Comfort examines environmental news making in published article
Associate professor Suzannah Evans Comfort explores the history of environmental news making in her article, “Before the Environment Was News: Outdoor Writers and the Boundaries of Journalism,” which was published in American Journalism on July 29.
Comfort examines outdoor writing columns – which are largely overlooked by journalism scholars because they violated norms of news making by including advocacy and personal narrative – as a precursor to modern environmental journalism. She found that outdoor columnists of the early 20th century were writing about pollution, habitat protection, and nature in their stories of fishing, hunting, and the outdoors before news organizations recognized the news value of environmental problems.
The article reflects on the norms of journalism and its prioritization of certain types of news work and what that says about both journalism and scholarship.
Comfort’s research took her to the University of Montana and Boise State University to access the organizational archives of the Outdoor Writers Association of America. Part of these trips were supported by Faculty Research Travel Grants from the College of Arts and Humanities.