Yesterday’s NYTimes put a first-inning, multi-column top-left p. 1 wallop into a new Choking on Growth occasional series from China. Reporters Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley have it — not so much a story as a long and well-buttressed proclamation — under the hed, “As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes.” The piece has a supremely authoritative air, its drumbeat of firmly declarative sentences (… its pollution problem has shattered all precedents) unqualified with quotes or attributions. Not that there are not sources and attributed quotes, but it scorns any hint of intimate, vignette lede and just launches itself with unalloyed conclusions. More excerpt: “Chinese cities often seem wrapped in a toxic gray shroud” and “a coastline so swamped by algal red tides that large sections of the ocean no longer sustain marine life.”

This is a big project at the Times. It may have occurred anyway but ought be a touchstone for reporters tackling the murk angle at the upcoming Summer Olympics. On line it includes an audio slide show, video, interactive features and outside experts for commentary. There is an audio report in Mandarin Chinese. One can’t help but wonder whether typical internet hookups in China allow easy access to it.

The art is superb. The featured photo gallery is a grim melange of coal grit, smoke, soot, and frenetic activity (but one could match much of it in India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, etc…or with historic imagery from 19th century US or Britain). Readers’ comments — which include many that, perhaps to evade the real issues, regard as hypocritical any harsh western criticisms of China’s rush toward modernity — are generally well-informed and passionate.

-CP

See Also Aug. 10 Post: NPR: A pair of pollution reports from China  ;

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