilled to be back in kind of a creative space that way. But I know you have a little more experience in this sort of thing than I do. How are you feeling about the podcast?

KILEY PRICE

I’m so excited. I actually come from a really different space prior to journalism. I started my career in a lab. So I was doing ecology and biology research when I was an undergrad. And I decided to pick up a journalism class because I really wanted to get better at communicating my research, partially to get more grant funding. But once I did take that class, I just completely fell in love with it and saw the value of being able to bridge that gap between science and the general public, because I think it can be really tough to understand some of these incredibly complex topics that people spend their entire career studying. 

So it’s great to learn something new every day. I’m a really curious person, as most journalists are, so I feel really lucky to be in this job. Eventually, though, I got my master’s degree in science journalism, which I didn’t know was a thing until I started looking more into it. While I was there, I started podcasting more because I saw that as another way to reach new audiences. And I actually did a few different wildlife podcasts while I was there, including one about orcas ramming into boats, which became a huge thing in the past few years. I was kind of looking into it like, why is that happening? And I got to interview one of the sailors who had experienced that.

So that’s how I got the podcasting bug. I’m really excited to be doing this again. So yeah, that’s where I’m coming at it from.

JAKE BOLSTER

Awesome. Great. Well, I’ll let you run here. I don’t wanna impede. I missed David’s conversation. I gotta, I still gotta unpack my tent. So I gotta run. But this is gonna be awesome. I mean, I can’t wait.

KILEY PRICE

Yeah, I can’t wait to be co-hosting this with you. You and I have worked together a lot on stories, and we’re kind of always doing brainstorming, so it’s cool to be doing it in this audio way as well. I’m really happy to be co-hosting with you, and I’m really excited to see your first interview on Inside Climate. 

JAKE BOLSTER

Yeah, it’ll be fun.

Final Thought

KILEY PRICE

Thank you so much for listening to Inside Climate. For more of our reporting, please visit insideclimatenews.org and sign up for our newsletters, all of which are free to read.

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