As part of its periodic survey of the compelling work by digital journalists using data and multimedia, Reporter’s Toolbox looks at some favorite projects in the last year or so. On the list are granular maps and spinning globes, compelling photo essays and clickable storytelling. But the heart of the best digital journalism, Toolbox reminds us, is that it matters. And these do.
"No food is harder on the environment than beef. Here's how ranchers and researchers are trying to make burgers less burdensome."
"Mining the critical minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries could threaten local water supply and Indigenous culture."
"The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering approving a pesticide for use on Florida oranges and grapefruits despite the fact that agency scientists have repeatedly found the chemical does not meet safety standards designed to protect children’s health, internal agency records show."
"Federal regulators announced warnings against two major food and beverage industry groups and a dozen nutrition influencers Wednesday, as part of a broad action to enforce stricter standards for how companies and social media creators disclose paid advertising."
"On a bright day this fall, tractors crisscrossed Gayle Goschie’s farm about an hour outside Portland, Oregon. Goschie is in the beer business — a fourth-generation hops farmer. Fall is the off-season, when the trellises are bare, but recently, her farming team has been adding winter barley, a relatively newer crop in the world of beer, to their rotation, preparing barley seeds by the bucketful."
"In her new book, Endangered Eating, Sarah Lohman chronicles disappearing foods – and why they need protecting".
"The American buff goose. Amish deer tongue lettuce. The Nancy Hall sweet potato. The mulefoot hog. When food historian Sarah Lohman stumbled on these fantastical-sounding ingredients in a database of vanishing foods called the Ark of Taste, she set off on a journey across the United States to discover more ingredients and traditions that had been abandoned in the annals of history.
Freelance food systems reporter Thin Lei Win believes that if the world doesn’t change the way it produces, processes, transports, consumes and discards food, climate change will worsen and hunger levels will spike. But she also worries that powerful interests want to keep the status quo and cites parallels with the tobacco and fossil fuel industries. More in Freelance Files, including places for freelancers to pitch climate-food stories.
The mining of the ocean floor has stirred up significant debate, much of which clouds the realities of whether and to what degree it would cause ecological harm to one of the world’s greatest resources. This week’s TipSheet looks more closely at the controversy, which may well come to a head in the coming year. The latest entry in SEJournal’s 2024 Journalists’ Guide to Environment and Energy.
"In South Sudan, war and semi-permanent flooding have left people to scavenge for food, with long-term consequences for their health".
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