Journalists report on the front lines of climate change is this signature panel where guests discussed strategies for effective messaging and how their work is received by the public and decision-makers at a time when we lack consensus about fundamental facts and evidence.
Panel guests included:
Duchesne Drew
Senior Vice President | American Public Media Group, President | Minnesota Public Radio
Duchesne Drew is Senior Vice President of American Public Media Group and President of Minnesota Public Radio. In this role, he leads the teams that produce MPR News, The Current, APM Reports and Marketplace.
Before joining American Public Media Group, Drew led the Bush Foundation’s leadership programs, community innovation and communication teams and built networks across the region as its Community Network vice president. Prior to his role at Bush Foundation, Drew was managing editor of operations at the Minnesota daily newspaper the Star Tribune, where he began as a summer intern and rose to one of the most senior roles in the newsroom. And in 2021, he was inducted into the Hall of Achievement at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. In 2022 he was named to The Root 100, an annual list of the most influential Black Americans in the fields of arts, community, business, entertainment, media and politics.
Megan Garvey
Executive Editor, LAist
Megan Garvey manages reporters, editors, and producers to deepen the reach and impact of LAist’s award-winning journalism on the radio, on demand and on the web. Under her leadership, LAist’s online audience has reached historic highs with a focus on original and distinct storytelling and investigations. She has also broadened the newsroom’s partnerships, including the California Reporting Project and ProPublica. Garvey spent two decades at the Los Angeles Times as reporter, assignment editor, assistant managing editor, and deputy managing editor and contributed to Pulitzer Prize-winning breaking news coverage.
Rosanna Xia
Environment Reporter, Los Angeles Times
Rosanna Xia is an environment reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where she specializes in stories about the coast and ocean. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 for explanatory reporting, and her work has been featured in the Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. Her first book, California Against the Sea, examines the future of our vanishing coastline in the face of rising water.
Dorothy Fortenberry
Screenwriter and Playwright
Dorothy Fortenberry is a playwright, screenwriter, and essayist. Her plays include: PARTNERS (Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival), SPECIES NATIVE TO CALIFORNIA (IAMA Theatre), GOOD EGG (Red Fern Theatre), CAITLIN AND THE SWAN (The Management), STATUS UPDATE (Center REPertory), and MOMMUNE (Chalk Rep). As a television writer and producer, she has worked on “Extrapolations” (Apple TV+), “The 100” (the CW), and “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu) for which she received multiple Emmy nominations, the PGA Award, and two WGA Awards. She also writes essays for publications including Commonweal and The Los Angeles Review of Books, and likes to talk on podcasts. She is the 2021 laureate of the George W. Hunt, S.J., Prize for Journalism, Arts & Letters for outstanding work in the category of fiction writer or dramatist.
Sadie Babits
Supervising Climate Editor, NPR
Sadie Babits is NPR’s Supervising Climate Editor. She works with NPR reporters on the Climate desk and leads the Public Media Climate Collaborative where some 70 reporters at public radio stations across the country work to cover the biggest story of our time. Prior to NPR, Sadie was a professor of practice at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication where she taught students how to report on climate, sustainability and other environmental issues for broadcast and digital platforms. Sadie has served in public radio leadership roles for more than a decade, including as news director for Colorado Public Radio from 2014 to 2017 and has spent most of her journalism career reporting on environmental issues including policy, climate change, and public lands.
Brianna Sacks
Climate Reporter, The Washington Post
Brianna explores how climate change is transforming the United States through violent storms, intense heat, widespread wildfires, and other forms of extreme weather. She deploys to disaster zones and does investigative and accountability enterprise reporting on the preparations for, responses to and aftermaths of catastrophic events.
She grew up in Southern California, and her work hits home for her, as she experienced personal loss during the Woolsey Fire in 2018, before going to Paradise to cover the Camp Fire.
The Pulse of Washington D.C.
