The Center for American Progress Action Fund is expanding Climate Progress — with several more bloggers, much more original content, and a new format that will launch Monday.
Climate Progress began 7 years ago with me posting once a day, and it grew into the most widely read climate science blog on the web with regular contributions from several CAPAF staffers and guest posters.
In 2011, Climate Progress added a Deputy Editor and became part of CAPAF’s broader Think Progress website, which itself was redesigned to maximize social media traffic (among other things). That helped us maintain traffic growth while so many other sites, and virtually every climate science denier website, flatlined.
Now we are expanding and redesigning Climate Progress again. We will be adding several new blogger-reporters and also sourcing content around the country on local climate impacts and local climate politics. We will do investigative reporting and break news. And as you’ll see Monday, the site redesign makes use of lessons learned from other high-traffic sites.
Part of the motivation is the collapse of media coverage of what is in fact the story of the century (see “Silence Of The Lambs 3: Media Coverage Of Climate Mixed In 2012, But Still Down Sharply From 2009” and “In Epic Blunder, NY Times And Washington Post All But Abandon Specialized Climate Science Coverage”).
John Podesta, CAPAF Chair, explains the move this way:
Right now, global temperatures are the highest they’ve been in 4,000 years. That’s bad news, and more terrifying still is the fact that the New York Times doesn’t seem to think global warming is news at all.
Just a few months ago, the Times announced that they’re shutting down their environmental desk. And this is just the latest example of the publications we rely on most cutting the coverage we most need.
At a time when “superstorm” has become a part of our everyday vocabulary, we can’t afford to miss out on news that is so vital to our survival….
It’s not just the Times. Climate change reporting has fallen dramatically over the past few years, which means important stories are falling through the cracks every day: From new information on climate change science to the ties between Big Oil and D.C. decision-makers to in-depth reporting on the repercussions of fracking. We’re ready to take it on. Our team is committed to not only bringing you hard-hitting investigative reporting, but making sure that this reporting leads to action and accountability. [We aim for] cutting-edge environmental coverage — sending our experienced reporters across the country, and harnessing the power of technology and crowd-sourcing to get the story out, debunk conservative misinformation, and make sure our representatives in Washington play by the rules.
If we don’t do this work, no one else will.
UPDATE: Ryan Koronowski and Kiley Kroh serve as Climate Progress deputy editors. Joanna Foster, a former contributor to the now-shuttered Green blog at The New York Times, and Ari Phillips recently joined Climate Progress as reporters. Phillips will be reporting from Australia until September. Center for American Progress Action Fund Senior Fellow Tom Kenworthy, a former reporter for USA Today and The Washington Post, will also serve as a contributor. I will keep up my previous pace of writing for CP, now as Founding Editor.