When I first started out, journalism used to involve finding out something no one else knew, writing it up, putting it in the paper, and then going home.
Maybe that’s a bit simplistic, but essentially, we had a single, daily product for reaching readers: the paper. Cramming a whole day’s news into it wasn’t always easy: pouring fluid, volatile events into a small, fixed container has its limitations, like trying to mop up an endless gush of toxic sludge with a single tissue. But journalism felt less complicated than it does now.
These days, when we want to emphasise an issue or a news event, we have to think about far more than the printed page. The paper is the icing on the cake. And the cake itself is like a Bake Off showstopper, pearled with more ingredients than ever. It takes a lot of baking.
So when it was suggested that the Guardian should mark the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration by focusing on climate change, we knew it wouldn’t be straightforward. To do justice to what is arguably the world’s greatest challenge at this most critical moment would take planning and originality. To make an audible statement at a time when the digital echo chamber is filled with the white noise of Trumped-up feedback would require a finely tuned signal.
Our response was to curate 24 hours of uninterrupted coverage of climate change: most of it coralled into a rolling live news article, stuffed with our journalism and constantly updated, that was kicked off in London, migrated through New York and San Francisco, and wound up in our Sydney office. We headlined this liveblog: Global Warning: 24 hours on the climate change frontline as Trump becomes president.
I was the editor tasked with bringing it all together – part conductor, part motivator and part creator of a very colourful spreadsheet.
In one sense, just organising the words for people to read was the easy bit. But there were so many more dimensions to this project. Our coverage wouldn’t just be words. What films would we produce? What graphics and pictures? Should we have a quiz or a doomsday thermometer? A carbon clock or a climate symphony (both, in the end). What could we do on social platforms: Facebook Live and Twitter? Instagram and Tumblr?
We had to work out which opinion pieces we should commission, and decide whether they should be written uniquely by proponents of anthropogenic global warming – ie would we shut out climate deniers? (Answer: yes, as they are a tiny, if vocal and powerful, minority). But also consider: where were the jokes and moments of uplift? And how would the whole thing fit together?
I likened this full day of coverage to a cross between a radio show, a telethon and a disaster movie. How we chuckled grimly through those long Skype sessions arranged at the only time of day (2100 GMT) when editors in London, New York and Sydney were all just about awake.
The other thing we juggled was the knowledge that often, with this kind of project, we engage our core readers – like you – but fail to reach those beyond our bubble who don’t think like us. So we needed to find external allies who might help. Jane Spencer, deputy editor of Guardian US, found willing partners in the microblogging and social network Tumblr and the Spanish-language US broadcast network Univision, who helped us find groups of new readers, many of whom have never heard of the Guardian before.
In all, to bring this project about, I had conversations with more than 60 people, including myself, often, sometimes in my sleep. When you think that 20 years ago, fewer than 10 people might have been involved in a comparable project , it really brings home how complex the news industry has become.
Complex – but satisfying. The response from readers to our liveblog – it received more than 3,000 comments, and was shared more than 9,000 times – was gratifying, but the quality of debate was also instructive.
One commenter, Stefana Broadbent, wrote: “The importance of your constant reminder of the topic is really crucial. In a recent series of studies we saw that people rarely talk about climate change at home or with friends even though they are extremely worried about it.
“This “spiral of silence” is brought about by the feeling that people around us don’t share the concern and it could be embarrassing to raise the issue. Your articles therefore not only inform but reassure many of us that the topic is important and we are not alone in our concern. Interestingly we also found that people are silently changing their habits much more than they publicly discuss. This at least is encouraging.”
Launching – and sustaining – the rolling liveblog on 19 January was exciting, like a theatre performance after weeks of rehearsals. We had plenty of vignettes – interviews, short films, data graphics – lined up in advance but also improvised some of the output as we went along. So we spent an hour reporting on Africa and had a segment on solutions technology before spending time watching someone draw climate change on Facebook Live, and then posting some glorious before-and-after images. In London, we were really only just getting warmed up (ha ha) when we handed over the liveblog baton to New York.
Personally, I can honestly say this project really got under my skin. I’ve felt for years that climate change is a battle that we are not quite winning, but also believed that tech and innovation might mitigate the impact and will save us all in the end. Now I’m not so sure.
From the people we spoke to and the data we gathered, I’m more and more convinced that it will require a total change in our economies, our lifestyles – even our civilisation – to bring about the no-carbon sustainability that will allow the human race to continue its extraordinary story deep into the 22nd century.
I can moderate my meat consumption and international flights and put a few solar panels on my roof. But to head off this danger we need our entire economic approach to shift away from the GDP-obsessed, hydrocarbon-injected hypergrowth model of the past 150 years to something radically different. Something gentler, something unplugged.
Another reader, who for reasons known only to himself preferred to be referred to as AyeAyeCaptain, added in a comment on the liveblog:
“This is a really good idea. Next, do the same about income inequalities, the damaging effects of monetarist policy on our once famous welfare systems and provincial towns, the price the poor nations of the world pay for limitless, mindless consumerism …
To which I can only respond, aye aye captain.
