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Journalist Robert S. Eshelman is looking forward to diving back into one of the most important environmental beats of our time: climate change. \u201cThat story will evolve over the rest of my lifetime and it poses the greatest existential threat to all human kind.\u201d<\/p>\n
An alumnus of Metcalf Institute\u2019s 2012 Annual Science Immersion Workshop for Journalists<\/a>, Eshelman has held editorial positions overseeing science and environmental coverage for several online news outlets, including Vice Media and, most recently, Seeker.com<\/a>, and was an associate producer on \u201cYears of Living Dangerously,\u201d an Emmy Award-winning documentary series about climate change. As he began settling into his new management position this past January at Seeker.com, a dramatic shift was happening in Washington as President Trump ushered in new leadership and priorities regarding environmental regulations. \u201cAll of those things just elevated and amplified climate change, environmental topics in general,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the early stories we did was to look at what happened in Australia with similar circumstances where a conservative government came in and disregarded the input of scientists around issues of climate change,\u201d recalled Eshelman. \u201cWe explored the intersection of science and politics and what that looks like in other places throughout the world.\u201d<\/p>\n For the most part, Eshelman edits stories for about a dozen journalists at Seeker.com on a range of topics including energy, space exploration, technology sectors, and medicine. However, as environmental news coverage becomes increasingly more political with higher stakes, Eshelman is eager to return to the environment beat that he has covered since 2009.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an incredible story, one of the most important stories out there and we\u2019re right in the center of it, covering the science and politics of it,\u201d explained Eshelman. He added that he was also motivated to cover climate change \u201cbecause the country in which I was born, raised and continue to live shares the greatest historical responsibility for the current climate crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Eshelman, who holds a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University, still uses the science translation tools he developed during his Metcalf fellowship. \u201cIt\u2019s not easy to take science journal articles and translate them into language that the general public might understand,\u201d he said, and offered this advice to the ten fellows selected for the 2017 Annual Workshop: \u201cTake time to listen to the scientists you\u2019ll meet,\u201d he said. \u201cThe better you understand what makes a scientists tick, the better your reporting will be.\u201d<\/p>\n