Science & environmental press

History of  Science and Environmental Journalism 

Sources for historical examples of science & environmental writing   

Blogs & Podcasts

  • The pump handle (public health history)
  • Science History blog (schi.org)
  • Environmental History (environmentalhistory.org)
  • Journalism History (https://journalism-history.org/) and podcast

Neglected areas where more research into the history of  science and environmental writing is needed:

  • Benjamin Franklin & the Dock Creed water pollution controversy of 1739, reported in the Pennsylvania Gazette;
  • Hezekiah Niles and Niles Weekly Register of Baltimore, 1811-1842, often covered science and public health topics.
  • Frederick Law Olmstead, a New York Times reporter in the 1850s traveled through the South (and later designed Central Park in New York City);
  • Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, who championed public health reform in New York before the US Civil War and wrote a book about his “Overland Journey” to the great forests of California in 1859;
  • George Bird Grinnell editor of Field & Stream pioneered ethical issues such as bird and game preservation in the 1870s;
  • Carl Schurz, newspaper publisher in the 1860s – 70s, was an ardent conservationist and Secretary of the Interior 1887-91;
  • The many non-bylined writers who described the fight to save the bison and other wildlife in the 1890 – 1920 time frame;
  • W. Scripps, founder of the Science Service in 1921 and Edward Slosson, its leading editor;
  • Carr Van Anda, as editor of the New York Times between 1904 and 1932 insisted that the newspaper take science seriously;
  • “Ding” Darling of the NY Herald Tribune who helped organize the New Deal conservation movement in the 1930s;
  • Reporters who founded the National Association of Science writers in 1934, among them, the five reporters who shared a Pulitzer for science writing in 1937: Howard Blakeslee (AP), David Dietz (Scripps), William L. Laurence (NY Times), Gobind Bahiri Lal (San Francisco Chronicle) and John O’Neill (NY Herald Tribune).
  • Early 20th century science writers for major newspapers such as Garrett P. Serviss, Waldemar Kaempffert, Bernard Devoto, Silas Bent, Richard Oulahan, Marjory Stoneman Douglass, Edward Meeman, Walter Lippmann
  • Early 20th century science writers who covered issues like radium (Walter Lippmann), leaded gasoline and carbon monoxide (Silas Bent) and other environmental controversies.
  • International reporting from exploited frontiers: the Congo with Edmond D. Morel c.1904; the Amazon with Benjamin Saldaña Rocca and Euclides da Cunha 1900s – 1920s; and the Philippines with Fidel A. Reyes c. 1908;  (Kovarik, 2019)
  • Mid 20th century newspaper science writers: Gladwin Hill, Walter Sullivan, E.W. Kenworthy, and John B. Oakes of The NY Times; Luther Carter and Allan Hammond of Science;  Jon Franklin and Ann Cottrell Free of the Baltimore Sun; and Casey Burko of the Chicago Tribune. (Shabecoff, 1992);
  • Mid 20th century reporters who covered radiation like John Hersey, or dam controversies like Edward J. Meeman in the Tennessee Valley and John B. Oakes in the West (Feighery, 2023); or highways and preservation like  Washington Post writer Aubrey Graves.

S&EJ Bibliography

Henrik Bødker, Irene Neverla, eds., (2013). Environmental Journalism. Routledge.

Deborah Blum (2021). “Science Journalism Grows Up.” Science. 23 Apr 2021. Vol 372, Issue 6540 p 323.

Douglas Brinkley (2010). The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. Harper

Douglas Brinkley (2022). Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening. Harper

John Burnham (1992). “Of Science and superstition: The media and biopolitics.” In Craid L. LaMay and Everett Dennis, eds., Media and the Environment. Island Press.

Tina Cordova (2023). “What Oppenheimer doesn’t tell you about the Trinity test,” New York Times, Aug. 1, 2023, p 22.

William Cronin (2021). “Two cheers for the whig interpretation of history,” Perspectives on History, American Historical Association, Sept 1, 2012.

David Dowling (2023) “Health Reform in the Mid-nineteenth-century New York Periodical Press,” in R. Wilson (Ed.), New York: A Literary History, Cambridge University Press.

Martin Durkin (2007). The Great Global Warming Swindle. Documentary video, 2007.

Edith Efron, (1984) The Apocalyptics. Simon & Schuster; Also Rothman, S., and Lichter, R. (1986), “The Media, Elite Conflict and Risk Perception in Nuclear Energy Policy,” American Political Science Association.

Edwin Emery (1972), The Press and America, 2nd edition. Prentice Hall, 1972, p. 29.

Glen Feighery (2023). “Teaching essay: Frontier values vs. environmentalism in news coverage of Colorado river dams.” Journalism History. June, 2023.

Barbara Friedman, Carolyn Kitch, Therese Lueck, Amber Roessner & Betty Winfield (2009). “Stirred, Not Yet Shaken: Integrating Women’s History into Media History,” American Journalism, 26:1, 160-174, 2009.
DOI: 10.1080/08821127.2009.10677706

Daryl Hartman (2023). The Battle of Ink and Ice, A Sensational Story of News Barons, North Pole Explorers, and the Making of Modern Media, Viking.

Jim Hartz, Rich Chappell (1997). “Worlds Apart: How the distance between science and journalism threatens America’s future,” Nashville, TN: First Amendment Center.

John Hersey (1946). Hiroshima, The New Yorker, Aug. 23, 1946.
On the web: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima

Robert Hunter (1971). The Storming of the Mind: Inside the Consciousness Revolution. McClelland and Stewart; Doubleday.

Waldemar Kaempffert (1945). “Radiologists determine after effects of explosions of atomic bombs not the whole truth,” New York Times, Sept. 16, 1945, p E9.

Waldemar Kaempffert (1946). “Continuing studies of atomic radiation show its effect on living creatures,” New York Times, March 17, 1945, p E9.

Michael Keating (1993). Covering the Environment: a handbook on environmental journalism. National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Vincent Kiernan (2022). Atomic Bill: A Journalist’s Dangerous Ambition in the Shadow of the Bomb. Three Hills

William (Bill) Kovarik (2022). “Changing views of extinction in history,” In David B. Sachsman, Eric Freedman, Sarah Shipley Hiles, (Eds.), Communicating Endangered Species: Extinction, News and Public Policy,. New York: Taylor & Francis. https://billkovarik.com/endangered-species-news-and-public-policy-a-history

William (Bill) Kovarik (2019). “International Environmental Journalism” in David B. Sachsman, and JoAnn Myer Valenti (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Environmental Journalism. London UK: Routledge.

Hillier Krieghbaum (1967). Science and the Mass Media, New York University Press.

William L. Laurence, “US atom bomb site belies Tokyo tales,” New York Times, Sept. 12, 1945, p 1.

Gabbi Mocatta (2015). Environmental Journalism. Open School of Journalism, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. On the web: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361052520_Environmental_Journalism

Chad Montrie (2018). The Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism, University of California Press.

National Park Service – NPS (2023). “The story of the teddy bear.” On the web: https://www.nps.gov/thrb/learn/historyculture/storyofteddybear.htm

Nark Neuzil, William (Bill) Kovarik (1996). Mass Media and Environmental Conflict: America’s Green Crusades. Sage.

Mark Neuzil (2008) The Environment and the Press, From Adventure Writing to Advocacy. Northwestern University Press.

Joseph A. Pratt (1980). “Letting the Grandchildren Do It: Environmental Planning During the Ascent of Oil as the Major Energy Source,” The Public Historian 2:4, p. 28.

Richard Rhodes (1986). The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Simon & Schuster.

Nelson Smith, Leonard J. Theberge (1983), Energy Coverage, Media Panic, Longman, p. 142.

Alex Wellerstein (2022). Restricted Data: The history of nuclear secrecy in the United States. University of Chicago Press.

Rex Weyler (2020). “Remembering Bob Hunter, Mind Bomber.” Greenpeace International. On the web at: https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/30250/bob-hunter-greenpeace-founder-memorial-mindbombs-rex-weyler/

Wikipedia, “Science Journalism.” Accessed Aug. 1, 2023
On the web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_journalism

Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame. “Carl Schurz.” On the web: https://wchf.org/carl-schurz/.

Robert L. Wyss (2007, 2018) Covering the Environment: How Journalists Work the Green Beat. Routledge.