Covering Pollution: An Investigative Reporter's Guide

$25.00 USD

Covering Pollution: An Investigative Reporter's Guide
By Lori Luechtefeld

For IRE in cooperation with the Society of Environmental Journalists

Tap into resources you can use for local investigations into environmental pollution.

This guide seeks to be immediately useful to investigative journalists. Although it offers extensive resources for in-depth and time-intensive investigations, its main focus is to show you how you can get to the heart of an investigation quickly and without waiting months for Freedom of Information Act requests to be fulfilled.

Much of the information in this guide focuses on how to use Web-based, federal database searches to get the data you need to both find and drive environmental investigations, but you'll also find numerous tips from veteran reporters about how to handle other aspects of investigative environmental journalism, including interviews and writing. 

What's inside:

• Find out where to start when reporting on pollution in your community.
• Understand the data used to monitor local water and air quality.
• Learn how to use the Toxics Release Inventory and track other hazardous wastes.
• Read how top journalists deal with environmental advocacy groups and take special care in their reporting and writing.
• Get up to speed quickly on using mapping to depict your community's environment.
• Special appendices on navigating the EPA, following the money and tapping into state and federal environmental resources.

IRE members are eligible for a discount onovering Pollution: An Investigative Reporter's Guide ($15 for members). To receive this discount or to make bulk orders please contact the Resource Center at 573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org.