Kathleen Cei Photo

Roger Cohn

He was recruited by Yale FES Dean James Gustave Speth to run YaleEnvironmental Online, an online, not-for-profit magazine that will be a mix of opinion, research, investigative journalism and policy pieces, with an emphasis on global stories. Cohn says the magazine will feature stories by seasoned journalists, like Bill McKibbon and Elizabeth Kolbert of The New Yorker, as well as scientists and activists.

The magazine's expected to launch in the spring, but Freda Moon caught up with Cohn at his new Yale digs last week.

Cohn: When I first started the environmental beat...it was perceived as sort of a fad beat that would fade out after the environmental post-Earth Day era passed. Most newspapers didn't have it and most editors were skeptical of it. Even my editor was skeptical of it. Later on it did become a full-time beat at the Inquirer and most major newspapers, but I think a somewhat marginalized one most places. That's pretty much remained that way—except that in the last year, with the tremendous interest and public awareness of global warming, there's been a shift and you're seeing environmental stories get out of the science section and onto the front pages in a way that they never did before.

NHA: With your experience, you could seemingly have your pick of jobs at important environmental publications. Why come to Yale?

I think this will be an important publication and the idea of starting something from scratch and building it and learning online—how to develop an online publication—was very appealing to me. I like starting something. Really I was part of a team at Audubon that sort of remade that magazine and re-launched it and I did the same at Mother Jones—totally changed the magazine. Those were far from start-ups—they were well-established magazines—but it was creating a whole new era in both of those publications. I like that.

NHA: Why were you eager to "learn online"?

Cohn: That's where there's a lot of movement—that's where the growth is. Particularly for publications that are not as commercial in their appeal, I think there's a lot more future potential online because there the cost of producing your publication is far less. If you're not a for-profit publication—and you're not going to be based on advertising—online has more potential for the future for substantive articles.

NHA: How do you define "environmental?"

Cohn: We're not limiting ourselves to climate change. We're defining it broadly...but we're going to be coming at it from a policy and science point of view. This is not a "green magazine" in the sense of being about what you can do to reduce your footprint on the planet.

NHA: Global warming is getting a lot of attention now. Are there other important environmental stories not getting ink that should be?

Cohn: The environmental stories that are getting major coverage are almost all related to global warming...That's a problem for environmental issues. Other issues that might be in some ways related to global warming—like biodiversity or species survival—may get subsumed by the issue of global warming...Mainly what's happened is global warming forced its way onto the nightly news and forced it's way onto the front pages. I do think there's a potential problem with that, in that it's looked at as the only issue. I'm glad to see the attention on global warming, it's been long and late in coming, but I don't think that we can lose focus on other issues.

NHA: What kinds of stories aren't being covered by the major and mainstream media?

Cohn: Some of them we want to cover so I don't know if I want to...(laughs)...One of them is the impact of energy development on public lands in the United States under the Bush administration...The stories that go slowly, like deforestation and loss of species, tend not to get as much attention in the media. Another thing that the media's not done a very good job on—and I think it's because in some cases it's tough for them to figure it out, for any of us to figure it out—is alternative energy sources: what their real potential is, which ones are real and achievable and we should be moving forward with and which are the ones that have been hyped but have less potential.