American Energy Society has selected Coral Davenport as Energy Writer of the Year 2015, for her thoughtful and creative use of Twitter to report news about energy and the environment.
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Current conversations about energy and the environments often draw from a variety of people with a wide range of interests and backgrounds. But, within this diverse group, there exists an informal barrier: the most influential climate leaders on both sides of the issue are men (Al Gore, James Hansen, Tom Steyer, Bill McKibben, Daniel Yergin, etc.). A few notable exceptions merely serve to prove the rule that women are not often welcomed into the climate debate at the highest levels.
However, the most influential and effective climate reporters are women. It also appears that Twitter provided their first public forum and has become the platform upon which they have built broad communities of committed followers. Coral Davenport is our clear-cut winner of the Energy Writer of the Year in 2015, but she also represents many others who make important contributions to larger conversations about energy and the environment, including:
> Coral Davenport, for The New York Times, @CoralMDavenport > Kate Sheppard, for HuffPost Politics, @kate_sheppard > Kate Galbraith, for Foreign Policy, @KateGalbraith > Talia Buford, for Public Integrity, @TaliaBuford > Rebecca Leber, for New Republic, @rebleber > Elana Schor, for Politico, @eschor > Emily Atkin, for American Progress, @emorwee > Heidi Cullen, for Climate Central, @HeidiCullen > Lisa Friedman, for Climate Wire, @LFFriedman In recognition of Ms. Davenport’s work, the American Energy Society is pleased to feature her presentation at the Harvard Kennedy School, Belfer Center:
Climate Change, the Story About Everything |
For journalism, the 21st century is an era where public trust drops yearly, and reporters face competition to reach a growing Internet audience. Adding these challenges to a beat as controversial and global as climate and energy policy creates a job that seems near impossible.
The New York Times’ Energy and Environment Correspondent Coral Davenport confronts these challenges head-on by covering environmental policy in a way that goes beyond the conventional boundaries of Washington-based reporting to the larger, all-encompassing impact of climate change issues on a human and dollars-and-cents scale. “Climate change is a story about everything,” Davenport said at a recent Harvard Kennedy School seminar that drew a standing-room-only crowd. “There’s nothing that climate policy doesn’t touch. A few groups lobby against things like health care. Hundreds of groups want a say in climate change policy,” she said. The talk, and following question and answer session, was co-sponsored by the Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program, the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics & Public Policy, the HKS Sustainability Initiative, and the HKS Energy and Environment PIC (Professional Interest Council). The event, which attracted nearly 80 students, faculty, HKS alums and members of the Boston community, is part of a long-running speaker series “Climate, Energy & the Media,” noted ENRP director Henry Lee. “I invited Coral because she is one of the most respected and prolific reporters in Washington DC covering controversies in the policy and politics of climate, energy, and environment,” said ENRP Senior Fellow Cristine Russell, a science journalist and organizer of the series. “She came to the New York Times only two years ago with an in-depth knowledge of these issues and a fresh journalistic approach to making this meaningful on a human level.” Davenport explained how climate change used to be perceived by the public as a distant problem, one that would only affect the Arctic and the survival of polar bears. Through her reporting, she showcases how climate change is impacting people now, combining the policy with personal stories. In a topic that can often be muddled with numbers and scientific reports, Davenport emphasized her constant objective to publish climate stories that seem more immediate and closer to home. For example, she noted that one story focused on a struggling local business in Miami affected by storm surges and sea level rise. Of course, stories that link policy to a real face are not likely to convince the most serious climate change science deniers. There is a large group, including both members of the public and Republican 2016 presidential candidates, that still questions the “established science,” a term Davenport uses in much of her reporting. To address this group, she chose to write a story not on the results of recent climate research but the methodology of the scientists behind it. Her in-depth report, “Greenland is Melting Away” not only puts a face to the NASA-funded scientists studying the Greenland ice sheet but also shows what this team risked to carefully measure the degree to which climate change is happening here and now. In her first-person story, Davenport follows a team researching the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. The scientists spent 72 hours on the ice in a mission that could have cost them their lives and sacrificed their own hand and foot warmers to help keep the batteries in their equipment alive. Davenport also described how they would urinate in bottles in their tents and then place these bottles inside their sleeping bags to keep warm. “To me, this seems like a lot of work to fake data,” said Davenport. “What we ended up with was a story that brought the reader to Greenland. It wasn’t about the end result. It was about the process.” The multimedia story included not only photographs but also the first footage from the Times’ drone, as well as in-depth graphics to help visualize the story. Following the publishing of this story, Davenport attended the most significant climate event of 2015: the December United Nations’ COP21 Climate Conference in Paris. Russell described the importance of knowledgeable coverage by reporters such as Davenport, who specializes in the policy side of climate, energy, and environment while other Times reporters do the in-depth science. Davenport came to the Times in December 2013, from the National Journal. Previously, she reported for POLITICO, Congressional Quarterly, and the Daily Hampshire Gazette, in Northampton, Massachusetts. From 2001 to 2004 she was based in Athens, Greece, where she wrote stories on economics, terrorism, the environment and the 2004 Olympics for several publications, including the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today and CondeNast Traveler. She is a graduate of Smith College. “Journalists writing about climate have been forced to understand not only the science and the impact of climate change but the political side as well. Most importantly, in the past five years, climate change has increasingly emerged as one of the most important global issues,” said Russell. Davenport also spoke to her HKS class on “Controversies in Climate, Energy and the Media.” Davenport concluded her talk with a look into the future, especially how climate change will come up in the 2016 presidential election. She reminded the audience of the breadth of this issue and how it will continue to grow in the interest of policy makers and the public. “I feel less like I have to fight for space on the front page or make my stories interesting,” she said. Instead, Davenport worries about finding enough “time to write all the stories out there.” Written by: Casey Campbell, a former project assistant on the project Managing the Atom.This article was originally published here at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
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About the award
According to Eric Vettel, president of American Energy Society, "There are a lot of great journalists who write about energy and the environment, but Coral Davenport's use of Twitter and other social media platforms were exceptional and compelling. We selected Ms. Davenport as the inaugural Energy Writer of the Year for democratizing complex energy and environmental issues."
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About the author
Coral Davenport covers energy and environmental policy, with a focus on climate change, from The New York Times's Washington bureau. She has covered these issues since 2006, reporting for Congressional Quarterly, Politico and National Journal before joining The Times in 2013. Her coverage at The Times has included reporting from atop the Greenland ice sheet, breaking the news of Volkswagen's illegal use of software devices to evade pollution regulations, and a 2016 interview with President Obama about his efforts to build an environmental legacy.
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Other awardees
2023: Philip Verleger and Kim A. Pederson »
2022: Amy Harder » 2021: Katharine Hayhoe » 2020: Daniel Yergin » 2019: Vaclav Smil » 2018: Nathaniel Rich » 2017: Meghan O'Sullivan » 2016: Mark P. Mills » |
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