How to produce reporting that doubles as a community resource

In 2022, Deceleration published its Extreme Heat Survival Guide, a bilingual community resource to help people navigate dangerous extreme heat events in San Antonio and South Texas. Last month, founder Greg Harman and editor Marisol Cortez were interviewed by a production crew working on assignment for the Weather Channel about their extreme heat coverage for a documentary about climate organizing initiatives around the country. 

Launched in 2016, Deceleration is a nonprofit online journal that produces original news and analysis responding to our shared ecological, political, and cultural crises. According to Harman, the production crew reached out the same day that door hangers based on their Extreme Heat Survival Guide hit the neighborhood streets. “[The producer] wanted something off the beaten path, media -wise,” says Harman. “He was impressed that we have been going — at various rates of production — since 2016.” 

Harman shares how Deceleration collaborated with readers to draw attention to an underreported issue.

What inspired the Extreme Heat Survival Guide?

We want our reporting to be of use to the community. The heat guide was created after it became clear that our home community was being thrust more quickly than we had anticipated into extreme heat risks. We were underwhelmed by the information being distributed on the top by governmental agencies at various levels. We invited readers to contribute and they showed up strong. We partnered with a local artist who made this really heavy challenge, well, fun and fresh.

https://twitter.com/PuroPincheSA/status/1553086502862741504

How did this guide turn into door hangers?

We are a small initiative. And, to be honest, if our reporting doesn’t trickle up into other media spaces, it has very little chance of catching the popular mind. We were shocked when we realized that even our finding that the local medical examiner was refusing to track heat deaths wasn’t getting picked up by the big players. Or the death of an unhoused neighbor, in spite of the depth of our coverage. So we felt actually forced to stretch our work into more obviously organizing efforts, such as with making the door hangers and a petition targeting Bexar County. 

If local media was healthy and working the way it needs to, this issue would have already rolled out in a column by the daily’s editorial board and at public radio. It clearly wasn’t, for whatever reason. A big deadly serious story was going unreported by other media partners that most residents get their news from. We took steps we felt morally compelled to take even if some may charge that we crossed some editorial boundary. We love our community. We simply can’t stand to see their suffering ignored.

Do you have any new or upcoming pieces related to this coverage?

We have new information about heat deaths here we expect to publish this month. But we’ll be taking a couple weeks to switch tracks and attend and team-report the 12th World Wilderness Congress in South Dakota — the first tribally hosted World Wilderness Congress. So much of the most critical work we write about is being advanced by Indigenous Peoples. This congress truly helps set a global conservation response and this year will have a huge impact, I expect, on inserting Tribal authority and influence in historically understood white and Western conservation science. Come September, we have a suite of stories planned on heat and heat solutions we are excited about bringing forward to our growing community of readers and contributors.

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