I had an amazing time listening to Dan Fagin speak both Thursday afternoon and Thursday night. He was an esquire speaker and eas very informative. I learned that we are living in a new era call The Anthropocene. It’s the time in which humans are impacting the environment. At his Thursday night lecture he talked about how the world is constantly changing. He used continental drift as an example. The problem is human are causing it to change too rapidly. He also said, “our grand task as humans is to develop a world wide acceptance strategy leading to sustaining ecosystems against human stresses.” Environment Journalism is important because we need to spread the word about this task. In Fagin’s book, Toms River, he tells a captivating Anthropocene…show more content… The company dumped chemicals into the ocean and sand because the sand would absorb it and the water would dilute it. This resulted in a lot of pollution all over the town. Even the water fountains at the chemical plant were polluted. This then led to widespread disease like childhood cancer. Fagin also said that stories like in Toms River are happening all over the world will little media coverage. When Fagin worked for Newsday he would write a lot about pollution in the city. He noticed that the amount of breast cancer was increasing in a certain area and the government did a subpar study and that was the end of that. He also taught me that when going into journalism it is important to be a knowledge journalist. In his case it is environmental journalism. In order to be an environmental journalist, you need to be very knowledgeable on the current issues and the opinions of the public. It is important to have, what he calls, “bullet proof facts.” When publishers were reading over Toms River before it was published, they could not find any holes in his data. He double checked and triple check his facts to make sure the information he was giving to the public was accurate. Accuracy is key - especially in a world full of fake and fast…show more content… I personally have pages of notes filled with advice. My favorite thing that he said was everyone has their own printing press. We are are a generation of self starters with access to the entire world with the click of a button. Start your journalistic journey off small with school newspapers or blog posts. The internet gives us so many outlets for reporting. He then suggested that we work up from there. Go to freelancing and then graduate school. I also enjoyed what he said about being platform agnostic. When going into a communications field, it is important to have skills all over the spectrum. The more skills you have, the easier you will get a job. Offer what other people can’t. Lastly, I was truly inspired by the quote, “Don’t just be a reporter - tell stories about things you care about.” People say you’ll never work a day in your life if you do what you love. The idea of having something that will bring in income, but also incorporates your interests and beliefs is very
