Reporting Climate Change Training Course

What’s it about?

Climate change is widely seen as the greatest threat to human development – perhaps even to human survival – in modern times. As the issue has moved gradually from the fringes of the news agenda to a firm centre-stage position, many journalists have difficulty grasping the implications, disentangling the mass of competing and contradictory claims, and distinguishing fact from fiction. In this course, journalists will learn how to prepare powerful but accurate reports, to inform their audiences without sensationalism or alarmism, and to bring home the likely impact of climate change to their lives of each and every person. We also offer the option to add a session focusing on the En-ROADS climate simulator platform, co-developed by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan.

Who should attend?

Journalists and editors with two to five years’ experience.

Learning outcomes

Understand the essentials of climate science and international climate negotiations
Understand climate change issues in their country and how they fit into the global picture
Decipher climate acronyms and complex climate concepts
Explain climate change in simple terms and its impact on the lives of ordinary people
Explain the political and economic conflicts it can bring about
Balance and explain contrasting scientific forecasts
Handle fairly the views of climate change sceptics
Grasp the scale of what is forecast to happen over coming decades
Report and assemble a climate change story based on basic writing principles
Best practice news reporting and writing skills
Build exclusive stories from scientific reports
Understand potential pitfalls in covering climate change

Benefits

Participants will benefit from a deeper understanding of issues surrounding climate change and its impact on their country as well as on the wider region and the world.

Training structure highlights

Understanding climate science
Making sense of the UN climate negotiations
What makes a climate change story?
The key climate issues in your country
Use the En-ROADS platform to generate potential outcomes in your relevant country where climate policies are adopted – or not
A fact-based lead generator to support any journalist in the transparency and accountability of their stories
Scary acronyms and climate coverage pitfalls
Writing effective news leads
Interviewing skills, use of “interview funnel”
Structuring a story – simple stories
Building an exclusive story from releases
Importance of context, explaining terms, injecting background, importance of not assuming reader knowledge
Writing good headlines
Participants will be asked to draft a climate change story and make the case for it to an editor