How can journalists tell climate stories from a local point of view?

We’ll meet in person for the first time and discuss the challenges and opportunities for climate journalists working for local news outlets. The session is kindly hosted by the online magazine Hauptstadt in Bern.

We’re happy to have three guests who will share their insights with us in a panel discussion lasting about 90 minutes: Isabel Brun, Patrick Gasser and Florent Hiard.

Isabel is a climate journalist for the Zurich-based online magazine Tsüri.ch and reports at irregular intervals on climate issues that concern Switzerland’s largest city. Once a month she tries to broaden her view — because Zurich is not the centre of the world — and summarises striking, sad, important, or shocking news about the climate crisis in a briefing. (Always on the verge of losing hope.)

Patrick is an editor at the Walliser Bote newspaper in Visp. Growing up as a farmer’s child, he studied journalism at the MAZ in Luzern and graduated in 2015. He now lives in Saas-Fee, where he witnesses the effects of climate change on a daily basis. Hence, he’s interested in meteorological and climate topics in the canton of Valais.

Florent is a journalist and is in charge of the web edition of the Nyon-based newspaper La Côte. As a former research assistant in geosciences and a science and geography teacher, he jumped into journalism in 2019, addressing environmental stories through their scientific, economic and political aspects.

The panel discussion will be held in English and will take place at Hauptstadt’s premises at Belpstrasse 53, 3007 Bern – a 10-minute walk from the train station. Florian Wüstholz, a freelance journalist and co-founder of our network, will moderate the discussion.

After the panel discussion, Prof. Dr. Andreas Zischg will lead us on a 60-minute climate-themed walk through Bern. He will break down the expected climatic changes in the local context of Bern and discuss how they affect wellbeing and ongoing transformation processes. Zischg is a professor of modelling for human-environmental systems at the University of Bern. He also co-directs the Mobiliar Lab for Natural Risks at the university’s Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, where he studies the interactions between environmental changes, natural risks and societal transformations.

To take part in our climate journalism afternoon, please email us at info@climatejournalism.ch

We’ll finish our meeting with dinner and drinks for anyone interested. (Unfortunately, we cannot cover the costs, but we can provide fun and laughter.) For those joining us for dinner, please RSVP by Monday, 23 January 2023, so we can make a reservation.

Our meetings are for professional journalists (and journalism students) only.

For existing members of the network: We start at 3 PM with an internal meeting.

Foto (c) Sabrina Weiss