How editorial partnerships bolster local climate reporting

Public radio newsrooms that have invested in climate reporting are leaning into editorial partnerships to sustain coverage of this specialized, and increasingly local, news beat.

At WUSF in Tampa Fla., the commitment to climate reporting is more urgent than ever, said reporter and host Jessica Meszaros, who won a 2026 Public Media Journalists Association Award for her story about how extreme heat increases health risks during pregnancy.  

“Every single person who lives in Florida is impacted one way or another, just stepping outside in the heat,” Meszaros said. Floridians who live outside of flood zones may believe that they’re safe from rising sea levels and increased precipitation, she said. But when their homes flood during severe storms like Hurricane Milton, they learn how very wrong they were. 

Meszaros reported her award-winning story through a partnership with Climate Central, an independent nonprofit that reports on how climate change affects people’s lives. Her reporting drew from a Climate Central data analysis that recorded an increase in the number of “pregnancy heat risk days” last summer; Tampa was among the Florida cities where pregnant people and their unborn babies were most vulnerable. Science communicators and journalists from Climate Central also helped Meszaros incorporate extreme heat data and other scientific sources into her story. 

WUSF is among the 30 NPR stations that also participate in NPR’s Climate Collaborative, which brings NPR and station-based climate journalists together weekly. During the meetings, climate reporters and editors discuss newsy national and local developments and stories in progress.  

“Talking about it at the national level, …we’re able to see how other people are covering things and make sure … that there’s a throughline through all of our coverage across the country,” Meszaros added. 

The meetings are run by NPR Senior Supervising Climate Editor Sadie Babits and Climate Reporter Rachel Waldholz, according to an NPR spokesperson. More than 40 reporters and editors are currently active in the collaborative. Participation tends to fluctuate based upon the kinds of stories reporters are focusing on at any given time, the spokesperson said.

Since NPR closed its Climate Desk in May, assigning most of its journalists to the National Desk, the collaborative is one of its signature activities that continue. Another is Climate Solutions Week, an annual package of coordinated special coverage that features reporting produced by journalists from NPR and stations.

“Climate journalism remains a priority for NPR’s newsroom, and while the newsroom reorganization was driven by financial necessity, we also took care to ensure that climate coverage and all areas of coverage would be preserved and not diminished,” NPR said in a statement. 

‘On the ground for the local audience’

Another member of the Climate Collaborative, WABE in Atlanta, participates in Grist’s Local News Initiative. This partnership embeds Grist’s climate reporters in local newsrooms across the country. Emily Jones, WABE climate reporter since 2021, is a former Morning Edition host and reporter for Georgia Public Broadcasting. Through LNI, Grist shares Jones’ reporting for republication by news outlets across the state. 

Grist, an independent nonprofit news organization that has covered climate change for 25 years, employs a team of 40 journalists who report local and national stories from more than 25 states, according to CEO Nikhil Swaminathan. Public media partners include Chicago Public Media’s WBEZ, Michigan’s Interlochen Public Radio and Blue Ridge Public Radio in Asheville, N.C. 

“We don’t want local and regional news to be created in Brooklyn or San Francisco or Seattle,” Swaminathan said in an interview. “We want to create it on the ground for the local audience so that it feels authentic to them.”

Molly Samuel, WABE’s deputy managing editor, agrees that climate coverage is increasingly  important for local newsrooms. “The more that the effects of climate change have become clearer and we’re seeing them on the ground, the more and more it becomes a local story,” she said. 

WABE also has partnered with stations in other states to produce reporting on regional energy and climate policy, Samuel said. Several years ago, she partnered with a public radio reporter from Oklahoma on a mini-series about coal ash. The coverage aired on NPR. “That would not have happened without the collaborative existing.” 

Covering Climate Now, which partners with hundreds of international news outlets on climate reporting, counts PBS News Hour, American Public Media and statewide public radio networks in Maine and Nevada among its partners.  

This summer CCNow collaborated with Susan Phillips, senior editor and reporter covering climate, energy and environment at WHYY in Philadelphia, to report on Pennsylvanians’ attitudes about political action on climate change.  

Mark Hertsgaard, CCNOW co-founder and president, said the public’s growing appetite for climate coverage has helped CCNow build its many partnerships. 

“The American public wants to know more about climate change, especially about climate solutions,” he said. 

‘We do have to make choices’ 

Station-based climate journalists are also collaborating with news organizations within their states or regions. WUSF participates in the Florida Climate Change Reporting Network, a news exchange that was founded by Florida’s major daily newspapers and WLRN in Miami. 

Mary Shedden, senior managing director of content, said such partnerships have helped WUSF expand its climate coverage. “We’ve identified collaborations, and we see speed bumps, but I think we get creative in addressing those,” Shedden said. 

Adriana Martinez-Smiley, a reporter for WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio, actively collaborates with journalists at other Ohio stations to deliver more climate coverage for listeners. One of three staff reporters in WYSO’s newsroom, she covers two beats — indigenous affairs and the environment. 

Two of Martinez-Smiley’s environment stories produced in partnership with the Ohio Newsroom were featured on NPR’s 2025 Climate Solutions Week. This year, PMJA recognized Martinez-Smiley’s reporting on superfund sites in Ohio in its awards for environmental coverage.

“We do have to make choices sometimes and really assess what our capacity is to cover something,” Martinez-Smiley said. “I really like to prioritize stories where there are opportunities for public engagement.” 

WYSO is an anchor station within the Ohio Newsroom, a collaborative of eight Ohio public media stations that report on under-served communities and supplement one another’s coverage. 

Martinez-Smiley also meets biweekly with environment reporters at two other Ohio public media newsrooms to discuss the stories they are working on. 

The bigger picture

For all the cross-newsroom collaborations supporting climate reporting, researchers who track coverage of the beat have documented a sharp decline globally. 

The University of Colorado’s Media and Climate Change Observatory reported a 14% decline in global reporting on climate change in 2025. The annual study, released in January, tracks the volume of news articles that refer to “climate change” or “global warming.” Since 2021, the volume has declined 38%.

In the U.S., restructurings at CBS News and the Washington Post since October 2025 eliminated jobs of climate and environmental journalists who produced specialized coverage. 

NPR’s decision to dismantle its Climate Desk and lay-off lead editor Neela Banerjee, was another shock. 

University of Colorado Environmental Science Professor Max Boykoff, co-author of the Media and Climate Change Observatory study, attributed the decline in part to political leaders on the world stage who rarely talk about climate change. In addition, newsrooms of all sizes are under financial pressure and often lack the expertise and time to report on this complex and politically-charged topic. 

“If you’re not a specialized climate journalist or environmental reporter then it can be daunting to step into this,” Boykoff said. “There’s just increasing pressure on time deadlines … on not wanting to step into something that is getting a lot of pushback from segments of your audience.”

Even though NPR pledged to continue reporting this specialized beat, one public radio news veteran questioned whether NPR will be able to coordinate reporting across member stations. In an interview with Current, Evan George, former news director at KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., said the Climate Collaborative has less editing power under the new structure. 

“The local stations need that sort of coordination to have a national impact,” said George, who now directs communications for the Emmett Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in Los Angeles. 

Station-based reporters are so often overwhelmed with the demands of their jobs, George added. But he does see potential in this corps of climate journalists. 

“There’s promising networks of public media reporters who cover climate and the environment within the NPR system,” he said. “There’s 30-plus reporters who are part of the Climate Collaborative who will continue feeding locally sourced stories to NPR.” 

From her vantage point at WUSF, Shedden said the restructuring of NPR’s climate team hasn’t affected her newsroom’s reporting or relationships with NPR editors. 

“The climate change desk closing down was taken very hard, but, as someone who’s had conversations with NPR, I don’t believe their commitment has changed,” Shedden said. “We haven’t seen it or felt it, so far.”