Public TV program MetroFocus this week turned its attentions to a climate change news experiment run out of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. The WNET TV news magazine focused the nine-minute piece on AdaptNY, a digital project run by Associate Professor Adam Glenn.
AdaptNY, which launched a year ago June, aims to explore improved media coverage of the New York area’s preparations for future climate change risks in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.
Metrofocus producer and host, the Emmy-award-winning Rafael Pi Roman, interviewed Glenn at length about the project’s approach, which combines social media curation, primary source documentation and its own reporting, in order to create sustained coverage of and public conversation around the climate adaptation topic.
“I really started this experiment after the devastation of Sandy, when I was seeing a lot of coverage and attention to recovery, and also to how we would adapt to future extreme weather,” Glenn told Roman. “But my journalistic instincts told me that after some short time that that attention would wane. The effort was really to see if we could sustain the conversation and focus on this issue of climate adaptation and find better solutions by keeping the dialog going.”
The Metrofocus package on AdaptNY included a video report on an AdaptNY climate resilience workshop at the Journalism School last February. The day-long workshop, run by Glenn with partners Online News Association and the Center for Community and Ethnic Media, helped local participants brainstorm ways to inspire local communities to embrace the necessity for climate adaptation.
J-School alumni, current students and staff also had a hand in the Metrofocus TV report. The show’s package was produced by alum and Metrofocus multimedia producer Kirsti Itameri. Footage used in the video story was gathered by current student Nesh Pillay and broadcast associate Devan Mulvaney, who were both part of a team that provided live coverage of the February workshop, and that also included alum Matthew Surrusco and current students Meral Agish and EJ Stewart.
In addition, the success of the AdaptNY workshop spotlighted in the MetroFocus segment provided the inspiration for a similar half-day climate workshop that ONA recently announced will be run by Glenn as part of the organization’s annual conference in Chicago Sept. 25-27.
The Metrofocus program aired the AdaptNY segment June 11 on WLIW-21, and again on June 12, at 8:30 p.m. ET on WNET at 10:30 p.m. ET on NJTV.