The Climate Desk – a consortium goes into business, if free is any way to run a business.
A news merger of sorts – more of a collective with a single bin for its products – has made its bow in environmental reporting. Such outlets as Grist, the Center for Investigative Reporting, PBS (via its Need to Know public affairs program), Slate, and Wired – even the august old magazine The Atlantic – have established The Climate Desk. It’s a one-stop shop for reporting on global change that they’re mainly giving away free on the internet anyway. If you can’t beat the aggregators, join ‘em. It has an rss feed too, which The Tracker just added to the trap line.
A write up on it already ran at the blog end of Mother Jones, by Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein;
This will make my life somewhat easier. The Tracker feeds off all the free stuff that media provide. If some of it’s already in a neat little pile to check out, terrific. But in a world of sustainable professional journalism such a convenience ought to come with a fair price for most people. I’m hoping that ksjtracker and its like get dispensation to continue serving the trade with links to the media’s daily performances. But in the long run, price tags are necessary.
An idle question to which I’d like an answer – can such pre-aggregated services to readers as this be sold exclusively as an ap to the eco-savvy fraction of people snapping up iPads, HP Slates, and other electronic news tablets, providing at least a little revenue to the people who went to all the trouble of cohabiting one corner of the web? Maybe it already is. But I, as do many, hope that the comfort people feel paying for aps on smartphones and similar media will soften them up to the idea of paying a little fee (or sitting through ads) for old-fashioned reporting.
- Charlie Petit
