A topic I keep thinking and reading about is how to define 'climate literacy' for news organisations. What are those basics that newsroom managers need to establish amongst their staff and where does specialisation begin? As an example: I assume news organisations would have..

2/9 responded differently to this recent study from Northumbria University if the vastly different effects of melting sea ice versus melting land ice on sea-level rise were considered basic knowledge in news organisations. https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/news/antarctic-tipping-point/

3/9 To their credit, several news organisations did report on this study, albeit with delays which indicate their news desks were not able to understand the importance of the story on their own, as they do with many other topics and long before their specialist desks alert them.

4/9 If you then take a look, though, at the traffic-boosting social media accounts of many of the news organisations who ran the story, you will see that the story was not given the promotion and placement (time of day, frequency of posting etc.) other big stories get.

5/9 To me, this points again towards a need in news organisations to not only increase their climate crisis coverage or expand their science or climate desks but equally to increase the climate literacy across all desks and especially their news desks and social media teams.

6/9 There is a large number of great books about the politics and economics of the climate crisis. There are surprisingly few, though, that solely convey the basics of climate science itself in a way that is neither overwhelming nor too simplistic. The two best explainer books I

7/9 have found thus far are: 'Small Gases, Big Effect - This is Climate Change', published by Particular Books and 'Climate Crisis for Beginners', published by Usborne.
Here are two pages from Small Gases, Big Effect' about melting sea ice vs. land ice:

8/9 My assumption is that the insufficient treatment the study above has received from the world's main news organisations is rooted in the fact that the vastly different effects of melting land ice versus sea ice on many of the world's largest cities have not been understood.

9/9 Let me know, please, if you are aware of climate literacy training projects for staff in general news organisations (broadcast, digital-only, print-digital) beyond the one that has been conducted by the BBC a few years back. My DM's are open. Thank you!