Sustainable News: An Initial Profile of Journalists Who Tell the Story of Asia’s Environment

Brian L. Massey, Department of Communication, University of Utah

Sankaran Ramanathan, Mediaplus Consultants, Singapore

Abstract

This article reports a preliminary profile of Asian environmental journalists. Demographic, news-topic priority and Internet-use variables were tested on a convenience sample of print journalists from 18 countries. On average, they reported on the environment at least weekly, but there was generally little correspondence between the subjects of their reporting and their perceptions of their countries’ most serious environmental problems. Yet they showed a promising potential for strengthening their coverage by using the Internet as a research and networking tool.