Media in New Jersey is Failing Coastal Wildlife
Written By Jenna Reynolds, Director of Save Coastal Wildlife.
In the early 2000s, I used to joke that the only way the Asbury Park Press (the major weekly newspaper for Monmouth and Ocean counties in New Jersey) would put an in-depth environmental story about Raritan Bay on its front page was if an environmentalist like me committed a horrifying crime, like murder. It wasn’t the best joke in the world, but this dark humor highlighted the general coverage of the newspaper at the time. The editors would frequently only place articles on the front page about murders, corruption, thefts, or drug use about the northern Bayshore region of New Jersey that included Raritan Bay.
Totally overlooked or buried in the many pages of the newspaper were important stories (at least I thought so) of noxious brown algae bloom during Memorial Day weekend in 2008, raw sewage cakes washing up on beaches from northern New Jersey and New York City in the early 2000s, and the loss of vital open spaces, especially freshwater wetlands, due to overdevelopment. At the time, I was chair of the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council, an all-volunteer organization that was dedicated to helping clean up the environment along the Raritan Bay-Sandy Hook Bay complex. I was familiar with many environmental topics in the area, but nothing was getting into the mainstream media no matter how many press releases people sent out. The information would continually get buried into the back pages.
Neglect to give full attention to important environmental stories in my view has only gotten worse over time for nearly every online or print news outlet in New Jersey and especially those covering the Jersey Shore. Gone are the days when quite a few publishers would have at least one environmental reporter on staff or a person knowledgeable on the natural world to appropriately investigate stories about the environment. Due to continued budget cuts, those specialized reporters are gone with the wind. Thus, some of the most significant stories about the coastal environment in New Jersey have been overlooked.
For example, there has only been modest attention given about what coastal communities are doing to make sure residents and infrastructure are prepared for life in an ever-changing climate. We live in a time when many communities along the Jersey Shore have experienced amplified damage from tidal flooding, high winds, and increased rainfall. Yet, putting an elevated regard on global warming issues continues to be unvalued and overlooked across many news outlets. I guess stories about global warming doesn’t pay the bills.
Of course, the lack of attention to climate change by the media is not just a New Jersey thing. Sadly, many news outlets across the nation are frequently silent. A 2019 article in The Columbia Journalism Review by Kyle Pope and Mark Hertsgaard examined this issue in, The media are complacent while the world burns. The authors concluded in the article that “Instead of sleepwalking us toward disaster, the US news media needs to remember their Paul Revere responsibilities – to awaken, inform and rouse the people to action….If American journalism doesn’t get the climate story right – and soon – no other story will matter.”
This is particularly true I believe along the Jersey Shore where we are seeing the effects of global warming now.
Sea level has risen about 18 inches since the early 1900s, more than twice the global mean of about 8 inches according to The New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center of Rutgers University. In addition, the 2020 New Jersey Scientific Report on Climate Change published by NJDEP has stated that “over the last 50 years, in New Jersey, storms that resulted in extreme rain increased by 71%, which is a faster rate than anywhere else in the United States.” The report goes on to declare that “since the industrial age, ocean pH levels have declined and the ocean is now 30% more acidic, if carbon dioxide emissions continue at current rates, ocean pH levels are expected to fall, creating an ocean that is more acidic than has been seen for the past 20 million years.”
If this all seems like news to you, woefully you are not alone. Information about the effects of global warming along the Jersey Shore always seems to get nominal curiosity by the local media at best. It’s one major reason why even as the effects of global warming accelerates, fueling more intense storms and increasing sea levels, climate change remains a low priority for Americans, while a subset of the public even rejects that it’s happening at all, as reported in a 2023 study by the Pew Research Center.
But it’s not just global warming. There are many environmental stories taking place along the Jersey Shore that are not being told by the local media. Take for example the loss of coastal biodiversity. Since 2019, the Atlantic horseshoe crab population in the New York City region, including Raritan Bay & Sandy Hook Bay in New Jersey, has trended downward from good, to neutral, and now poor as per the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. In the past 50 years, over 70% of both seabird and shorebird populations have declined in the United States as they compete with people for food and space to rest and feed during migration. In New Jersey, over 30 species of wildlife that breed, migrate or overwinter along the Jersey Shore are listed by the State of New Jersey as endangered, threatened, or a species of special concern including several species of whales, sea turtles, and coastal birds. The threats to these animals are many, but very little attention is frequently paid to these wildlife issues by the local media.
Another example is bycatch, which as defined by NOAA Fisheries, are discarded animals that fishermen “do not want, cannot sell, or are not allowed to keep... Bycatch can be fish, but also includes marine mammals, sea turtles, and seabirds that become hooked or entangled in fishing gear.” As shown in the popular 2021 NETFLIX documentary, Seaspiracy, bycatch is happening all over the world by many people in the commercial fishing industry. Yet, there has never been an examination of bycatch among the several commercial fisheries in New Jersey, even though countless marine species, as reported by NOAA Fisheries, are killed each year as bycatch in the Northeast. According to the National Bycatch Report, Update 2019, published by NOAA Fisheries, bycatch is taking place in the “Greater Atlantic Region,” which includes the area of Maine through North Carolina (north of Cape Hatteras). The report tells us that in 2015 (the most recent data) among other animals there were 1,088 grey seals, 436 common dolphins, and 307 harbor porpoises counted as bycatch. There were also 2,215 seabirds found as bycatch, mostly Great shearwaters (Puffinus gravis) caught in gillnets. Even though the report does not describe where exactly these animals were caught, the media has largely overlooked examining bycatch as an issue (including vulnerable fish species) in New Jersey.
I am not suggesting the New Jersey media is totally blind to wildlife issues.
The recent environmental story that seems to be getting extraordinary attention by the media is the death of whales and other marine mammals along the Jersey Shore. Since December 2022, there have been over a dozen dead whales, mostly juvenile humpbacks, that have washed ashore or have been seen off the coast. Yet, what is being reported by the local media is not what is killing many of these whales, but frequently the direct or indirect political battles between Democrats and Republicans, and the future of energy use in New Jersey. The media loves stories about political battles, and it’s all the better when they include gloomy and gory pictures of dead marine mammals.
While the local media is quick to report on the front page of their websites or on social media pages about a dead whale or another marine mammal, they are often slow to react when the necropsy results are made available a day or two later. Many people do not realize then that what is actually killing numerous whales is blunt force trauma from ship strikes. There has been no evidence or facts to suggest the death of whales has anything to do with offshore wind activities. The facts, however, don’t seem to be as popular with publishers as the fable.
In September 2023, Pearl Marvell wrote an article entitled, Wind opponents spread myth about dead whales, for Yale Climate Connections. She reported that the “experts who have studied the issue note that the vessels exploring for wind developers are heavily regulated and must watch out for marine mammals as well as refrain from using sonar until the animals leave the vicinity. Also, they note that the sonar used by the wind industry is much less powerful than that used by vessels exploring for offshore oil and gas, which is known to harm and even kill marine mammals.”
Very little of this information has been reported by the local media in New Jersey. It’s a blank space that has created a difficult situation to try to have a conversation with people about slowing down ships to save whales. Instead, the amount of false knowledge being spread is causing countless people, who may think they are doing the right thing by trying to stop renewable energy activities along the Jersey Shore, to stop whales from truly being protected.
Most of the fatalities have been juvenile humpback whales that are largely unskilled with swimming with enormous, fast-moving vessels. Post-mortem examinations have suggested ship strikes are likely the cause of many deaths. We need to slow down ships to save whales along the Jersey Shore. This seems like it should be simple to do, like passing a law to slow down vehicles near schools to save schoolchildren, but there are so very few articles in the local media that discuss slowing down speeding ships to save whales. The topic is largely out of sight, out of mind.
So why is the local media in New Jersey failing coastal wildlife?
Fundamentally, it’s about their economic survival. Modern technology has mainly destroyed the for-profit business model that sustained local journalism in this country for many decades. Local media face challenges in having their content seen and monetized on online platforms. People have become increasingly unwilling to pay for news when they can access voluminous content on social media for free, which creates a cycle where a continued decrease in readers/subscribers leads to even less advertising income for news organizations. More than half of all U.S. counties now have limited access to reliable local news and information, and an average of 2.5 newspapers closed each week in 2023 compared to two a week the previous year, a reflection of an ever-worsening advertising climate, according to a Northwestern University study issued in November 2023. While digital outlets have emerged to fill some voids, they're closing at roughly the same rate as new ones start, the report said.
The for-profit model that many news outlets rely on today to pay the bills depends on hits, likes, and increasing pageviews to get advertisers. This means that news stories often must appear trendy and popular. The mantra seems to be to give the people what they want, instead of what they need.
This is probably why we see so many top five or ten lists in the media. The top ten best pizza places, top ten best hamburger restaurants, the top ten best places to use a public restroom. These top ten lists are popular and draw advertisers, but they’re not news or investigative journalism, they’re just opinions.
How can we improve local media to save coastal wildlife and the environment?
In New York State, a coalition of publishers is currently pressing New York’s legislature to help save its local news industry and local journalism. They’re proposing for the New York State government to provide a tax credit of up to $25,000 per journalist retained or hired. Credits would be capped at $1 million per outlet. This mirrors a journalism job-saving tax credit plan that was proposed in U.S Congress in 2021 (H.R.3940 - Local Journalism Sustainability Act). It called for household tax credits for news subscriptions by people and credits for small businesses advertising in local media.
These proposals are great and have my support and if approved would greatly help an industry that needs potency. But I also suggest that the path to really saving local journalism should go one step further.
Local news needs to move from an essentially failing for-profit model to a non-profit business model.
Nonprofit journalism will help to move the media away from people and firms that prioritize maximizing profits over real journalism.
Nonprofit journalism is not a new concept. It already has a Wikipedia page and a cool name – philanthrojournalism. This type of journalism can transport the media away from depending on likes and hits on social media to real journalism funded largely by donations and foundations by people who believe that what they do has value. This includes much needed investigative reporting, which has seen a sharp decline in for-profit journalism over the years.
This is why nonprofit journalism is so inspiring and seems to be catching on. In May 2019, The Salt Lake Tribune (established in 1871) became the first legacy paper in the United States to announce its intention to fully convert from a corporation to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The Pew Research Center also reports that 172 digital nonprofit outlets had launched between 1987 and 2012, with at least 71% being formed between 2008 and 2012.
Furthermore, there is the Institute for Nonprofit News. This organization strengthens and supports about 450 independent news organizations in a new kind of news network: nonprofit, nonpartisan and dedicated to public service. As per their website, in 2009, journalists from 27 nonpartisan, nonprofit news organizations gathered at the Pocantico Center in New York to plan the future of investigative journalism. The result of that meeting, the Pocantico Declaration, established the Investigative News Network (now named the Institute for Nonprofit News) and laid a foundation of collaboration among a new collective of nonprofit newsrooms dedicated to serving the public interest.
Research has shown that in communities without a strong local news presence, voter participation declines, corruption increases, misinformation spreads, the environment deteriorates, and political polarization worsens. Does this sound familiar. Are we not seeing this decline taking place today? In order for the local press to function and to be strong, we need it to be free from social media hype and the ownership by firms that prioritize maximizing profits over real journalism.
We need a first-rate local nonprofit news system to be born in New Jersey that plays an important role in informing citizens about public health, the environment, education, public safety, local politics, and other issues that affect our daily lives and lives of all species who live along the Jersey Shore.
Most importantly, in my opinion, we need for the media to stop failing coastal wildlife along the Jersey Shore.
