Publication Items

Toilet-to-tap water jokes aside, the technology and economics of turning sewage into potable drinking water is increasingly seen as a remedy for water-stressed communities. The new BookShelf review of “Purified: How Recycled Sewage is Transforming Our Water,” explains how water shortages, climate change, unsustainable growth and other factors have led some communities, most recently Los Angeles, to consider going “all in” on purified wastewater.

With climate-related legal disputes playing out worldwide, we could see more environmental journalists facing subpoenas to access their newsgathering materials and reveal their sources. Case in point: the legal battle embroiling a news nonprofit over its coverage of pipeline protests. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press’ Chris Young looks at shield laws and resources to help deal with legal threats to your journalistic integrity.

While government censorship may worry journalists, so should self-censorship. That’s the warning in this month’s WatchDog Opinion, whether self-censorship’s “chilling effect” is driven by fears of attack, legal or physical, or by distortions in what it means to be fair, a “bothsidesism” usually pushed by one-sided players. But the bottom line, the column argues, is that when the truth is knowable and known, journalists owe it to their audiences to make the call.

If extreme heat seems an unusual subject for December, the new EJ InSight column reminds us that among the natural disasters sweeping 2023 were waves of devastating global highs. Yet telling that story visually is an enormous challenge, acknowledges former LA Times photo editor Silvia Rázgová, who shares insights into how to portray the seriousness of extreme heat, getting beyond the cliches and connecting (safely) with its dangerous reality.