The Nature Beat
Why start a newsletter about nature?
Hi! I'm a writer in Mount Rainier, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC. For more than ten years I've written about science and the environment for outlets from niche trade and university magazines to global newspapers like the New York Times. In that time, I've become one of the nation's most active journalists covering forests, ecosystems and the natural world — what I've come to call the "nature beat." I’ve probably written as much about trees, about marsh grasses, about fungi, about insects, about soil as any other journalist in the past decade. To see my work, check out my website.
Unfortunately, nature isn't really a traditional news beat. To take just one prominent example, the Times website has sections for sports, dance and real estate, but not nature. More stories have probably been written in the past year about crypto, Elon Musk or Twitter than about the natural world. I don’t know of a single journalist who focuses exclusively or even primarily on the natural world.
And that’s a problem, because we could easily live without crypto, Elon Musk or Twitter — indeed, we did until very recently — but we could not live without nature. Yet we seem to feel that nature is something that just happens, that we need not pay attention to unless we happen to be tree huggers or bird watchers.
The closest “normal” journalistic beats to nature are probably science and environment, where I’ve done most of my work. Each offers, at best, a particular lens through which to look at the natural world, not the thing itself. Lately, environmental journalism has been almost completely consumed by climate change — an important topic for sure, and one I’ve devoted much of my career to, but hardly a sun so bright it should blot our view of the natural world around us. Among other problems with climate coverage, I worry that its constant evocation of crisis alienates a lot of potential readers who would engage more if journalism were to take a broader view of nature and the environment.
As extinctions accelerate and vital ecosystems collapse, the costs of our ignorance of nature are becoming clear. But I would argue there’s an even more important and fundamental reason to read and write stories about nature. Nature is awesome. It’s fascinating. It’s beautiful. It’s healing. It’s inspiring. It’s our home. The more intimately we can connect with nature, the more fully we can live. And as humans, one of our primary ways to connect with something is through stories.
Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that the concept of “nature” is problematic, maybe even…unnatural. It’s often used to mean the part of the world that’s separate from culture — in other words, separate from us. Probably needless to say, I don’t see nature as something separate, but rather as something we’re intertwined with — indeed, that we’re part of, and that’s part of us. But then why define it at all? I do so mostly out of convenience; when I say I’m writing about “nature,” you probably have a pretty good sense of what that means. And everything — a story, a blog, a career — needs to be about something. Perhaps we’ll eventually arrive in a “post-nature” world where such categorization will seem quaint and unnecessary. But for now, “nature” seems like the best word we have for what I’m writing about; it seems we’re stuck with it.
I also want to acknowledge that there’s a literary genre called nature writing. Some of my favorite writing, such as Annie Dillard’s classic book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, belongs to this genre. But for the most part, it’s not a world that I inhabit as a writer, at least so far.
The bottom line is that a lot of story and essay ideas I have — including, I think, really good ones — struggle to fit into traditional journalist categories and find homes at traditional outlets. This newsletter is a place for me to write some of those things, to experiment, to explore. Perhaps some of what I write here will serve as rough drafts of pieces that eventually get published. Perhaps I’ll post five times a week; perhaps once a month; perhaps some of both depending on how my inspiration and busyness levels wax and wane. Whatever kind of adventure this ends up being, I invite you to join me for it. And if you feel like supporting me, please feel free to donate. (But for now, all writing here will be available at no cost.)
I like your thoughts about the void of nature oriented journalism. I remember when "Energy and Environment" started appearing as a category in newspapers and magazines, usually in the back pages. And yes, carbon, as important as it is, is another unfortunate mental reduction.