Learn at Lunch: Jacki Swearingen '73

The Media and the Environment, Climate Change and Biodiversity: Reporting in a Troubled Age

With Jacki Swearingen '73

After a year of fires ripping through Los Angeles neighborhoods and the boreal forests of Canada, after historic floods in places such as Texas and Pakistan, the ravages of climate change loom larger each day in our individual and collective lives. Reporting on the causes of rising temperatures and droughts along with biodiversity loss, as well as the resulting disasters, has become an increasingly important task for journalists around the world. Yet these journalists now must file their stories about the current administration’s assault on renewable energy, about global deforestation, and about aggressive mining in the oceans and remaining wildernesses just as today’s media landscape is shifting to digital modes. How can journalists best meet the challenge of alerting us to the threats to the Earth and the policies that endanger it or offer hope of protection?

Join us October 30 at 12:00 pm for a ClassACT HR’73 discussion led by Jacki Swearingen ‘73 about doing environmental journalism at a time when the press itself is under threat.

JACQUELYN SWEARINGEN '73

Jacquelyn Swearingen is a retired journalist and historian who has written about environmental issues ranging from the conservation of the Florida Everglades to the legacy of atomic war in Hiroshima. She covered international trade and manufacturing for the Detroit News, and Congress, foreign affairs, and federal regulatory issues for the Miami Herald. Her work as an investigative reporter for the Times Union in Albany included reporting on health and environmental justice issues in New York state. While living in Tokyo, she also wrote for the Asian Wall Street Journal and The Japan Times.

At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Dr. Swearingen taught East Asian and European history, international relations, and an introduction to science and technology studies. She served as the managing editor of Cultural Anthropology. She concentrated in Chinese history at Harvard and received a Ph.D. in Japanese and Chinese history from the University of Chicago.