Climate Is Every Story

banner

听听

We must never forget that the natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity, and the responsibility of everyone.

鈥 Pope Francis, Laudato Si鈥, 2015

Series Overview

鈥淐limate Is Every Story鈥 is a year-long event series that seeks to foster an ongoing dialogue about covering the climate crisis among leading journalists and md传媒国产剧 College鈥檚 faculty and students.

The World Meteorological Organization reported in March 2025 that the past 10 years on earth have been the hottest 10 years in almost 200 years of record-keeping. Which means that right now, there is no news story bigger than our fast-warming climate. It is global, geopolitical, existential, and rapidly evolving. Most journalists who cover climate do so as a beat 鈥 they chronicle the persistent rises in global temperatures, the cascading natural disasters, the political battles over clean energy and emissions, and the ever-more-dire United Nations reports. But climate change has seeped into every facet of modern life: How we work, what we eat, how we invest, where we build, and, in the case of the most vulnerable, how we survive. Which is to say, it鈥檚 outgrown any single journalistic beat. It is inextricable now from most disciplines, from the economy and business development to culture, food systems, immigration, and so on. Simply put: Climate is every beat; every beat is climate.

And yet: Covering the climate crisis grows more challenging by the day. Even as climate impacts are spreading, the media environment is becoming increasingly precarious. Between media layoffs and the proliferation of 鈥渘ews deserts鈥 鈥 or regions without reliable local news sources 鈥 it鈥檚 getting harder for newsrooms to adequately cover climate stories. Last summer, in a survey conducted by the Earth Journalism Network, 76 percent of environmental journalists reported that their coverage was limited by a lack of resources. The report recommended that individual journalists 鈥渘eed the support of their newsrooms to specialize in environmental journalism and break down barriers between beats, allowing journalists across the organization to cover climate change and its effects.鈥澨

We know that journalism shapes the decisions of individuals, communities, companies, policymakers, and governments as they navigate an uncertain future. And we know that a lack of informed and insightful journalism about climate change has broad-reaching impacts on communities and society at large. But we believe that the future of climate journalism is a conversation that reaches far beyond journalists. And we believe md传媒国产剧 College can be a place that both inspires and informs that conversation.听

Public Health, Common Good

October 1, 2025 | 12:00pm-1:00pm听|听
Schiller Institute Convening Space (Room 501), 245 Beacon

Journalist Moderator: Patrick McGroarty (鈥06), Economy Editor, The New York Times
Faculty Panelists: Summer Hawkins, Professor, School of Social Work, and Associate Director of the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good and Praveen Kumar, Associate Professor, School of Social Work

McGroarty

Patrick McGroarty

Patrick McGroarty is economy editor at The New York Times. He helps lead a team of reporters in New York and Washington covering every aspect of the American economy. Previously, McGroarty spent 16 years at The Wall Street Journal, most recently as Health & Medicine bureau chief. Before that, he was deputy bureau chief in Chicago and a reporter based in Johannesburg and Berlin. He graduated from md传媒国产剧 College in 2006 and started his career at the Dorchester Reporter before moving to Germany on a Fulbright scholarship in 2007.

Summer

Summer Sherburne Hawkins

Summer Sherburne Hawkins is a professor at the md传媒国产剧 College School of Social Work and the Associate Director of the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good. She is a social epidemiologist with an interest in addressing policy-relevant research questions in women鈥檚 and children鈥檚 health. Her research examines the impact of policies on health disparities in women and children by evaluating natural experiments created through policy changes within and between US states, including policies related to substance use and reproductive health. She received her PhD from the University of London and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health before joining md传媒国产剧 College in 2012.

Kumar

Praveen Kumar

Dr. Praveen Kumar is an Associate Professor at the md传媒国产剧 College School of Social Work. His research focuses on the human dimensions of climate and environment in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. He examines adaptations that address the health and well-being of populations vulnerable to climate and environmental risks. He is an engineer-turned-social scientist. He received his PhD in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a McDonnell International Scholar. Before his PhD, he worked as a management consultant for KPMG in India, primarily in its Climate Change and Sustainability Services Practice.

Jason B

Jason Beaubien

Jason Beaubien is a Peabody award-winning journalist and writer. He鈥檚 reported stories from more than 60 countries around the world for National Public Radio. His work has focused primarily on issues affecting low-income countries, specifically the impacts of natural disasters and armed conflicts. Early in his career, he covered local news in San Francisco and md传媒国产剧. Beaubien later served as NPR鈥檚 Africa Correspondent, Mexico City Bureau Chief, and as the network鈥檚 Global Health and Development Correspondent. He now lives in Keene, New Hampshire, where he launched a local daily news podcast called KeeneCast. Beaubien continues to teach writing, journalism, and podcasting.

The Climate Crisis is Local News

November 12, 2025
More to Come!

Forced Migration and Changing Communities

More to come!

The Business of Climate

More to come!

Back To Top