ABSTRACT
The Nordic countries are often praised for their environmental awareness and the quality of their media systems. This chapter characterizes the late 1960s and 1970s as the pioneer phase of environmental journalism in Nordic countries and says that the major media established new environmental editorial positions in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the author finds that “many of these environmental positions have been terminated since the early 2000s, partly because of financial pressures and staff cutoffs in editorial offices and partly because some media no longer prioritized the expertise of specialized environmental editors.” He concludes, “this is a part of the trend of replacing specialized reporters with journalists who cover large areas of news production, including a variety of news topics and different forms of reporting.” While some argue that because of these staff cutoffs, environmental journalism in the Nordic countries “now resembles the situation that prevailed prior to the 1990s when there were very few journalists covering environmental issues full-time,” the author argues “that environmental awareness is now much wider both among the public and the journalists themselves” and that “environmental issues are now established among the regularly and even routinely reported topics of the news agenda.”
