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TipSheet is a biweekly source for story ideas, background, interview leads and reporting tools for journalists who cover news of the environment.

For questions and comments, or to suggest future TipSheets, email the TipSheet Editor Joseph A. Davis at sejournaleditor@sej.org.

Journalists can receive TipSheet free by subscribing to the SEJournal Online, the digital news magazine of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. TipSheet is also available through the searchable archive below and via RSS feed.


Latest TipSheet Items

February 15, 2012

  • This user-friendly tool will help you understand and analyze discharges from point sources such as factories, sewage treatment plants, power plants, airports, and feedlots. EPA consolidated data from a number of inventories, making it easier to see who is dumping what, when, and where, and who is known to be in violation of their permit.

February 1, 2012

  • NOAA, the USFWS, and the NY State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (representing all state and wildlife agencies) released on Jan. 19, 2012, a draft of the first national strategy for responding to climate change effects on plants, fish and wildlife. The public comment period is open until March 5, 2012, and public meetings and a webinar will occur until Feb. 22, 2012.

  • Finally, after numerous delays amid allegations of political interference by people who don't want to see documented evidence of climate shifts, the wait is over. The new detailed interactive map is based on data from 1976-2005, and is the first official revision since the 1990 update.

  • This year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Feb 16-20 in Vancouver, BC, offers dozens of sessions on environmental topics — climate change, mineral resource dependency, water, critique of science journalism, disaster recovery, science integrity in government agencies, and more.

  • One day, EPA may propose rules for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and petroleum refineries. But the process continues to drag out, with the consent of the state and local governments and environmental advocacy groups that have been litigating for about five years to make the agency take action.

January 18, 2012

  • The assessments, expected late January 2012, could have wide-ranging direct and indirect effects in realms such as toxic site cleanups, brownfield development, manufacturing processes, domestic food production and sales, and international trade of food and possibly other goods.

  • From the latest issue of SEJ's biweekly TipSheet: EOL, which is searchable by both common and scientific terms, has vastly expanded its content since its launch in 2008 and now provides extensive nitty-gritty on about half of all described species, as laid out in more than 950,000 pages and more than 760,000 images.

  • Snow cover has many implications, from ski resorts short on snow and farmers who rely on snowmelt for irrigation to firefighters and residents battling major fires in unusual locations in the middle of winter and smothering blizzards in areas at the other end of the extreme snow spectrum this year.

  • The analysis can be a useful starting point for targeting angles you want to investigate for toxic pollution stories. The raw data also offer numerous ways to look at occurrences and trends in many ways nationally and locally the agency hasn't addressed or emphasized in its analysis.

January 4, 2012

  • Your coverage of the awards, which range from $1 million to $20 million, can focus on topics such as the environmental pros and cons of each project, how urgent the projects really are, how “shovel-ready” they are, their merits in comparison to the projects they beat out, the political implications of the early funding as the presidential campaign heats up, and more.

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