About the Project
From naturalist painter James Audubon and Sierra Club founder John Muir to author Rachel Carson, and from the founding of the National Park Service in 1916 to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1969, environmentalism has a long tradition in this country.
Not until the 1970s, however, did the U.S. environmental movement begin to gather broad momentum. In the decades since, consciousness of the fragility of our planet and the urgency of preserving its future has spread to all sectors of society.
The cause of “going green” is now not only a cultural and moral movement, but also a business proposition. Environmental activism, once associated with radicals and “tree-huggers,” has gained mainstream legitimacy in politics and popular culture, as Al Gore’s Academy Award for his documentary on global warming — “An Inconvienent Truth” — demonstrated.
This year, 38 years after the first Earth Day, America’s mass media are engaged in this story as never before. Publications featuring green-themed issues and environmental series in recent weeks range from Quad City Magazine and Mother Jones to USA Today and The New York Times Magazine. The phenomenon is not without its contradictions, of course: Vanity Fair has been mocked for failure to print its third annual “green issue” on recyclable paper, and the medium of paper itself is problematic.
Nevertheless, the groundswell of media attention to environmental problems and solutions is a good sign, and we happily join the trend with this project — reminding you to recycle your newspaper when you are done! If it looks like we’ve jumped on a bandwagon, bear in mind that we conceived the project months before the current spate of green-oriented magazine and newspaper packages appeared. We believe the simultaneous yet independent development of environment-focused projects by a broad array of groups and organizations across the country this spring emphasizes how deep the movement’s roots now extend.
Our project emerges from a semester-long endeavor by seven first-year students in Iowa’s masters professional program in journalism, with editorial advice and assistance from four second-year students in the program.
The result is this special newspaper report highlighting some key environmental issues and programs in Iowa, plus a website — www.degressofgreen.net — that will take you to even more stories, pictures, ideas and resources.
For covering costs of printing this insert — on recycled paper using soy-based ink — we thank our business sponsors, listed on the back page, and The University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Thanks also to the campus newspaper, The Daily Iowan, and especially publisher William Casey, for carrying this report. Above all, our gratitude goes to the many individuals around the state who shared their knowledge about environmental matters, along with their enthusiasm for creating a more sustainable world.
In addition, Nicholas Bergus, Jason Bradley, Emily Grosvenor and Steve Silva contributed to brainstorming sessions, story development and editing; Bergus additonally contributed his expertise to multi-media components and website development.
About the Students
- Brian Cardile (writer, videographer):
An East Coast transplant, Cardile now sees the importance of a green Midwest. - John Goodlove (writer, print editor, page design and layout):
Twenty-five years after graduating from Iowa State University, the former Cedar Rapids newspaper editor is back in the classroom. - Andrea Parrott (writer, cover design and page layout):
Journalist. Scholar. Iowa City native. - Jamie Rondinelli (writer, copyeditor):
Pursuing the best of two worlds — journalism and medicine. - Erin Tiesman (writer, photographer):
For this Iowa native, life is a series of great quotes, stories and snapshots. - Cliff Thompson (writer, webmaster):
Thompson is an aspiring digital journalist from Trenton, Neb. - Pete Wilson (writer, sponsor liaison):
This recent New Orleans evacuee has seen climate change up close and would like to spread sustainability to help prevent other communities from suffering a similar calamity.