Things have started to balance out a bit as we all adjust to working together, working crazy hours, eating Chips Ahoy! for dinner and being paged like doctors at all hours of the day. There are good days and crazy days...like on Wednesday, when my first assignment wasn't until 6 p.m. and I got out of the office by midnight, or the time I had to cover 3 consecutive events (which means 3 videos, 3 text stories and 3 photo slideshows...which, thanks to the help of my news team, got done relatlively fast), or the time I spent 10 hours in a Playa del Carmen conference center watching bloggers, media experts and Mexico's most famous scientist ever, Mario Molina, sit in panel discussions.
The latter event was actually very interesting from a journalist point-of-view. The panelists talked about the role that media play in educating and influencing the public on climate change topics. Even in the climate stories I've written prior to the COP16, I struggled to find the delicate balance between celebrating efforts and initiatives and criticizing the fact that (surprise!) none of them have been implemented, or they don't reall work. Climate change is real, it is affecting us, and we must all change our lifestyles to lessen our impact, but how exactly does that translate to a run-of-the-mill news story whose purpose is not to preach or take a side?
Despite supposedly being the voice of an international conference filled with 25,000 participants and delegates from 193 countries, all of the stories that we cover at the COP16 news center have to do with the Mexican government. Really, I should feel stupid for being so surprised that a semi-official news center would actually just tow the national line, especially here. Every event is hosted or co-hosted by the Mexican government, and all of the interviews that are scheduled in advance are Mexican officials, scientists, environmentalists, you have it. But what is actually the most irritating is the quality of the website. We pour hours into making videos, photo slideshows and stories. The video and photo editors hardly eat or sleep because they spend all day in their freezing cold studios working, and the reporters are under pressure to file stories for an immediate turnaround. And then you look at the website, and you can't find things, or the organization is uninviting to random viewers, and it's disheartening to see that.
Anyway, that's my daily dose of bitching. It's Saturday, so I must be working!
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