Journalistic judgment calls: A grounded theory exploring journalists' coverage of environmental and climate news

Previous research into the rise and fall of climate change in news media has relied upon broad content analyses of news media coverage and in-depth study of yearly ups-and-downs in hopes of uncovering reasons behind fluctuations.;This research project takes a different approach and explores how journalists themselves have approached, reported and written about regional weather and environmental extremes in the Southwest.;Research is based on qualitative interviews I conducted with eight journalists from Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. These interviews explored journalists' experiences as they reported on droughts, soaring temperatures and wildfires.;I transcribed, coded and constantly compared each interview utilizing grounded theory methodology. The resulting codes and concepts were sorted into categories which resulted in an emergent theory explaining why newspaper coverage and public concern of climate change has been decreasing as immediate, environmental issues related to climate change has been increasing.;This emerging theory indicates that journalists will continue to struggle connecting extreme, regional weather events to climate change. This implies that future environmental extremes are not good candidates for reigniting the issue of climate change.