7 Comments
User's avatar
Howard Weaver's avatar

Have some fun. We need both a general atmosphere of "happy warriors" and some fund stuff that's actually built into our model, things like arguments over music, a film section that provokes and showcases opinions about movies, etc. Need ideas here.

Expand full comment
Howard Weaver's avatar

Solutions-based journalism -- apply an "optimism lens" to everything we do, always asking ourselves what could we and our readers be doing to make X-y-z better?

Expand full comment
Howard Weaver's avatar

We each have reasons for being interested in this project. Here are some of mine:

• Trump Derangement Syndrome: he's an impediment to everything good and decent and must go - quickly -- if American ideals are to survive.

• The climate clock is ticking. Humans face an existential crisis -- almost beyond life and death because its about not whether some will live or die, but about whether the planet will support human life.

• A cascade of catastrophe -- Climate chaos, incipient civil war, loss of a shared civic vision, the Super Rich and wealth inequality, systemic racism, and so on.

• Find dreams to believe in -- Somebody needs to be snapping or at least cataloging ideas and examples of structures, organizations, technologies, etc that can guide us as we dig out of this whole.

• Poor people from countries scorched by climate change will come looking for food and shelter in less disadvantaged countries. How do we plan to handle this?

Expand full comment
Howard Weaver's avatar

Mission Control

Heads Up

Clean Underwear

Brain Buffet

Not Spam

Second Block

Story Tree

✔ Story 405

Storied

Story'd

Been There

Before We Croak

✔ After the break

Sustained

Old Guys On Pogo Sticks

Meanwhile...

This just in...

✔ Subversive Optimism

Junk Males

Thinking Aloud

Thinking Allowed

✔ Thinking Aloud Allowed

✔ Scripted Improv

Now I Get It

One More Thing

Shiny Objects

Oooo, Shiny

Expand full comment
John Larson's avatar

I spent a week in Prince William Sound doing stories several months after the spill. We went out at night with Marine biologists to capture, blood test, sometimes tag, and rescue (if necessary). I can still clearly see their eyes reflecting the searchlight as they’d come to the surface to watch us. Middle of the night, pitch black. We were their evening movie. I think we were probably generally viewed as the bad guys.

Expand full comment
John Larson's avatar

It will be challenging to find the right voice for climate - a lot of the coverage needs to be alarmist, urgent, frightening etc. It will be important to weight it towards solutions, activism etc. Btw, there was an article in the NYT a while ago about Sea otters disappearing all along the Aleutians. It was so sad I couldn’t finish it for days. Is there anything more beautiful or wonderful than sea otters?

Expand full comment
Howard Weaver's avatar

Otters; most wonderful or simply wonderful? We’ll have the debate ... after the break.

Expand full comment