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Sarah Ettman-Sterner: Nuvigreen Project Covers New Environmental Ground
News headlines produced by the media are enough to make anyone’s head spin, reminiscent of Linda Blair’s green-spewing demon in The Exorcist. Twitter regurgitates a dizzying high-speed scroll of messages, neatly packaged in a 140-character blast. Sometimes it’s interesting, but often it’s mindless drivel — as are annoying Facebook postings of “news” from your social network. Newspapers, magazines and broadcast news on TV/radio are fraught with doom and gloom. It’s difficult to find thoughtful dialogue about the environment.
In search of real, meaningful information about what’s going on “out there,” you can download “apps” with breaking news from CNN, Fox News or The New York Times on your Palm, BlackBerry or new iPad (lucky you!). The apps may be a novel way to get a real-time pulse check on current events, but the problem remains the same: We are on the receiving end of manufactured media.
The constant barrage of ticker-tape messages represents a superficial peek at natural and human-induced events. The balance is tipped toward problems beyond our immediate control: earthquakes, El Niño, the Great Recession, the health-care debate, the jobless rate, a never-ending war in the Middle East, climate change, shrinking school budgets — ad nauseum! The content is fed to us in bits and bytes that lack depth and breadth, and are spun and spewed for our easy, mindless digestion. We don’t know what to do with much of this brain clutter. The easy way to deal with it is to 1) just don’t do anything, 2) tune it all out, or 3) grumble and wish for it to go away.
Just when you think our planet has shifted on its axis from a stomach-churning overload of “Fixed News,” I recommend you take a pause that refreshes. Ask yourself: What’s happening here and now? What are people thinking, learning and doing with respect to the real, natural world? Is there a comprehensive source of green new media in Santa Barbara, the birthplace of Earth Day and the global environmental movement? Is it possible to find well-crafted content founded on facts, and that provokes thought and inspires a human connection to our environment and society? Is there a way to get a grip on the Twitter-Facebook-LinkedIn-YouTube-social networking train and harness its power to induce change?
In putting myself through the paces of this mental exercise, I came up with an idea that’s blossoming into a strategy I’m excited to share with Noozhawk. It’s called the Nuvigreen Project. It’s a mentorship experience that helps bring to light a new source of environmental reporting, while supplying our community with up-to-date eco-news from fresh, youthful perspectives.
The intent of the Nuvigreen Project is to serve as terra firma for encouraging a new generation of environmentalists and motivating high school and college students to pursue green careers, especially green journalism. Now, inspired young environmentalists have an outlet — a place to be seen, heard and published and get feedback.
Launching the week of April 22 in honor of Earth Day’s 40th anniversary, the Nuvigreen Project will be an ongoing series in Noozhawk’s Green Hawk section. It will showcases the talented writing and reporting skills of more than 100 environmental studies students attending Dos Pueblos High School and UCSB.
There are some participants you may already be familiar with, such as the students featured in the recent “trashy behavior” exposé in Noozhawk, and UCSB’s Emily Williams, author of the “Copenhagen for Dummies” story.
All are undergoing a rigorous course of study based on high academic objectives set forth by California’s State Content Standards and the achievement goals for environmental studies at the University of California. To be published online, authors follow a set of guidelines, perform their own research, go into the field and learn editorial process — under the watchful eyes of teachers and mentors. And all authors follow the code of ethics on which Noozhawk is founded.
The Nuvigreen Project complements and extends what’s going on in the classroom. This process culminates in professionally published articles, with images, videos and even a social-networking component. By presenting the final product in public — online in the Green Hawk space before peers and family, and local, national and international Noozhawk subscribers — young people gain real-world, real-time experience.
It’s a joy and an honor to collaborate with my fellow Nuvigreen co-authors. They make a difference in my life, and I hope they will for you. They are a lively, fun, educated group of people you should get to know. They are creative, curious, have opinions and understand issues. As writers, they strive to integrate science, new media and language arts. These young people are willing to explore tough topics. They tackle themes such as the role of religious mores, sex and family planning effect population, and the environment, what farm subsidies have to do with your favorite bag of 99-cent chips, and the problem of nuclear waste disposal.
Student authors also employ clever references to pop-culture icons (Homer Simpson, Wonder Woman and the Dugger family of TLC Channel’s 19 Kids & Counting), all purposely designed to grab your attention and enlighten you. Upcoming articles include “The Inconvenient Truth of the Torta,” “Mother Nature’s Plastic Babies,” “Is Your Steak Killing Polar Bears?” “Through the Roof: Solar Energy,” “Six Feet Under, Green As Ever,” and “The Cops Are the Criminals.”
Upbeat and intellectually stimulating, the subject matter produced through the Nuvigreen Project demonstrates that there is room in New Media for environmental journalism from fresh viewpoints, enhanced with a dash of humor. But don’t let the lighthearted aspects of student-generated work fool you. In honing investigation skills and journalistic chops, they take their work very seriously, and they delve deeply into hard-core, issues-based science. They respect this unique opportunity and the audience they wish to reach. In turn, please respect their work and position by supporting them with a warm welcome and thoughtful, considerate feedback.
Like me, you may find that the Nuvigreen Project is the remedy for exorcising cranial clutter.
[P.S. I look forward to meeting you at Noozhawk’s Earth Day booth this Saturday and Sunday in Alameda Park, 1400 Santa Barbara St. See me if you’re interested in supporting or participating in the Nuvigreen Project. Or e-mail me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).]
— Green Hawk interactive producer Sarah Ettman-Sterner focuses on current environmental trends and marine-related topics. A member of the Society for Environmental Journalists, she provided the “voice” for Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Society for more than a decade. She can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Comments
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» on 04.16.10 @ 09:54 AM
Fabulous, Sarah. PBS Newshour had a fascinating story last night about how and why people are, or can be, motivated to work.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june10/makingsense_04-15.html
Money, it turns out, is not an effective motivational force for people doing creative work like you’re advocating. Yes, being paid is nice and necessary, but if the goal is striking it rich, workers lose, to an extent, the ability to think in new and original ways. And when creative work is also measurably beneficial to the community, as yours is, the non-monetary rewards become even more important. We need to make sure those in our creative community can make decent livings without having to worry that they’ve entered a feast or famine work situation.
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» on 04.17.10 @ 08:13 AM
First I was going to ask what was the political motivation behind this project was. Then I read jonk’s comment and it became very clear. The environmental movement is still firmly entrenched in the socialist camp. Unbelievable that modern science cannot wrestle this movement from the clutches of rabid socialists.
Sarah, I became an environmentalist in 1969. No not from the oil spill, but because of the destruction of farm and forest by rapid development here in So Cal. Then I moved to SB and expanded my concern to air and water pollution. But the environmental movement split. Two camps arose, those who believe human beings to be a foreign species to earth, destroying it with greed and profit. And those who saw us as part of the solution to crapping in your own living room.
The first camp went legalistic (obstructionism) then got high jacked by socialist and leftists to be used as political pawns, they have been there ever since as jonk illustrates.
Those of us who chose science and engineering sought to find solutions to pollution, inefficiency and desecration.
Please, Sarah, tell me your new project is not about killing capitalism, increasing government control over human activity and using nothing more than obstructionism to achieve a healthier planet. I see too many young people today who are concerned about environmental issues but are terribly naïve about the exploitation of environmentalism by leftist politicos.
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» on 04.20.10 @ 01:47 PM
Yes, AN50, the “environmentalist” who doesn’t think there is any scientific basis for climate change and who sees a socialist hiding in every corner of the eco movement. Could it be that there a lot of progressives at work in making environmentalism a part of our daily lives because right wingers only get involved reluctantly, if at all?
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» on 04.22.10 @ 01:32 PM
Empty I’m done with you if you haven’t gotten a clue yet. When you grow up then you can join the adult conversation.
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» on 04.22.10 @ 02:27 PM
The truth stings but you’ll be alright. As for you and your fellow greenhouse effect deniers still holding out hope that we’re not destroying the normal functioning of the atmosphere, here’s what that radical liberal think tank NASA has to say:
Certain facts about Earths climate are not in dispute:
The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.2 Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many JPL-designed instruments, such as AIRS. Increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.
Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in solar output, in the Earth’s orbit, and in greenhouse gas levels. They also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very quickly, geologically-speaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even thousands. http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
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» on 04.23.10 @ 08:18 AM
Nice attempt at intellect, Empty. Might have been more effective if you had a clue what you were writing about. Go back to school and study physics, phony.
Nothing worse than someone pontificating over someone else’s research they don’t understand.
Thanks for being the poster child of the very phenomena I was describing to Sarah.
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