Lascher at Large » Events of Temporal Proximity

Research shakes up seismic knowledge near Northwest nuclear plant

Bill — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 01:20:36 +0000

The making of a story

This story originally appeared as a three-part series at King5.com [Click to read parts 1, 2 and 3].
The piece was funded with the help of this story’s page at Spot.

Brian Sherrod’s a professional fault finder.

The United States Geological Survey paleoseismologist scrambles up a shrub-covered hillside outside Yakima, WA, points a few hundred yards away and describes how a long stretch of slightly off-colored soil could change perceptions of an entire region’s earthquake readiness.

Three years from now, when the latest iterations of the USGS’s national hazard maps appear, they’ll likely include new information about the Yakima Fold and Thrust Belt. That’s a crinkled landscape of anticlines and synclines – hill-like folds of the earth’s crust – spread across Central and Eastern Washington, including the spot where Sherrod now stands and, further east, the home of the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear reactor.

A new paper by Sherrod and Richard Blakely accepted for publication May 2 highlights compelling new evidence that the Yakima Fold and Thrust belt may be much more seismically active than long thought. If true, these findings could reshape assumptions used in assessments of nuclear safety, just as regulators try to reassess the controversial energy source in the wake of the March 11 Tohoku earthquake in Japan.

The magnitude 9 Tohoku quake wreaked unfathomable havoc in that country. Buildings collapsed. The ground split and a furious ocean stormed the coast, overwhelming defenses. Roiling, flaming seas of debris marched across cities and farms and deep down river valleys, upending houses and decimating one of the most advanced nations in the world.

Barely before the Japanese could grieve, the sight of smoke at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant stoked new concerns. Soon, news of hydrogen explosions and lost power and overheating fuel rods emerged. Emergency responders pumped seawater in a seemingly quixotic attempt to prevent a radioactive release. Officials declared and expanded evacuation zones. The one country that perhaps most viscerally understood the power of the atom found itself haunted by it again.

Overheated debate

Fukushima’s shadow stretched across the Pacific as anti-nuclear activists and industry proponents alike quickly mobilized.

Attention almost immediately turned to the Pacific Northwest, where the Cascadia Subduction Zone has in the past and could again produce quakes similar to what struck Japan.

Nervous thoughts also wandered to a tumbleweed-strewn compound known as the Hanford Site hundreds of miles inland, where nearly six decades ago, as part of the Manhattan Project, it provided the plutonium used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Throughout the cold war, experiments on Uranium and other elements were conducted at Hanford, where nine nuclear reactors produced plutonium for weapons. Operated by the U.S. Department of Energy, the nearly 600-square-mile Hanford Site is now North America’s most contaminated place. A massive cleanup there will last years.

The region also hosts the Columbia Generating Station, which provides 1,150 MW of electricity on land at Hanford leased from the DOE. A joint operating authority known as Energy Northwest and consisting of 27 member public utilities districts from across Washington runs the plant (Once known as the Washington State Public Power Supply System – WPPSS, or “Whoops” as the public often joked – changed its name to Energy Northwest in 1999 to distance itself from a massive municipal bond default that left additional reactors unfinished).

Industry leaders and regulators alike tried to reassure Americans that nuclear power plants across the U.S. are safe.

“At the moment, based on all the information we have, we are convinced that all the plants that are operating in the United States are operating safely,” Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Victor Dricks said.

After sustained public and political pressure, on April 1 the NRC convened a task force to examine nuclear safety.

“We’re conducting a 90-day review of the safety of all of the nuclear plants in the country in response to the events in Japan; a quick look to determine if there are things that we need to do, actions we need to take and things we see there,” Dricks said. “ Later, when we’ve had a chance to thoroughly review all the lessons we learned from Fukushima, we will conduct another review.”

Meanwhile, the commission continues ongoing reviews of plant licenses, including Energy Northwest’s application to extend the Columbia Generating Station’s operating license to 2043 (the plant’s current license expires in 2023). Two plants – ~~Indian Point in New York~~ Vermont Yankee and Palo Verde in Arizona – have been re-licensed after the events at Fukushima.

So far, the Columbia Generating Station’s license application has proceeded smoothly, with a draft environmental impact statement from the NRC scheduled in June. However, NRC letters sent as part of the licensing process reveal the NRC had multiple questions for Energy Northwest about the assumptions it used to develop its response plan for potential accidents. Among the questions: Why did Energy Northwest continue to use 15-year-old studies as the basis for its earthquake preparations, when much more up-to-date information about the region’s seismic profile were available from the USGS and Hanford itself?

Now two months after the Tohoku quake, NRC staff stymied an effort by a coalition of citizens’ groups who want the commission to suspend other activities until it fully reviews lessons learned from the disaster. On May 2, NRC staff recommended that the commission deny the group’s emergency petition.

As a plant currently under review, the Columbia Generating Station became one of the petition’s focuses. The document said Portland, OR-based Northwest Environmental Advocates was “extremely concerned” about the implications of the Fukushima crisis

“They are particularly concerned about the implications of the Fukushima accident in light of earthquake risks to the Columbia Generating Station based on new findings of a structural zone that kinematically connects faults in central Washington with faults in the Puget Sound, the entirety of which may be seismically active,” the petition said. “The Fukushima accident also highlights the hazards associated with facility mismanagement, which has been a chronic problem at the Columbia Generating Station.”

According to Sherrod, who’s not involved with the petition, the findings it refers to are the same ones from his and Blakely’s paper.

Though the field is dynamic and growing, Dricks says in-house seismic experts are up to speed on earthquake data and research. Seismic and other hazards are too important only to deal with during plant licensing, Dricks says.

“All of the nuclear plants in the country are required to have designs that address and take into account the most severe natural environmental hazards that have occurred in the area,” Dricks said. After considering the worst case scenario, the commission then adds in a margin of error to its requirements of plant operators to account for unforeseen circumstances. The commission also studies historical data to determine hazards. If new data suggests inadequacies in the existing design of an NRC-regulated plant, the commission and the licensee analyze whether additional action is necessary. If the task force now reviewing nuclear plant safety has any recommendations to change current severe accident mitigation alternatives, or SAMA, reviews, then that could impact NRC’s review of Columbia’s license, Dricks says.

Meanwhile, the commission pays attention to current operating conditions at nuclear plants across the world.

“We’re always looking for information that can be applied to all U.S. reactors, and we analyze information that could become available from any incident, including Japan,” Dricks said. He said the 90-day review launched after Fukushima is looking at all aspects of NRC activities and will provide any lessons learned from the disaster.

NWEA Executive Director Nina Bell said her organization’s concern isn’t limited to earthquakes, or any single risk at the Columbia Generating Station. Rather, she said, Fukushima, illustrates that natural disasters can combine with human error, poor siting, inadequate design and operational mistakes into cascading problems.

“Northwest Environmental Advocates believes that nuclear power is inherently an experimental technology and that there are any number of unforeseen triggering actions that are likely to take place,” Bell said

Bell, who said it was “shocking” that the NRC issued Vermont Yankee’s new license so soon after the Fukushima event, said the public’s being left out of important decision-making by a public body, though she’s not surprised by the NRC staff recommendation to deny the petition

“Since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeks to the extent possible to eliminate public involvement in its licensing proceedings, the reaction by the NRC staff is, indeed, not a surprise,” Bell said. “At the same time, it is still rather amazing that this huge nuclear accident in Japan is continuing, we still don’t know all of the cascading failures that occurred, and the NRC staff is taking the position that, essentially, we in the United States have nothing substantial to learn from that accident.”

On the case

Rattling along a dirt road in his Silverado pickup, Sherrod describes features of the Wenas Valley that together tell a bigger story. He wants to know whether a scarp – a linear ridge that often indicates sudden shifts in the earth, often, but not always, from earthquakes – indicates an active fault, as he suspects. At first appearing a blur of scrub grass and shrubs, as Sherrod points out exposed basalt and deformations and slight differences in color, the scarp comes into view like one of those 3D images in a Magic Eye poster. The feature’s not new to geologists, but Sherrod believes that if he can dig a trench into it he’ll find more evidence of an active fault and take a step closer to describing a tectonic region far more seismically active and interconnected than once thought.

In a sense, Sherrod, a member of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, is a detective looking for clues of past tremors, and the faults responsible for them.

“I go around and try to identify where active faults are, and try to figure how active they are – in other words, how often earthquakes occur on these faults and how big these earthquakes are,” Sherrod said.

Everything – fossils, layers of sediment, the exacting detail of data from airborne lidar mapping and magnetometers and, of course, lots of digging in the dirt – helps Sherrod solve the case. Clues might include different types of rocks on each side of a scarp or depositions known as colluvium that form when soil that should be on an upper layer shows up further below, suggesting that an earthquake rearranged the layers.

“The more we work over there, the more we’re trying to fit this into a larger tectonic framework,” Sherrod said of his scrutiny of the Yakima Fold and Thrust Belt.

In just the last three years alone Sherrod and his colleagues have found evidence for what are likely three newly-recognized active faults around Yakima, and even more elsewhere in the state.

“I haven’t tallied it up, but I’m pretty close to finding a new active fault every year here in Washington,” Sherrod says. He believes he’d find more if only given the resources to go look for them. “It takes money, it takes time, it takes people.”

One retired geologist deeply familiar with the Yakima Fold and Thrust Belt is intrigued by the study.

“We may have structures here that are actually more active than what we thought in the past, “ said Steve Reidel, who was a Hanford geologist for 30 years and now teaches at Washington State University, Tri-Cities.

The author of “Big Black Boring Rock,” a book about Northwestern geology, Reidel said fault records are difficult to find because scarps are rare, thanks to a different sort of cataclysm: The Missoula Floods. “Only” about 15,000 years ago, the bursting of an ice dam on a glacial lake released huge volumes of water, then over the next 2,500 years, did so about 40 times more. The floods were so forceful that they buried scarps and washed out features that might have been the best evidence of faults.

Reidel says that’s why it’s so crucial that geologists be given the resources to trench suspect faults – even most young faults would still be older than the Missoula Floods – so they can dig beneath the surface, beyond where key evidence may have been washed away.

“The problem is how do you get funding to do it?” Reidel asked. “We did it on weekends and evenings. As a couple of my friends said, our wives funded our research.”

Now, Reidel says, data collection that was always low key until Sherrod, Blakely, and others started exploring links across the Cascades, is changing the minds of people like himself.

“The way I look at it, we’re just at the cusp of that knowledge base now,” he says. “My attitude and ideas of what’s going on over here are changing based very much on what they did, but we don’t know what it all means and we don’t know how significant the young faulting, because we’ve never really had a chance to trench some of the features.”

Even if previously unknown faults are found, that won’t mean a huge earthquake is coming tomorrow, but it also won’t mean there’s no chance of a temblor. What it will mean is better tools with which to evaluate safety of places like Hanford and the Columbia Generating Station. It also doesn’t mean Reidel will leave town any time soon.

“The west coast is particularly dangerous [for earthquakes], but the best way to look at it is the probability of a big earthquake is the same every day and it’s pretty small,” Reidel says. “Some day you’re going to have that earthquake. You don’t know when, but you’re going to have it, but it’s still a small risk every day.”

Old Models

Questions about the Columbia Generating Stations’s safety didn’t start with Fukushima. Last fall the AP reported that the industry-funded Institute of Nuclear Power Operations said the plant was one of two in the nation most in need of improvement. In 2009, the plant had five unplanned shutdowns – known as “scrams” – Seattle’s King 5 TV station reported this April.

Energy Northwest officials refused requests for interviews for this story, but three days after the Tohoku quake, company officials assured a jittery public that the Columbia Generating Station was well prepared for the unlikely event of natural disaster, thanks to redundant backup power systems, a safe distance from the Columbia River in case the upriver Grand Coulee Dam bursts, and engineering that would help the plant weather ground shaking exceeding what would come from the largest earthquake expected in their region

Two weeks after the quake, Energy Northwest CEO Mark Reddeman penned a widely-circulated op-ed further detailing the plant’s preparations and meant to counter public apprehensions about nuclear power.

“In the past weeks, too much misinformation about nuclear energy has played on people’s fears,” Reddeman wrote. “The anti-nuclear lobby has seen an opportunity and they are exploiting it.”

In the op-ed, Reddeman said this wasn’t the time to debate the merits of developing additional nuclear power resources in the U.S. Rather, he wrote, the nuclear industry will thoroughly study in minute-by-minute detail to incorporate lessons learned once the situation at Fukushima stabilizes and can be studied.

“What you should know – and may know already – is that your friends and neighbors who work at Columbia Generating Station have an unwavering dedication to safety,” Reddeman wrote.

On March 10, only a day before the Tohoku quake, Energy Northwest received the latest in a series of letters from the NRC questioning the sufficiency of calculations the company used to inform its cost-benefit analysis of earthquake impact mitigations. A July 1 2010 letter, meanwhile, reveals NRC’s concern that Energy Northwest used old seismic hazard analyses to measure ground-shaking, despite more recent studies of earthquake hazards, like ones done by the USGS or the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for projects related to the cleanup effort at nearby Hanford.

The NRC’s Dricks said these letters only seek to clarify technical details and don’t cast doubt on plant safety.

“There is no reason for people living near the plant to fear for their safety,” Dricks said in an email.

Dricks later said that Energy Northwest’s response to the March 10 letter, as well as some unanswered questions from the July, 2010 letter, is due May 9.

Energy Northwest did respond to the seismic hazards question from that letter in a Sept. 17 response. It told the NRC that the Columbia Generating Station is farther away from seismic sources in the Yakima Folds than the Hanford facilities in question, with different soil structures underneath. Moreover, the response continued, a 2005 study at Hanford suggests that estimates of hazards were similar to what earlier studies had shown, and that data from a 2008 USGS hazard map suggests the company was actually being more conservative than necessary in predicting ground motion.

The question will now become whether the next USGS hazard map – scheduled for release in 2014 – will include updated information about hazards in the Yakima Fold and Thrust Belt. That will depend in large part on how much study the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network team is able to do on the region and on what new knowledge research like that done by Sherrod and Blakely brings to the table.

Neighbors

Of course, shifting knowledge about the Yakima Fold and Thrust belt doesn’t just have direct implications for the Columbia Generating Station. As separate as the Columbia Generating Station and the Hanford Site may be from a management and oversight standpoint, the fact remains that the two are inextricably linked, if for no other reason but geography.

What happens, for example, if the World War II era “Canyon” buildings where uranium was processed collapse? What if the K-basins that store fuel from Hanford’s old N-Reactor leak? What if a radioactive release at Hanford hampers responders’ ability to address a crisis at the Columbia Generating Station?

Eric Holdeman, an emergency management consultant who previously worked at the Washington State Division of Emergency Management, says there’s a proximity challenge for the Columbia Generating Station.

“When you have hazards in proximity to one another, everybody is doing their own thing, but it would be interesting to know to what degree they’ve looked at their 360 degree view, not from natural hazards but technological hazards,” Holdeman, who writes the “Disaster Zone” blog, said. Typically, he said, disasters like the one in Japan aren’t single events, but multiple events that together cause worse problems to occur. “I’ve just lived long enough to know never say never.”

Even given the risk of unexpected events, there’s only so much that can be done about major infrastructure.

“Once a facility like a nuclear power plant is built, it’s built,” Holdeman said. “You might be able to do something with the backup power, but the containment vessel is the containment vessel, it is what it is.”

Ivan Wong, a board member at the Earthquake Engineering and Research Institute, says the seismic hazard in Eastern Washington has probably been underestimated.

“Seismology and geology and this whole business of earthquake hazards is not a perfect science, so as we learn more about earthquake processes and earthquake hazards we have to go back and revisit what we’ve done in the past,” Wong said.

Each earthquake brings new information that contributes to our understanding of risks, Wong said. Regulatory agencies keep tabs on scientific developments as they evolve. Critical structures like power plants are either safe from newly discovered risks, or they’re forced by regulators to retrofit, he said, and therefore the public can feel confident in their safety.

Room for new work

There are significant fears elsewhere in the Northwest.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone – which stretches approximately from Northern California to Vancouver, British Columbia – will someday, possibly soon, unleash a quake similar to the one in Japan. The Northwest is less prepared for subduction quake than was Japan or Chile, where another subduction quake struck in February, 2010, but such an event probably wouldn’t cause heavy damage in the Tri-Cities.

Nevertheless the Tri-Cities aren’t completely safe.

One of Washington’s largest documented quakes hit in 1872. Geologists are still trying to pinpoint exactly how big it was, or where it was centered, but it’s widely believed to have been a 6.8 temblor with an epicenter near the south end of Lake Chelan, perhaps as far south as the town of Entiat. That’s about 100 miles from the Columbia Generating Station.

It’s also unclear what sources inform Energy Northwest’s assessments of the Columbia Generating Station’s risks, since its probablistic safety assessments still refer to a 1994 study, long before much of the current research and data came together.

To be sure, the Columbia Generating Station based its design specifications on the far larger quake near Lake Chelan. Another significant large quake in the region was the 1936 shaker near Milton-Freewater, in Oregon. These quakes are still quite recent from a geological perspective, and the monitoring now in place at Hanford only reveals so much about the record.

In fact, there just isn’t much seismic data from the region surrounding the Columbia Generating Station. The first seismic monitors were installed at Hanford in 1969. The largest quake they’ve ever recorded was a 3.8 (the most recent quake detected in the region was a magnitude 3.3 shaker just east of Hanford on April 29), but that doesn’t mean a larger quake can’t occur.

“The 20 to 30 years we’ve been monitoring is a very short time,” says the USGS geophysicist Joan Gromberg.

In the 1970s, some of the first significant work at Hanford to support a planned Basalt Waste Isolation Project became the first detailed look at the region’s tectonics. That meant working on mapping the region’s faults and folds, work that continued until 1989, when the DOE abandoned the project to focus on a proposed nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Afterword the only data collected was seismicity, which helps provide information about how much the ground shakes or may shake but doesn’t give a sense of the long-term frequency or history of earthquakes.

When Reidel, who came to Hanford to work on the Basalt project, and Al Rohay, who managed the Hanford Seismic Assessment Program for the DOE until the task was transferred to a Hanford Contractor this month, wanted to trench Rattlesnake Mountain, a more than 3,000 foot high treeless mountain that dominates the Horizon, they couldn’t secure funding. Without the DOE building anything new, there wasn’t a justification to study potential faults any further.

“Out of all the industrialized countries, the U.S. has the least amount of geologic mapping done, which is kind of a sad state of affairs,” Reidel said.

Sherrod says his and his colleagues’ ability to map the state’s seismic risks is limited only by the amount of resources the federal government is willing to throw their way, not by a lack of subjects to study. They just need the time, funding and other help necessary to collect and sift through data.

The more data they collect, the more geologists will be able to shift a raging debate about the Columbia Plateau and the Yakima Fold and Thrust Belt: Whether these regions thin- or thick-skinned.

Thick-skinners think that deformations in the Columbia River Basalts cut deep into the seismogenic – or earthquake producing – part of the earth’s crust, and can thus cause larger earthquakes. Thin skin adherents say a structure known as a “decollement” – essentially flat faults where layers of rock slide across one another and bunch up into rises similar to the way a rug pushed across a floor might – shaped the Yakima Folds as it slid between the basalts and the crystalline basement.

Sherrod says his newly accepted paper puts forth a thick-skin model and that he and his colleagues have the data to support that hypothesis. But that doesn’t mean geologists have enough data about the region.

“I have thought for a long time there is just a general lack of knowledge about active faults in Central Washington,” Sherrod said. “There’s a lot of room for new work.”

People like Sherrod and Blakely might be finding the big faults, determining how frequently earthquakes occur on them and understanding how big they can be. There’s still one question they can’t answer.

“When’s the next big one going to be?” Sherrod says. “That’s the one we always get. We just don’t know.”

Sidebar: Proud of the cloud

Sidebar: Tearing down the wall

Sidebar 1: Proud of the Cloud

For decades, the Hanford site drove the economy of nearby Richland – essentially a company town for the nuclear industry – and, to a lesser extent, Kennewick and Pasco, Richland’s neighbors in a metropolitan area known as the Tri-Cities. Now the cleanup continues to define the region; commanding large portions of 2009 stimulus funds and keeping the Tri-Cities economy afloat as the Great Recession hit the rest of the Northwest hard.

All of this reinforces a sense of “plutonium pride.” All over the Tri-Cities are landmarks like Atomic Laundry and Proton Lane. Student athletes at Richland High School play for the Bombers. Their mascots are mushroom clouds.

“We’re proud of the cloud,” says Dave Acton, a Richland native.

Over pints of Plutonium Porter, Richland native Dave Acton – the general manager and brewmaster at Atomic Ale & Eatery – describes his hometown pride. Easily mistakable for Jeff Bridges’s title character from “The Big Lebowski,” Acton rolls his eyes at nuclear fears.

At the confluence of the Yakima, Snake and Columbia Rivers, two other cities besides Richland comprise the Tri-Cities. Pasco is a rail town that’s become a magnet for Latino immigrants. Panaderias, taquerias and predominantly Spanish signage fill the city’s business district. In a city that’s also the gateway to Eastern Washington’s grain farms, Pasco’s outdoor farmer’s market is one of the state’s biggest. To the south, meanwhile, Kennewick is the region’s shopping hub, with both an indoor shopping mall and a sprawl of arterials lined with big boxes and strip malls, while bars, tattoo parlors and headshops – as well as a number of wood furniture refinishers – now dominate the city’s older Downtown.

The surrounding region is largely agrarian. Volcanic soil from the Columbia River Basalts makes the hills and valleys of the Yakima Fold and Thrust Belt prime wine country. Combined with pleasant weather and a resilient economy, the Tri-Cities have grown faster than other parts of the Northwest.

“There’s a lot of people in this area, but they’re not from here,” Acton said. “People sold their cracker boxes in Seattle or California for 3 or 4 million dollars, came here and bought a mansion on the mountainside. Then they come in and they say ‘oh my god, this area is dangerous.’”

Acton’s fed up with newcomers who try to whitewash the region’s history by suggesting that the high school change its mascot, for example.

“Quit trying to change our area,” Acton said. “You moved here. We are who we are.”

Acton says he doesn’t take Richland’s nuclear history as a negative. He says the city has a reason to be proud. Those who came to work on the Manhattan Project are no different than shipbuilders who built the USS Enterprise, or the women who inspired Rosie the Riveter and helped build B-17s and Mustangs.

“Here in Richland we didn’t necessarily ask to be in the war, we didn’t necessarily want to be in the war, but we can say with complete and utmost certainty that we ended that thing,” Acton said. “It’s not about deaths, it’s not about destruction, it’s ‘let’s get this done, so we can all get along now for a change.’ Unfortunately, we never will.”

Now, Acton said, nuclear power is a way of turning the knowledge gained in the pursuit of nuclear weapons back into something useful He dismisses concerns as fear-mongering.

“Panic sells,” Acton says. “Peace doesn’t.”

-Bill Lascher

Sidebar 2: Tearing Down the Wall

Until recently, geologists and geophysicists believed that the young volcanoes of the Cascade Range separated everything to their west from everything to their east. In their new paper, Blakely and Sherrod tear down that wall.

“Now we’re looking at the Cascades as a mountain system,” Sherrod said. He sees himself in a faction of scientists that theorizes that – from the Snoqualmie Pass South – the Cascades are only five million years old, or younger (some volcanologists put their “birth” tens of millions of years before that). That would mean they might have formed after a 10 to 15 million year long period when lava oozed across 63,000 square miles of the Northwest. Those lava flows formed the Columbia River Flood Basalts, one of the largest such flows in the world and a defining feature of the Northwest.

Many subtle clues support this position. One is part of the Pacific Northwest experience: The “rain shadow” caused by the Cascades, for example, which block moisture from passing from the Pacific Ocean to eastern Oregon and Washington. With wet wetter in one side of the Cascades but not the other, you’d expect different vegetation, as is the case today. The Columbia River Basalts, however, contain fossils of wet-weather vegetation you might find in the Great Smoky Mountains, suggesting that the Cascades weren’t there to block rainfall when the basalts formed.

Over the last decade, the USGS mapped faults around the Puget Sound area west of the Cascades to identify hazards in the heavily populated area. As they did, they found fault systems that seem to link up with faults deep in the basalts of the Yakima Fold and Thrust belt. Previously, most geologists thought the Cascade Volcanoes separated the Pacific Northwest into two different tectonic regions. Knowing that the basalts existed before the volcanoes means it’s likelier that the two sides are connected and part of a larger, deeper fault system than previously thought, not isolated features. That doesn’t mean that all the faults will rupture at the same time if one does, but it does show a more complex interaction of seismic stresses than once taught.

“You have to view this as a whole, a whole system. you can’t just kinda look at things in one little piece in isolation,” says Joan Gromberg, a geophysicist who works with Sherrod.

-Bill Lascher

Uncertainty, seismic risks and nuclear regulation

Bill — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 01:30:09 +0000

This is a copy of a blog post I wrote today at spot.us to update supporters about my work on a story exploring the seismic dangers that could face the Columbia Generating Station near Richland, Washington. Click here to read more about that story and how you can help make it happen.

In more than a week of uncertainty following Japan’s largest recorded earthquake, its ensuing tsunami and the still unfathomable specter of a radiological nightmare, the only thing the world has to be certain about is uncertainty itself. We still don’t know the fate of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. We still don’t know how many people perished in the original disaster and how many still cling to life. We still don’t know how much of the Japanese landscape was contaminated with radioactive material, and we still don’t have a clear sense of the sort of recovery Japan faces.

We just don’t know.

So, here in the U.S., why are so many officials so quick to express such certainty, and why are journalists so quick to accept government officials’ and nuclear industry spokespeople’s assurances that yes, we swear, you’re really safe here in the U.S.? How can we be assured there really is little chance we will face disasters similar to that Japan now suffers through?.

I’m not referring to concerns about the immediate impacts of a radiation plume. The risk from this specific incident to U.S. citizens seems minimal. Nevertheless, I think we’re asking the wrong questions if journalists exploring dangers in the U.S. only consider immediate impacts in our country from the Fukushima Daiichi plant and don’t ask how what occurs in Japan to the Japanese people could be instructive for what may happen here. Meanwhile, there’s also problematic framing of the discussion.

This morning, for example, NPR’s Morning Edition led an interview by Renee Montagne with Georgetown psychologist Robert Dupont,who studies fear. Introducing the piece, Steve Inskeep almost jokingly said “As of now, the death toll from Japan’s nuclear emergency stands at zero.” Whether there may not have been immediate death, nor lethal doses, it misses the point to only look at the immediate aftermath and not the current risk. Dupont said other than Chernobyl we “don’t have bodies piling up.” But this isn’t just about bodies piling up. It’s also about bodies bombarded with radiation, bodies detoriorating over time.

Valerie Brown heartbreakingly reminded us of so much Monday in her “Pawning the Chernobyl Necklace” on The Phoenix Sun, fusing exquisite prose and detailed research and scientific knowledge to explain exactly how long lasting these impacts can be for an individual, what fear really feels like, and how blind assurances of safety serve no one.

I’m looking at the seismic risks facing the Columbia Generating Station because I just haven’t seen people telling the full story. Even if that full story reinforces claims that we are safe, it must be told credibly. I worry a bit that other outlets are exploring this topic, that they’ll get to it faster, dispatching salaried, staff reporters to tell it before I can, but then I realize two things: It’s a story that can’t be told too many times, that must be told in as nuanced a manner as possible; it’s also a story that deserves to be told in detail, in depth, and in as explanatory a manner as possible.

Our responsibility as journalists

That question has been rolling around in my brain since I first woke to news last week that officials from Energy Northwest – the company that runs the Columbia Generating Station, the only commercial nuclear plant in the Northwest, had assured the public that the plant is safe from Earthquakes. Officials certainly have to be cautious about panicking the public (especially when an American run on potassium iodide pills could threaten availability for the Japanese most immediately at risk).

So maybe the pressure is on journalists: we need to do a better job – without fear mongering – of asking just what evidence officials are using to justify their claims. How up to date are the seismic studies? What historic data they use? How thoroughly have geologists studied the Columbia Plateau’s potential, and how have those studies been integrated into designs at the Columbia Generating Station and the regulations that govern it? It’s our job to ask these questions and not to accept “we’re safe” as a satisfactory answer, especially when a simple google search – much like the one I performed the day I heard that story – reveals that historic quakes 90 miles away from the plant ahve exceeded its designs in magnitude and that dangers exist.

Simple Google searches, of course, are not enough. That’s why I’ve been poring through significant accident mitigation assessments, emergency management plans, and seismic profiles as I try to identify who I should call first. I always struggle with that when I start working on a story, and I should get over my uncertainty. What I’m finding so far, though, only prompted more questions. For example, the geologic area the plant sits on is one notorious for “bad data” about its seismicity. Again. Uncertainty.

Meanwhile, I also need to bring myself up to speed on current geology and seismology (why, for example, is horizontal ground shaking a better indicator of a quake’s strength than the ricter scale?), nuclear policy (if you thought the alphabet soup of federal agency names was bad, just read a report from the NRC – and hope you have a pot of coffee brewed) and just who would be at risk from a radiological release.

Thank you for your continued support

But I’m ready for the challenge.

We (read journalists) need to do a better job of asking people one simple question “how do you know what you know?” or “how do you justify the claims that you make?” So, if we want to know the risks earthquakes pose to nuclear facilities or any other sensitive area, shouldn’t we start with those who have spent their professional lives studying them?

Meanwhile I’m trying to strategize when I’ll go to the Tri-Cities to explore the community affected by this. I don’t want to do that until I have a better grasp of the issues involved so I can ask better questions, but I want to make sure I spend enough time actually getting to better know the area I’ll be reporting on.

It’s encouraging to see, however, that even before my first blog post dozens of you indicated you want these kinds of questions to be asked. Thank you so much for making this story a possibility and showing me that I’m asking the kinds of questions you want asked.

However, don’t be shy about telling me what more you want to know. What questions about this topic am I missing? what am I being too lazy about? What am I overlooking?

Following a War Correspondent’s Footsteps to the Oil Spill

Bill — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:39:47 +0000

Two nights ago I tweeted the following: Dreaming of dropping everything to report on the oilspill like an old fashioned war correspondent. Anyone hiring experienced reporters?

At first it was a bit of a whim. I’ve been working on a complex but often dry assignment. During breaks I’ve read these fascinating – if horrifying – stories about the spill. There are just so many pieces of this story that need to be covered. How could I contribute to that coverage, particularly when the story will have such far reaching impacts on our world?

Then I thought: why not just ask? Who needs help reporting on the spill? Why not offer my services as an experienced reporter who’d be willing to contribute his work, his time, and his energy?

So, who needs help?

Two years ago, when I applied to grad school, I described our shifting environment and its impact on society, politics, economics and culture — let alone life — as perhaps the only great global story. As I did, I had my grandmother’s cousin, Melville Jacoby, on my mind.

As I’ve described before, Melville served as a correspondent in China and Southeast Asia in the 1930s and early 40s. His work appeared in places like Time, Life and the United Press Syndicate at the onset of World War II. Younger than I am now, he was so deeply immersed he reported from the midst of a narrow escape from the Philippines after the Japanese invasion and, during his travels through China, became close to Chiang Kai-Shek. Killed at 25 in an accident in Australia in 1942, he left behind rich accounts of his life in the form of letters, dispatches and photos now in my grandmother’s possession.

As I learned from my grandmother about Melville, I realized he played a central role telling stories about one small part of another great, global crisis. Perhaps the war was more romantic than seemingly glacial environmental changes (though really, they aren’t so glacial) but both crises are the defining milieus of a particular generation. “Like Melville,” I wrote, “I want to chronicle my generation’s response to its crisis.”
‘
I have some travel credits, some time, and a little cash saved up.

I even have Melville’s typewriter.

If that could get me to the Gulf Coast, could there be a floor to sleep on for the minutes I’m not in the field? Who’s in need of a collaborator? A researcher? An errand boy? A transcriptionist?

Let’s talk. Even if it’s not in the field, how can I help?

All Things Not Considered in NPR’s Oil Drilling Coverage

Bill — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 22:18:25 +0000

Yesterday afternoon President Obama shocked the country when he announced plans to open parts of the Atlantic and Alaskan coasts to oil drilling. Though the Pacific Coast was left untouched, the move could open up huge expanses of ocean elsewhere.

Many environmentalists treated the news as a betrayal and yet another delay in the move away from a fossil fuel economy. Business leaders were generally heartened by the news. Some Republicans expressed cautious optimism about the President’s willingness to compromise, though others saw the move as thinly-veiled politics.

News organizations, meanwhile, treated the news as the surprise it was, with banner headlines and lead stories on broadcasts. You can read about the decision many places on the Web. I’d like to discuss, instead, how the news has been covered, particularly by National Public Radio. I believe NPR missed a chance to thoroughly cover the story. Listeners who first learned about the decision during their commutes home yesterday afternoon and on their way to work today, thus, missed a chance to fully understand a decision whose implications may reverberate for decades.

National Public Radio rightly decided to lead All Things Considered with Scott Horseley’s report on Obama’s decision on offshore drilling. As NPR’s White House correspondent, Horseley focused primarily on the politics of the announcement. His report included Obama’s statements justifying the decision as well as a sound bite from Florida Senator Lindsey Graham expressing what it meant for Republicans. It also included a reaction to the announcement by energy industry analyst Phil Flynn.

Horsely’s four minute piece described the decision as one “sure to turn some green energy advocates red” and briefly included two of those advocates’ voices: a snippet of a statement from the League of Conservation Voters and part of an interview with National Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke. Beinecke expressed her organization’s concern about “some of the most sensitive marine environments in the country.”

Missing from NPR’s follow-up coverage, though, was significant analysis of the decision from those advocates’ perspectives or from other, perhaps more neutral analysts. By contrast, NPR has since devoted much of its coverage to oil industry reaction beyond Flynn’s analysis in the initial story.

Immediately following Horseley’s report, NPR aired four and a half minutes of discussion between All Things Considered Host Robert Siegel and Ben Cahill, an oil industry analyst from PFC Energy, about what the news meant for the oil business. What NPR didn’t do is find someone who could talk about what the decision means for the ocean, for the global environment, and for economies and community health near the proposed drilling areas. Such a source needed not be Beinecke or other environmentalists. A marine scientist, a climatologist, or a geologist could have provided valuable analysis of the decision’s implications. If a news outlet wants to consider all things related to a society, it must not only consider that society’s business, but its politics, its, people, and its natural surroundings. All of those forces and more – business included – shape a society, a country and a world.

Today brought Morning Edition and a story by Scott Finn titled “Environmentalists Question Offshore Drilling Plan.” Despite the headline, the only concern expressed in the three-minute piece came from Kathly Douglas, a St. Petersburg power walker and opponent of oil drilling. I don’t think the power of citizen and community voices should be discounted and I’m cautious about which voices we call authoritative, but if Douglas had further background and credibility as an opponent of the drilling, Finn did not present her credentials (A simple Google search shows she’s involved with a regional branch of the Sierra Club focused on coastal issues in Florida, though that background wasn’t noted by Finn). As it turns out, in a piece advertised as discussing opposition to the drilling, hers was the lone voice expressing such opposition. Finn did include other St. Pete Beach visitors not as concerned as Douglas about the possibility of drilling. He also spoke with David Mica, the executive director of the Florida Petroleum Council, who welcomed the President’s decision. In fact, the piece also included the only scientific voice NPR has yet aired reflecting upon this story, the University of South Florida’s Al Hine, who countered claims that there might not be enough oil off the Florida coast to justify the drilling.

Yesterday afternoon, Scott Neuman (Apparently only Scotts are reporting this story) wrote an accompanying story for NPR’s Web site that more deeply explores this topic. He presented detailed information on government estimates of how much oil and gas might be found off the Atlantic coast. He also introduced Oceana, another environmental organization opposed to the drilling, further described the historical context of the drilling and explained what other obstacles have to be surmounted before. drilling can start. Still, that’s the limit of NPR’s added coverage. While I applaud the network’s use of the Web to deepen its coverage, I question how many listeners actually decided to pursue that further coverage. I also wonder why it hasn’t used the Web to deepen its analysis (and provide interpretations beyond Cahill’s).

Reporters working on tight deadlines are not obligated to devote precisely equal amounts of time to sources on different sides of controversial topics, particularly complex, ongoing discussions that involve many more than two sides. They should, however, strive to do so. Journalists must make far more complicated judgments about how they weigh the voices included in their reporting. They have to take care not to perpetuate the falsely dichotomous conflict narratives so prevalent in contemporary news coverage, but they also have to provide perspectives of comparable authority when covering controversial topics (particularly when they specifically refer to controversy in their stories).

Unless something changes by the time today’s All Things Considered airs, which East Coast listeners will have heard by the time this entry posts, the network will have missed its chance to provide a thorough introduction to this very significant news. The same argument could rightly have been made if NPR spoke predominantly with Beinecke and her allies and minimized its exploration of oil industry voices.

Even if there is substantive follow-up of the story this evening, the damage has been done. NPR has already framed the decision in audiences’ minds without providing thorough analysis or context.

Making the most of making the media

Bill — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:08:35 +0000

Finding Community | Stopping to Breathe | False divisions | Continuing the discussion | Other Voices

I arrived in Los Angeles late Monday afternoon. As I landed, I watched the sunset turn the Santa Monica Mountains that golden hue they turn in late fall, caught glimpses of the skyscrapers along Wilshire Blvd., marveled at the sheer everywhereness of it all and traced a line from the Hollywood sign down to the corner of Hollywood and Vine, where, nearly a century ago, my great-great-grandfather’s decision to rent a barn on his sprawling ranch to two young filmmakers for $250 a month might have made much of the city’s role as a media mecca possible. The tableau pulled at my heart, one more landing in a city I’ve called home for only a year, but which has been in my blood for five generations.

For years, though, as I hinted in a post last Spring, I’ve danced with another city. Over the past week, the motions became more certain, thanks in part to the energy I tapped into at the We Make the Media Conference at the University of Oregon’s Turnbull Portland Center.

Thoughts about the future raced through my mind as my plane descended. Some of these thoughts are familiar to the world at large. Some are personal. When it comes to Saturday’s conference, I’ve had to take some time to digest, get back home, and prepare my next steps. They include returning to Portland very soon — and more permanently — in part to join the community of mediamakers who emerged at the conference.

Finding Community

I want to reiterate this word “community.” For whatever it’s worth, however hokey it might be dismissed as, I found community on Saturday. In a way I haven’t been able to say for quite some time, I’ve found my people, at least my people for this moment. Perhaps I’m just famished, but I just haven’t found these people in Los Angeles.

I’m emphasizing this for a reason. For all the critiques I have of We Make the Media, and all the many more already so eloquently articulated by other thinkers (Click here for a list of the reflections I’ve found, some of which I’m responding to here), I’m stunned by how, a few days later, I remain invigorated by the event. Like Abraham Hyatt and many others, I left the event quite drained, but now feel energized. Though the event may not have gone in the direction organizers hoped, perhaps it was a success anyhow.

A sort of “sub-organizer” of the event, Hyatt was the first to bring it to my attention. I know, as others do, that he put a great deal of work into both making it happen, as he does in other efforts cultivating Portland’s media community. So I looked to him first for his dissection of what went right and what went wrong at the conference.

Despite my hopefulness, significant concerns emerged. As much as I felt I found community, I was as troubled as others about the limits to the pool from which I could derive that community. As Hyatt admitted, conference organizers may not have made enough of an effort to reach out to community media or to media that “reflected the racial diversity of Portland:”

“We were lucky to have KBOO come on as a sponsor a few days before the conference. But what if that had happened a few weeks before? Who else could we have invited? And how would that dialogue have shaped the planning of the event? If we’re going to create a media organization that breaks out of the old news models, we need to be including people from outside traditional media outlets.”

I don’t think I’ll write much more about this issue right now. Hyatt acknowledges the problem succinctly, and others have addressed racial diversity far more effectively than I may be able to. Please do continue to discuss the topic. I want to be part of a growing, inclusive media community and I want to know how I can work to enable that inclusiveness.

Stopping to breathe

What I do feel comfortable discussing is technology, connectivity, and other forms of inclusiveness. Many have discussed the “Twitter corner” that emerged — largely for reasons of proximity to power outlets and the wi-fi access-granting powers of Suzi Steffen — as if it was a breakaway counter-conference. That’s not entirely true, and I’ll get back to that point.

Early in the day, Steffen complained on Twitter about the lack of a projection of the live Twitter stream that emerged at the event. I agree that a common Twitter hashtag (which, of course, became #wmtm) and information about wi-fi access should have been announced before the event. The digital element of the conference felt like an afterthought, and it’s rather astounding that an effort largely inspired by nonprofit journalism endeavors in Minnesota and San Diego, Web-only endeavors, did not have online elements that didn’t feel like afterthoughts.

That said, I don’t know if I agree with Steffen’s concerns about the lack of a projected twitter stream. Yes, it may have kept the entire crowd informed about the discussion happening online, but I wonder whether this is a great example of how Twitter should be a platform people choose to participate in or not (During an early Twitter exchange about recording and documenting the online discussion and the event in general, Steffen convinced me of the importance of being able to opt-in to or out of the online discussion.

Could one opt out of a projected stream, though? I’m not certain that really would be possible. Perhaps some of my fellow tweeters might argue that’s fine, that it just offers a different way of presenting what’s taking place at the conference and eliminates the tenuous authority we place on anointed speakers. It would change the event’s dynamic. I haven’t been to an event with a live Twitter stream yet, so I’m speaking on conjecture, but I feel the conversation might get too disjointed and too distracted.

It was worrisome enough to me to see how caught up I got in the Twitter stream myself. What would happen if every participant was having fractured, interrupted conversations, if the speaker responded to every tweet, or some of them, or if she didn’t respond to any? How would that affect the event’s dynamic? I think it would become far more than a stream. And again, that’s fine, but I think this is a point where we need to acknowledge that just because we have the ability to discuss and comment and report everything that happens, doesn’t mean that we should.

Sometimes even if we have tools available to us, tools that are incredibly useful in certain contexts, we don’t always have to use them. I have a car. It’s comfortable and it goes quite quickly from point A to B, even taking traffic into consideration. But I’m often much happier, much better served, by reaching my destination on foot, by bike, or via public transportation, specifically because each of those methods offers its own way to experience the journey. While I have the car (and no, not everyone has the luxury to choose), I don’t have to use it every time I leave my house. Just because we have technology doesn’t mean we must use it, and I think that point was missing from discussion at the event, and it’s often missing from our discussion of the “future of journalism.”

During the event,Courtney Sherwood announced on twitter that she was

“Not enough of a multitasker to keep up w/ #wmtm live tweets. I’d rather listen to speakers than read other folks’ summaries and debates.”

I agreed in tweets here and here, in which I argued:

“I think it’s worthy to ask if we should examine this need to cover everything as quickly as possible,”

and

Sometimes I think we need to stop and breathe, let the world happen, digest it, and report on it when we’re ready, if we’re ready.”

We really do need to breathe. I’ve expressed similar concerns over time in posts here, here, and here, at one point noting that

As we fret and flail we risk forgetting about the words we’re stringing together, the information we’re reflecting upon and sharing, and the stories we’re telling. Whether breath on our lips, ink spread across a page, keys hammering into a ribbon or electrons running through a circuit, I’m concerned with how thoughts are captured, contained, altered and disseminated.

This perspective was even acknowledged by a tweet from Portland Phlush during our small network discussion, the same discussion that evolved into talk of an incubator (more on that very soon).

What’s crucial, of course, is that Sherwood opted for herself to disconnect from Twitter, as I noticed many others did as they closed their laptops (for what it’s worth, there were plenty of people on laptops not sitting in the “Twitter corner”).

T.A. Barnhart, decidedly not a journalist, may have said it even better than I could (friends from the Annenberg Specialized Journalism program will recognize this as a far more articulately-worded form of the “different colors of paper” argument I often made last year):

“In the end, my real work is no different than an opinion writer of a century ago: reading, thinking, writing, responding, and then more of the same. I get books from the library, bookstores — and Amazon. I read newspapers and magazines — online. I correspond with friends, politicals, colleagues, etc — via email, Twitter, websites and even by phone and in person. I write notes on paper, and I write notes on my laptop, which is not really functionally any different than typing up a few pages of notes and storing in a manilla folder. I use print-outs to proof longer drafts. And I publish online, although I have begun the process of creating an actual book.”

Despite my reservations about the projection of a twitter stream, about the distraction they might cause, I know something else. These sorts of thoughts, these backchannels have existed in one form or another since as long as there have been conferences, really since as long as we’ve had the ability to communicate (see my article here about how scientists at USC are exploring the crucial role of backchannels in interpersonal communication).

Though i agree with Hyatt that the resistance to technology by some of the core organizers was disappointing, I differ with his claim that “technology is journalism.” I’m left wondering, “how so?” He mentions code and reporting tools and new ideas, but I don’t see how at least the first two are anything more than tools. Yes, new technology does open up new opportunities, but those opportunities are absolutely dependent upon what one does with the technology, what stories one tells, what messages one delivers. New technology still requires vision, tenacity, creativity and curiosity.

False divisions

Unlike Hyatt, I don’t agree that “the corner” had no outreach or communication with the rest of the groups offering proposals at the conference. One of the misconceptions about “the corner” that has now been widely challenged on other blogs was that we were participating in an us-vs-them mentality. I think the fact I delivered via Twitter and this very Web site my own statements above about resisting the need to constantly stream information suggests that technology can be used in many ways. Technology by its simple existence as technology does not necessarily alter what’s told.

Anyhow, I grew to enjoy “the corner,” despite my dabbling with slow journalism, precisely because it was welcoming, inviting, and open to divergent perspectives and challenges. Though it didn’t emerge from there, I don’t think the idea of a content-neutral incubator that would serve as a physical and virtual space for journalists took off among this crowd because we saw it as a radical alternative to the other proposals. Instead, it succeeded because we perceive it as a space where journalists of all forms, in all mediums, with all opinions about where journalism should go and how it could be defined could find a place to work. It is by nature encompassing. Such a space would be what we make of it, not what it makes of us, and it would cater to the evolving, changing needs of independent freelancers (or, with a nod to Michelle Rafter, entrepreneurial journalists).

As Jen Willis — who participated in the same small group I did — put it

“Even in our break-out sessions — I was in one about smaller, online networking groups — the ideas and comments floated in Twitter were often better, more focused and more forward-thinking than what was happening ‘verbally.’”

Indeed. We were so caught up with process and rules and confusion over what we were supposed to be doing in that room that those of us who had an idea of what should be done, or at least what we wanted to see, didn’t wait for it to happen. We took to Twitter to begin developing our own future and to further articulate many of the ideas that would, eventually, form the basis for the incubator proposal.

There really has been a false dichotomy set up between an “old guard” and young technophiles in some of the responses to the event. Responding to (and defending) the event was Ron Buel, who, disappointingly perpetuated the idea that there were two camps at the event (Buel’s commentary is also available on OurPDX):

“The Old White Guys who believe in traditional journalistic values – thinking, reporting, open-mindedness, ethics, that kind of old-fashioned thing – and technology-hip independent young journalists twittering away as the discussion ensued, even though it is they, not the Old White Guys, who will make the new reality of journalism happen in the digital age, or not.”

This statement saddened me. Before the conference I enjoyed engaging both Buel and Barry Johnson on the discussion papers they prepared. Though I was critical at times, I welcomed the effort they put into the event’s preparation and wish more people had become involved in the pre-event discussion. Such involvement — which might have required better publicity and outreach before the event — might have prevented some of the aimlessness and confusion at the day’s outset.

Nevertheless, Buel’s statement highlights exactly the attitudes frustrating to many journalists and conference participants. Categorizing us as either protectors of “traditional journalistic values” or “technology-hip independent young journalists twittering away” illustrates the core misunderstanding of our own industry. We are not either/or. We weren’t at the conference and we aren’t in life. We are not either relics of the past or dreamers of the future. We are far more fluid than we have been cast, and I think Buel’s doing so shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the very people he wanted to involve at this conference. Moreover, he takes far too many assumptions into his piece. Why does he continue to insist that we “are not worried about what will happen to our democracy?”

<>Again, the proposed incubator offers an example of just how concerned we are about democracy and the quality of our journalism. We are proposing a space where we can cultivate professional skills, nurture community, constantly improve and respect individual independence and diversity simultaneously.

Buel instead dismisses the incubator as a “neat” idea. Actually, it’s more than a neat idea. It’s also not wholly unrelated to championing “traditional values” and it is not unworkable. What we are discussing is setting up a space to develop core strengths among journalists of all stripes. We have concrete plans for next steps, just as do the other two work groups Buel claims are filled with old folks (though I think each is more broadly supported than he characterizes, as the incubator is as well).

It wasn’t just the old guard (to use a characterization I just rejected) who created this false dichotomy. Many of the tech savvy participants did as well, though I think there may be issues of muddled communication here (and perhaps with Buel and Steve Smith and others who were more resistant to the Twitter corner too). For example, Steve Woodward describes a “cultural gulf” in his discussion of the “futures – plural – of journalism .” I agree with Michael Anderson, who responded in Woodward’s comments area, arguing that despite the overall quality of Woodward’s “we should all be cautious of the stiffening narrative that the Young Twittering Turks have some monolithic point of view as a group.”

Continuing the discussion

These sorts of discussions — not just the event itself, but the chatter in blogs reflecting on the event, and in their comments sections, and on impromptu listservs and in “the corner” — should be happening everywhere. They very well may be. As far as I can tell, they are not happening here in Los Angeles, despite the presence of countless, passionate, hungry journalistic minds. Sure, Annenberg hosts a number of speakers and events related to the future of journalism, and similar events take place across the city, especially thanks to the efforts of the Society of Professional Journalists’ local chapter, the Los Angeles Press Club and other groups (JellyLAand, to a lesser extent, Blankspaces andWhereMMM are working to change the way professionals collaborate and work with one another).

Though I’ve certainly found passionate journalists here, I can’t think of a consistent group, an energized core. Those events that do bring journalists together feel more like pits of desperate networking, reflecting an L.A. attitude I’d normally dismiss as mythology. I haven’t felt a part of something more interested in promoting the community and the field of journalism than individual career fates perhaps since I was at Annenberg. Even there, those of us who cared had to fight against the passionless vapidity of marketing ourselves, of style over substance, of figuring out how to sell our product instead of cultivating the product we hoped to sell.

But I haven’t found the core, creative passion that electrified the air at WMTM. Again, maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but I can’t feel it happening. Instead, we watch grudge matches (Though insightful, well-argued grudge matches)debating what happened to the LA Weeklyand fret about the seemingly perpetual implosion of the Los Angeles Times. Perhaps I’m just heartbroken I can’t get a foothold in a city that means so, so much to me. Nevertheless, as much as I worry about L.A., I’m so excited about the possibilities in Portland.

Again, I turn to Jen Willis:

“We came together as professionals interested not only in creating content, but in helping to craft and guide how that content is delivered. I’d like to think we showed up because we’re proactive and optimistic, and because we honestly give a damn about what’s happening (and not happening) in the media today.”

Really, there are possibilities. It’s silly that some people were disappointed that the conference didn’t reach concrete conclusions. No one should have expected the event to save journalism in Portland or elsewhere, though that seems to have been the attitude of some (though certainly not all) of those critiquing the conference. In any event, something was accomplished. Though there was a tremendous amount of wasted time and frustrating breakdowns in communication, the energy that emerged behind the concept of a news incubator is encouraging. I’m disappointed I can’t make it right back to Portland next week for the Digital Journalism Portland/SPJ social hour to be part of the first next steps in making it happen.

Other reflections on We Make the Media

For more nuts and bolts breakdowns of the conference, different perspectives on its implications, and other thoughts about the direction of journalism and the media in Portland, please read these other blogs, listed in no particular order (my apologies to those I’ve left out, but this is what I’ve seen so far). I highly recommend reading the comments on these posts too, as they are incredibly insightful. Oh, and please comment on this piece too!

A life, a career, a world repurposed

Bill — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:30:04 +0000

What are you doing this Saturday?

Perhaps you’re taking a stand to help slow climate change by participating in one of more than 4,000 actions in 170 countries being organized by 350.org. The number, as the organization will tell you, represents the parts per million of carbon dioxide thought to be the upper limit for avoiding runaway climate change (we are currently at 387 parts per million).

You can come to your own conclusions about whether or not to join these actions. As a journalist, perhaps I shouldn’t attempt to sway you to action. However, it is also my responsibility to describe the world in which we live, to clearly present information and to sort through the distractions – both unintended and intended – that obscure the truth.

As my career has evolved, I have found myself increasingly drawn to exploring how society copes with the possibility of a changing environment from a political, scientific, sociological and cultural perspective. Many facets of contemporary life have an environmental component, including politics, the economy, culture and technology.

Much is made about the emergence of green technologies and there are great business stories to pursue revolving around sustainability, but there is so much more. Voters are making green issues a higher priority, cities are incorporating environmental standards and requirements in planning decisions, romantic partners are choosing to hold carbon-neutral weddings and environmental litigation and prosecutions are keeping many lawyers, and law enforcement personnel, busy.

There are many questions to be answered about the intersections of the environment and society. How do we as a society cope with the possibility of a changing climate and shifting availability of resources? How do environmental transitions affect society, politics, family and personal relationships? How do they affect our mythology and our beliefs? Humans tend to progress in crisis, or to change, to be at their best, and I would like to observe and document society’s reaction to environmental shifts. How does a slow-moving crisis affect human behavior?

In recent years I’ve had discussions with my grandmother about her cousin, the journalist Melville Jacoby. Melville served as a correspondent in China and Southeast Asia in the 1930s and early 40s, eventually penning articles for outlets such as Time, Life and the United Press Syndicate at the onset of World War II. Melville was my age at the time — younger actually — yet he was so deeply immersed he reported from the midst of a narrow escape from the Philippines after the Japanese invasion and, earlier during his travels through China, became close to Chiang Kai-Shek. Killed at 25 in an accident in Australia in 1942, he left behind rich accounts of his life in the form of letters, dispatches and photos now in my grandmother’s possession.

In exploring these accounts, I realize Melville played a central role telling stories about one small part of another great, global crisis. Perhaps the war was more romantic than the environmental movement’s seemingly glacial pace, but both crises are the defining milieus of a particular generation. Like Melville, I want to chronicle my generation’s response to its crisis.

When I applied to USC more than a year ago I wrote about how the shifting environment is fast becoming a global story, possibly the only global story, a point similar to one recently argued by Bill McKibben and other journalists. Back in the Spring of 2008 I argued that whether one accepts climate change as a preventable human crisis, or disagrees that it is a threat (or is caused by human activity), the mere discussion of the environment has global and local implications. If a shipping company invests in more efficient cargo jets because it expects to save money by stretching its fuel spending or does so because it perceives a public relations boost, that company is making a decision with tremendous impact on the environment. At a more local level, the city resident who uses a combination of bikes and mass transit to get to work because she realizes the reduction in her carbon footprint, or because she just cannot afford to purchase a car, will affect the environment either way. There is a difference in scale, but the outcome of either decision will impact many beyond the company and the young woman, altering the experiences and decisions of those additional parties.

Last night, I attended the monthly mixer of my local chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists. For the subway trip to the event, held in Downtown Los Angeles, I brought with me a copy of Elizabeth Kolbert‘s Field Notes from a Catastrophe. The book presents a stunning narrative of global climate change’s impact. Rich with science, Field Notes remains a page-turner, as well-crafted as it is well-researched. “That,” I kept thinking as I read, “is the sort of work I should be doing.”

Yesterday, in a widely dissected event, the Yes Men satirized the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by pretending to represent the group at a press conference and announcing that the chamber had reversed its position on climate change. The event reminded me of the beauty of creative action. It also, coincidentally, sparked thoughts on the flaws in contemporary instant journalism, a subject that has been dissected in the Toronto Star and by Dana Milbank, as well as in a discussion I have been a part of on the SPJ’s First Draft blog (and many other locations since I first drafted this post)

What all this reminds me is that I should be writing every day. I should be dissecting this problem and pouring my energy into it. I have the time. I have the preparation. I have the knowledge. I don’t want to beat myself up too much, but I do have to acknowledge that if I want to chronicle my generation’s great struggle as Melville did 70 years ago I can’t wait for the story to come to me.

In recent months I’ve been applying to dozens of jobs. I’ve been trying to figure out my future. I’ve been pitching stories, writing cover letters and trying to identify myself, what I want and what I have to offer. I’ve been telling strangers why I matter to them and why only I can give them what they need. Meanwhile, I’ve been standing still, throwing things against the wall, rather than creating the world I want for myself. I don’t say all this to draw attention to myself and my individual efforts. Instead, I say this because we cannot have the world we want unless we create it. It’s that simple.

Mt. Wilson Observed

Bill — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:32:00 +0000

“Two firefighters die.”

Each thick black letter blazes through the scratchy grime of the plexiglass newspaper rack. They ignite my attention. They singe my mind even after I pass, as I board a 754 Rapid at Wilshire and Vermont and as I disembark in Los Feliz. They smolder as I walk to the library, where I’ll fret and worry over personal concerns. As I wonder about my future, as my life goes on, as I deconstruct my own life and construct meaningless little tragedies out of what I find, a real tragedy sinks in.

It began as something of a triviality. Its faint scent that first day offered an occasion for a weak joke about smog, that easy target in Los Angeles.

The week moved on. The smoke rose over the horizon. The chatter rose. First slight concern on Twitter, then brief updates on hourly radio news updates, until the full force of the conflagration took shape in 16 thick, charred letters across the top of the Los Angeles Times.

My watery eyes. The orange shadows on the building across the courtyard from my apartment. The mountains of pyrocumulus clouds I’ve seen from the shores of Venice to the seats of a Blue Line train as it headed south toward Long Beach and every inch in between. The dry, inescapable heat. Layers of reality settled upon my skin alongside the caked, salty remnants of my sweat.

By today, the Station Fire in the San Gabriel Mountains has become nationwide news, as have a number of other blazes. Among the news: the fire’s march on Mt. Wilson, where flames threatened broadcast transmitters and a historic observatory, a complex essential to the history of modern science. The observatory holds special meaning for me. In late April I visited the observatory as I closed out my time at USC’s Annenberg School for Communications. K.C. Cole took my fellow science writing students and me to the observatory. We marvelled at the spot where Edwin Hubble learned our Milky Way was not the universe’s only galaxy and discovered crucial evidence of the Big Bang. We wondered where Albert Einstein may have set foot during a visit. We fantasized about joining one of the viewing parties often hosted at the observatory. We thrilled that, a century later, the observatory still contributes to our unfolding understanding of the universe we inhabit.

That day, I took a few pictures of the observatory, a few of which accompany this post. It’s not particularly stunning photography, but I’ve thought of the site often throughout the past few days and thought I’d share some selections of what I saw during my visit. Featuring Hubble’s locker, old equipment that seems like it came from a 60′s sci-fi show and the massive structure housing the 100-inch Hooker telescope — just one of the observatory’s telescopes — the pictures evoke my memories of that visit and my awe at both the human drive for knowledge and our industrious nature.

That visit meant something else to me too. I recall stepping out of a friend’s car after parking outside one of the telescopes. The air was chilly and crisp, even though it was nearly May, and I smiled when I saw a patch of snow, the first snow I had seen in person in more than two years. The scent of pine needles danced around me, intoxicated me, lured my mind to the great outdoors. It was a scent I missed, a familiar scent that reminded me of home, even though home, in a literal sense, sat on a suburban street in Ventura devoid of pine trees. It was a reminder of the Earth, this unimaginable, expansive place we wander through every second.

And this landscape had special meaning. Four years earlier — minus a month or so — I joined friends for a camping trip in these same mountains to celebrate a friend’s 25th birthday. It was one of those memorable trips where the lines between friends and family blur, a trip that offered another sense of home. That trip to the observatory was my first time back to that wilderness. This week, when I saw the smoke, even before I learned the observatory was threatened, I thought of the camp site my friends had found. Of the creek we hiked upon and the rope swing from which some of them launched into a frigid creek. Of the children in our group playing among pine cones. Of acoustic music around the campfire. Of comfortable smiles. Of the contentment of nature.

As important as the landscape and the history is, I know two families have been shattered by the loss of the firefighters who perished, and I realize there are at least dozens more whose lives have been permanently changed by the loss of their homes. I’ll treasure those men’s sacrifice fighting to save this place that, in just two short slivers of time, meant so much to me.

For the moment, whatever the observatory’s fate, however the fire progresses, I’ll remember that small speck of wondrous land high above the undulating ribbons of concrete and plaster and electric light expanding outward from this corner of the universe we call home.

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