Alexander Kaufman, a former Huffington Post energy reporter, spoke with Melanie Ehrenkranz of “Laid Off” about the publication’s decision to end its energy coverage.
Here is an excerpt:
You posted that HuffPost is ending its dedicated coverage of energy and climate change. What are the implications of that in newsrooms? On the public?
While I understand the reasons for HuffPost’s severe job cuts, I strongly disagree with the decision to deprioritize coverage of climate change and energy. If anything, the outlet should be expanding beyond what my colleague, Chris D’Angelo, and I were doing. The world just hit 1.5 degrees Celsius, the temperature spike above pre-industrial averages that most countries agreed to try to avert. We are dealing with mounting extreme weather that is buckling our energy systems. We are also facing rising prices for electricity at the very moment when curbing planet-heating emissions requires us to use more electricity for more things than ever before, like cars, stoves and air conditioning. Fortunately, HuffPost isn’t the only game in town. But any recession of coverage on this issue is a loss to readers.
What do you predict for the future of media and climate coverage? What do you hope to see?
Over the past few years, we have seen a number of really excellent, specialized publications launch that cover climate change and energy specifically and with great vigor. Those include Heatmap, Canary Media, and Cipher News. There are also existing publications, like Grist, and expanded teams at traditional news outlets like the Financial Times, the Washington Post and Bloomberg. I expect that, as climate change impacts more of our lives in even greater ways, we will see a proliferation of this coverage. I also think we will see it become less siloed into climate “verticals” as the food, beauty products, home goods, travel, financial markets and so much more face the consequences of a warming world.
Read more here.
