Through free workshops, the Metcalf Institute brings journalists and scientists together to create a solid scientific foundation for local environmental reporting.

With shrinking newsrooms, environmental stories have often become the bailiwick of political or general assignment reporters. Meanwhile, these stories have become increasingly complex and multifaceted. Reporting must balance business, lifestyle, politics, policy, international relations and economic issues on an accurate foundation of science.

With its Climate Change and the News Initiative, Metcalf’s goal is to help journalists understand the underlying science and work from that accurate foundation.

 “We want to help reporters and editors cover these stories in a more scientifically accurate and a more compelling way,” says Sunshine Menezes, Executive Director.

Because climate change is often reported nationally or globally, journalists are challenged to find a local angle, Menezes says. In fact, she added, it’s really only been in the past few years that science has been able to talk with some confidence about regional impacts.

“We do the hard work of saying, ‘Look this is an issue where there is a good amount of consensus around the problem,” she says. “We want to help journalists understand the nuance around the problems. Not the extreme black and white edges of it, but the gray areas. That's the hard part.”

Journalists have to recognize that much scientific research and discussion circulates around the grays, and from the scientific perspective the minutiae are where the really important stuff lies.

“Most of the world sees minutiae as a negative thing while most scientists see it as a very positive thing,” Menezes says. “We want to help journalists appreciate — if not the minutiae— the shades of gray. For scientists, we want to get them from minutiae to shades of gray.”

And she added, laughing: “Nudges of understanding are still useful.”

At two recent Metcalf Seminars in Chicago — one national and one looking at climate change and the Great Lakes region, I learned why scientists universally loathe the term Polar Vortex as it was used last winter here in the Midwest, how Toledo’s toxic algae bloom last summer could become a more frequent phenomenon, and that Chicago’s 1995 Heat Wave and 2012’s Super Storm Sandy — are iconic environmental events. In addition, I took home the highlights of the US National Climate Assessment, released in May 2014 after three years of research. And most important, I took home the names and contact information of local and national scientists who are experts in their areas of research. In addition, the Institute makes available on its website all presentations, slideshows and links to relevant information, which it then promotes through its many social media streams. 

The Metcalf Institute was established in 1997 at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. It’s named after Michael P. Metcalf, publisher of The Providence Journal-Bulletin, who was known for his high journalistic standards. Metcalf’s Executive Director Menezes is a scientist with a PhD in Oceanography from Rhode Island.

In 2013, Metcalf spent 52% of its $349,000 budget training journalists and 26% developing and distributing resources for journalists. In addition, the Institute spent 4% helping scientists better understand how to communicate their knowledge to a non-scientific audience.

The Grantham Foundation for Protection of the Environment funds the Climate Change and the News Initiative with a four-year grant. Other income comes from national and regional foundations and private donors. Metcalf has not reached out to corporate donors. But no matter who the donor "Our policy is that we always have 100% control over the content. We have not had a situation to date that we felt was challenging," Menezes says.

“Our primary constituent is a very skeptical group of people who are sensitive to conflict of interest,” she says. “We have a very good rule in place and it was developed to address any concerns.”

With a small but mighty staff of four. Metcalf leverages resources from many corners to bring training to a place and enable journalists to attend. Although Climate Change and the News training is free, Metcalf will pay travel and hotel expenses for regional reporters who want to attend but are a distance away.

Of the two recent seminars here in Chicago, the national seminar for editors was piggybacked on the annual conference of the American Society of News Editors held here. The second seminar, on the Great Lakes, was hosted by local public radio station WBEZ, Metcalf’s presence immediately bore fruit with this local report on toxic algae and its connection to agricultural runoff.

Metcalf expects a minimal commitment from the host newsroom of space and perhaps lunch. Other costs, including travel costs for Metcalf staff are paid by Metcalf. “We have never been approached by a single newsroom, although I would love to do that if a newsroom had the funds to bring us there,” Menezes says.

As an advocate for science, “We do the hard work of bringing together a bunch of people who can offer you different perspectives on these issues,” Menezes says. “Journalists get the resource list and gain some confidence about reaching out to other scientific sources.”

Metcalf’s approach to training journalists could hold promise for other areas of hard science — for instance, medicine — looking to strengthen foundational knowledge of their disciplines.

In addition to the Climate Change and the News Initiative trainings, Metcalf hosts a number of other events and programs.

These include:

• the Annual Science Immersion Workshop for Journalists, It’s oldest program. 
• an annual public lecture series, 
• a series of seminars for New England reporters called the Peter B. Lord Seminars on the Environment, named for a late colleague of ours,
• occasional science seminars for journalists as science conferences, such as one on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill this past January,
• science communication workshops for researchers in Rhode Island and elsewhere. 

“Scientists struggle with seeing themselves in a news story,” and the depth of what they said is not included, Menezes says. By bridging disciplines, "“We’re trying to build this understanding between journalists and scientist so they can better understand each other.”

This understanding has to go to the root of what each discipline does. "These are the rules and norms of my profession. These are the rules and norms of your profession. The goal is to learn how to appreciate how the other one approaches the same question."