Questions for biz journalists covering sustainability to ask

Evie Liu of the Reuters Institute details five questions that business reporters should ask when they are covering sustainability.

Liu writes, “Big corporations are some of the largest contributors to climate change, but they are also the victim of it. Climate stories in the business section can not only prompt wealthy and influential readers to drive substantial changes, but also enable newsrooms to reach a wider audience beyond the traditional business news reader.

“In recent years, many mainstream business media outlets have established dedicated teams, focused on sustainability stories that are driven by rising interest from both their audiences and reporters. These teams usually have a lot of freedom on the stories they want to pursue, and rely heavily on partnerships across the newsroom.

“Major coverage areas include key industries helping to facilitate the clean-energy transition, carbon accounting and its credibility, and the so-called sustainable investing that aims to channel more capital to the greener industries and away from the brown ones.

“Since sustainability is a new beat that simply didn’t exist a few years ago, these journalists face many challenges: they often work on small teams with limited resources, and may find it hard to resonate with the audience, identify greenwashing, or find trustworthy data.”

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