“Covering Climate Change” launches at News University

It has been five months in the making, and now an interactive course on climate change that I’ve produced in association with Internews and the Poynter Institute’s News University has just gone live (just in time for “Climategate” and Copenhagen…). It covers soup to nuts — climate science and policy, and communicating on climate change.

The course is ostensibly for journalists who don’t know much about the subject and want to bring themselves up to speed. But it’s really more than a course, and it might be helpful for anyone interested in climate change.

In some ways, it’s like an online textbook, with basic background information on everything from the history of climate change research to the physics of greenhouse gases to explanations of the major policy approaches. In others ways, it’s like a series of magazine articles, with story-like elements, side bars, photographs, and illustrations. And since it is on the Web, we tried our best to introduce multimedia and engaging interactive activities too, including a news judgment simulation in which users do some reporting and then have to decide what news to focus on in a story.

So if you know anyone who is interested in climate issues, including  journalists and aspiring journalists but by no means limited to them, please tell them about “Covering Climate Change.” Even your Uncle Walt who listens to Rush Limbaugh regularly and thinks global warming is a conspiracy by greedy scientists and evil journalists like me to establish one-world government may get something out of it. (A conniption fit perhaps, but maybe something more constructive…)

To access the course you first have to register at News U. (Click on the link in the first paragraph of this post to get to the site.) Registration is free, fast and easy. After you’ve signed up, you’re ready to roll.

The course contains a large amount of information. So we estimate that it will take about six hours total to complete. But you don’t have to do it all at once, or even the entire thing. Access what seems interesting and useful. Also, it is designed so that you can jump around to your heart’s content.

We’re hoping that it will prove to be a continuing resource that people will want to come back to when they need an explanation or some information. To help with that, we’re hoping to introduce a search feature some time soon. (We have to wait for News U to migrate to a new platform, which will make that much easier to implement.)

Here’s a description of the course from the splash page at News U:

Once a novelty, the climate change story is now as big as the world, and as local as your back yard. As the story itself has been expanding, so has the journalistic coverage. Today, it is no longer owned by journalists on science and environmental beats. In addition to government and political beats, global warming can be found in beats ranging from international affairs (think climate treaties), to technology (think solar panels), to business (think green industries) and even to the simple general assignment beat (think forest fires, and deaths and illness from heat waves).

That’s the goal of this course ― to give non-expert reporters and citizen journalists a firm grounding in the science and policy underlying climate change.

You won’t necessarily walk away as an expert environmental journalist. But, if your city council decides to pass a carbon tax, or if the politicians in an election you’re covering start debating climate change, this course should help you do your reporting with greater confidence.

I hope you’ll take some time to kick the tires and then take the course for a spin. And I know that some of you will be itching to tell me about something I’ve screwed up! So please, by all means come back here and leave me a comment. As always, I will take all reasonable, evidence-based comments seriously.