Somebody finally made a good climate regulator video
On bringing reporting to the world of short-form video.
I need to talk to you about this Instagram reel:
It leads with a pretty eye-catching piece of security footage. A woman picks up a spiral-bound book on a hearing desk, flips through it, then looks around and drops it in her bag: “Okay, maybe you saw this in the news… “ a man’s voice says over the video.
What's this about? A former candidate for Georgia’s public utility regulator and environmental advocate, Patty Durand, was arrested and charged for allegedly stealing utility company Georgia Power’s “trade secrets”.
But this video, from Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Grant Blankenship isn’t really about the specific charges or the case against Patty Durand. It’s about the much larger issues around this arrest: how monopoly utility companies are regulated, what you pay for electricity, data centers and how the utilities do or don’t drive fossil fuel reduction.
Even if you don’t live in Georgia, it’s well worth the few minutes to watch. Every thing mentioned here (well, perhaps not the alleged pilfering of company documents) is hapening in many, many states.
I was struck by this piece of video for a few reasons: It's about public utility regulators, which longtime readers know I have been talking about for years. And it’s done by a journalist, but designed and scripted specifically for social media video apps.
A few weeks ago, I read this excellent interview with Mia Sato, a tech journalist at The Verge, who has turned to TikTok to share more about her reported stories.
Sato is clear: she’s a reporter first. But having started her career in audience departments (for non-news folks, that’s largely people who manage, strategize and post to various social media and newsletter platforms), she was well aware how her work was getting repurposed without credit. Her stories were giving others the coin of the realm: attention.
“But I have to be so real and say a big reason I’m active on TikTok is because I am so stubborn, and I was getting really sick of seeing my work being used for other people’s content. I was like, I don’t like this. You are getting facts wrong. You’re using my words as your green screen background with your big head in front. I think it’s crazy that there’s this concept of news influencers and they’re not reporters. I said this on Bluesky months ago where I was like, I feel like as journalists we’re ceding ground to content creators who don’t know left from right, who didn’t report the stories, who don’t have the expertise to explain this to a general audience. And I don’t like that. I don’t like the idea of us taking some of it lying down.”
The honesty here (and the reflection that spending anything more than 30 minutes on making a video is not worth her time) is refreshing.
Video feels high-risk and low-reward in the climate beat. Talking about climate policy and action, even at its most tangible, is not as eye-catching or enjoyable to an person scrolling through fun memes and silly dance videos or one of the many, many things to be outraged about.
I have long suspected that energy stories that don’t focus on generic outrage or individualized “green tips” are social media poison. I haven’t seen much to counter that perception, until I watched Grant’s PSC video, which currently has far more views than anything else on GPB’s account.
Whether in a staff role or a freelancer, this also feels like a extra job responsibility that, regardless of Sato’s approach, has real potential to get in the way of the main job: finding out new information. (When I was at ProPublica, I saw the social video team work with reporters, to great effect, to take up less of their time but also make sure they remained the “face” of the story.)
While Conde Nast recently suggested to industry press that putting their journalists in video influencer roles helped drive subscriptions to Wired, the company is also backing that subscription drive with expensive and high-touch marketing campaign, to say nothing of the fantastic scoops Wired’s journalists have had about DOGE's impact on federal government this year. Maybe that’s what’s driving more subscriptions?
So, this is not a pivot to video announcement. What Georgia Public Broadcasting did with the Patty Durand charges, taking a nugget of (somewhat purient) interest and connecting it to larger issues at play is a small light for me.
It’s not impossible to make a good video out of the wonkiest climate stuff you could imagine. Whether or not that’s a long-term plan to inform and educate about practical climate action is a different question, and whether it reinforces a few large platforms and companies at the expense of the wider public square is another.
As news consumers yourself (and with great taste, thanks for subscribing) a reminder that your own attention is always at play.
- About that Georgia PSC election…
Elsewhere
So maybe you are obsessed with the written word enough that you’ve considered starting your own newsletter or want to talk to an audience without relying on social media algorithms. I (obviously) have been there, both in being a new newsletter writer and helping others start from scratch in high-pressure situations. So I created Launch, a guide for indie writers, creators, whomever… just getting started.
It’s designed to offer clarity that allows you to quickly and confidently get to writing, and sending your emails.
Launch is very similar to the process I go through with almost every newsletter consulting client, but at a fraction of my hourly rate. I made it because my full consulting services don’t often make financial sense for people at the very start of building their own newsletter, when success is far from assured and frankly the whole thing is at the scariest point.
Now, if somebody would make a Launch for camera-shy journalists…?
Reading
- The faith groups going hard on solar energy (Inside Climate News)
- Judge to New York State: You don’t have any legal excuse to not follow your own climate law (NY Focus)
- When rural electrical infrastructure was built out in the West almost hundred years ago, one group that got left out were tribes. Funding through the IRA, as well as help from the solar tax credit was intended to change that, but the Trump budget bill, plus recent moves by the energy department, cut every part of the plan that was supposed to bring a solar and battery-operated microgrid to rural Hopi reservations, where electricity is far from certain. They plan to sue — arguing the funds had already been obligated by the federal government. (NPR)
- Meanwhile Harris County (aka Houston) has sued the Trump administration over their cancellation of Solar for All, the portion of the Biden climate law aimed at bringing solar to lower-income residents. I talked about SFA in DC in my local solar update a few months ago.
- Restored tidal marshes in the San Francisco Bay have quadrupled in the past 20 years, after dedicated work and a funding stream. They’ll need it to contend with sea level rise. (KQED)
- “On Jan 7 she made her final mortgage payment. On Jan 8, her house burned down.” Or how a “troubling” share of America’s wealth remains locked both in fossil companies and homes at increasing risk of climate disaster. (In These Times)
- A major insurer has backed out of covering a LNG export plant in Louisiana I covered in this earlier story. But it’s unclear why. (Inside Climate News) Meanwhile, across the Cameron Parish coast, a judge has ruled against a permit for a different LNG plant. (Louisiana Illuminator).
- All the tools in the toolbox the Trump administration is using to undercut renewables (Washington Post)
- The world is getting better at responding to methane leak warnings, according to the UN observatory that issues alerts about the powerful greenhouse gas that’s often seen as a byproduct of producing, processing and storing fossil fuels. But that’s a jump from 1% response rate to 12% response rate from 2022 until now. (Bloomberg)
- Wildly specific research from the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota about tthe spectrum of carbon impact of eating meat in different US cities, but with the obvious caveat: “The geographic differences don’t change the conventional wisdom about eating less beef to cut one’s carbon footprint. Switching to pork or chicken is, in most cases, less environmentally harmful, because the two tend to produce fewer emissions than beef, the authors say.” (Bloomberg)
Listening
- What is minyo? I’m still not quite sure. But this playlist from Bandcamp full of modern Japanese folk tunes is very satisfying.
- Not only is this collaboration by Bardo and Combo Chimbita a full-on bop, the music video makes it's own fun in a dreary New York City winter. I’ve been playing it on repeat.
Thinking
Speaking of Looking-Down-the-Barrel video pioneers: Fellow Millennials, did you know Steve Burns took part of the Blues Clues model and turned it into an interview showabout, among other things, faith, money, sex and AI ?