Word that the Washington Post would be cutting roughly one-third of its staff spread quickly this week. Among those affected were at least a dozen reporters, editors, and visual journalists covering climate and the environment. The cuts will materially reduce the Post’s climate coverage. They come just over three years after the paper significantly expanded that desk, nearly tripling its size and describing climate change as “perhaps the century’s biggest story.” At the time, then–executive editor Sally Buzbee framed the investment not as a specialty beat, but as a recognition that climate touches nearly every domain the newsroom covers. What has changed is not the scale of the problem, but the political, economic, and institutional context in which it is reported. The layoffs were first reported by the New York Times as part of a broader retrenchment that will see more than 300 journalists lose their jobs. After the cuts, the Post’s climate desk is expected to retain only a handful of reporters. This is not simply a story about one newsroom. It reflects a wider weakening of the institutions responsible for producing and maintaining a shared factual record, particularly on subjects that are politically contested and structurally complex. Under ordinary conditions, information performs an underappreciated coordinating function. It allows people to orient themselves, to understand what is happening, and to trace responsibility across systems that are otherwise hard to see. When it works, it often recedes into the background. Its absence becomes evident only when facts arrive late, circulate…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.