Communicating
jjacquet | April 24, 2007
Two of my favorite writers of all time, Kurt Vonnegut and now David Halberstam, have died in the past month. In the spring of 1985, as I was a postdoc studying starfish larval ecology in Australia, I read The Powers That Be and it changed my whole perception of the American media world. David Halberstam was a powerful writer and a truly masterful storyteller--able to take the mundane facts of our world, find the drama, and weave them into stories that revealed the depth of human character. Are there many storytellers left these days who can do such things so skillfully? If you have an…
jjacquet | April 23, 2007TUNE IN TOMORROW, HERE, AT NOON PACIFIC STANDARD TIME FOR THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WINNERS OF THE SB FLIX CONTEST!
The votes are in, our celebrity judges have decided, and tomorrow we will announce the top three winners of the first annual SB FLIX Contest.
jjacquet | April 20, 2007The first annual Shifting Baselines Flix Contest is coming to a close. The SB Flix Contest was an open call for 1-minute videos with the goal of finding new and creative ways to communicate the glaring demise of our global ecosystem, especially that of the ocean. All of the videos had a lot of effort put into them, and some had a unique combination of creative insight and powerful imagery. You can watch the ten finalists on YouTube.
We plan to announce the winners on Tuesday, April 24th. The winners will be selected by celebrity judges Zooey Deschanel ("Failure to Launch"), Gregory Itzin ("…
jjacquet | April 18, 2007This week the winners of the 2007 Pulitzer Prizes were announed. Ken Weiss, Rick Loomis, and Usha Lee McFarling won Pulitzers for their explanatory reporting in their widely acclaimed five-part series Altered Oceans (see blogroll) in the Los Angeles Times, proving not only good reporting but worthy subject matter.
jjacquet | April 15, 2007The Great Turtle Race, an initiative by ten corporations and institutions to show that science is fun, begins today. Stephanie Coburtle, the turtle named after Stephen Colbert is Shifting Baselines' favored winner in this race from Costa Rica to their feeding grounds in the Galapagos Islands. "Normally, I'm no endangered species hugger..." said Colbert on his show. But his heart softened to these "eagles of the sea" after the Great Turtle Race not only made a name for Colbert but made conservation likeable.
jjacquet | April 14, 2007
Vanity Fair's latest issue takes a fashionable look at the environmental crisis. As one might expect, the oceans do not receive the same coverage as green consumerism (though these two do come together with Chantecaille's Coral Collection; a portion of the proceeds benefit a research project examining global warming's effect on coral reefs [is there still some doubt as to what will happen?]). But there is a photo shoot with "The Minds Aquatic" that highlights a number of dedicated researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Instituition and at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (Nancy…
jjacquet | April 13, 2007So as my Governor was saying, environmental "messaging" (such a foul term) needs to be less nagging and scolding. And Conservation International and friends have nailed it exactly, not just by putting together a very CREATIVE (a good quality to pursue) and fun idea with their Great Turtle Race, but then managing to score huge follow-through on Wednesday when Stephen Colbert opined hilariously on his show about the turtle named after him. That is the way to do it. One major mass media score like that is equal to five thousand well intentioned brochures left on the floor at environmental…
jjacquet | April 13, 2007
Governor Ahnold has been pushing an environmental agenda in California (in 2004, for instance, he jump-started the process to establish 29 marine protected areas along the coast) and now he's wading into the subject of environmental communication. And he's on the right track (maybe he's been reading Nisbet and Mooney's editorial on Framing Science).
In a speech yesterday at Georgetown University he scolded environmentalists for their basic style of communication, saying the environmental movement needs to get to the point where it's "no longer being seen as a nag or a scold" (hitting some…
jjacquet | April 12, 2007His novels had a big impact on me--who could forget his telling about a character who is at a party for diplomats and meets the embassador from Chile, can't think of a single thing to say to him, and so finally says, "It must be fascinating to be from a country which is so long and thin."
I loved his simultaneous joy for humanity, and...overall long term cynicism. This was reflected in his recommendation that we carve into a wall of the Grand Canyon a message for flying-saucer creatures one day that says, "We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard…