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.

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.