WSHU Public Radio has been selected as one of nine newsrooms to participate in the inaugural Climate Beacon Newsrooms Initiative (CBNI). The project is led by the prestigious Solutions Journalism Network in partnership with Covering Climate Now and Climate Central.
Reporter Davis Dunavin is WSHU’s designated Climate Beacon Leader. For the next nine months, he will work with the WSHU newsroom to transform coverage of the climate crisis to regularly include rigorous, community-informed, equity-focused solutions journalism. Dunavin’s previous work has aired nationally on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and been cited in The New York Times, NBC News and The Huffington Post. His recent podcast, Still Newtown, garnered nearly 130,000 downloads in 6 weeks.
The CBNI aims to lead a systems-level change in journalism so that all people — no matter how or where they get their news — have access to rigorous reporting not only about problems, but about promising and evidence-based responses to them as well. This is especially critical for the coverage of our changing climate, where apocalyptic, doom and gloom stories far outweigh those that examine meaningful efforts to advance environmental repair, resilience and adaptation.
“We are honored to have been selected to advance this important work, which closely aligns with our mission to provide fact-based, insightful coverage of our region’s important issues,” said Rima Dael, WSHU’s general manager.
“We are thrilled to participate in the inaugural CBNI cohort,” said Terry Sheridan, WSHU’s senior director of news and education. “This is a natural extension of our award-winning Higher Ground podcast, which explored climate change and adaptation on Long Island and around Bridgeport, Connecticut. We’re excited to build on what we’ve learned, and to expand on our commitment to this vital subject area.”
Season 1 of WSHU’s Higher Ground podcast, hosted by JD Allen, recently won a prestigious award from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Participation in the CBNI gives the station the opportunity to continue to focus on climate reporting.
WSHU Public Radio is the only radio station to have been selected through this rigorous process; all the other eight outlets are print or online publications.
