Who was being quoted on the health risk of BSE in Canadian beef in Canada's national newspapers, May 21-Aug. 13, 2003. Coverage continued for months but scientists stopped getting quoted. The y-axis is the proportion (%) of sources in each category quoted in each time period. (Johnson, 2004)

My thesis was on risk communication, using mad cow disease as a case study. I looked at a the language and sources used in news articles to discuss the safety of Canadian beef after Canada’s first mad cow was found in May 2003.

I remember that day vividly. It was my first summer at CBC, and I was interning at Quirks & Quarks in Toronto.

Then-prime minister Jean Chretien, in an AP photo from May 21, 2003, the day after the news broke. The original caption read: "Jean Chretien shows that Canadian beef is safe by eating it for lunch on Wednesday." (AP)

As the summer progressed, BSE remained a major national story, mostly because the U.S. had banned Canadian beef, leaving cattle producers without a major source of income. There was a huge SARS benefit concert in Toronto that summer, but I remember dubbing it “Beef-stock” because of the amount of Canadian beef promotion, including a city block-long aisle of BBQ. I wrote about it at the time:

Veteran comedians Dan Ackroyd and Catherine O’Hara weren’t even trying to be funny when they sat down between acts to eat Ontario and Alberta beef in front of the crowd of half a million spectators. ‘Mmmm, this is great Canadian beef,’ Ackroyd said between bites. ‘I just can’t decide which type of great Canadian beef I like better!’

Trust us, we have science

What does this all have to do with risk communication or my Masters work?

Well, I’d noticed that, as the story progressed, people were still talking about science and health risk, but they were no longer talking to scientists about it. Politicians, cattle producers, and yes, celebrities had taken the media stage to promote Canadian beef.

So I decided to look at whether that gut feeling had any backing to it, with a content analysis of the mad cow coverage in the two national newspapers, the Globe and Mail and National Post. I tracked a few things, including what each story was about, who was quoted making claims about health risk, and whether those claims had any caveat of uncertainty. (They should have, because a lot was unknown about the disease or how prevalent it was on Canadian farms).

The story shifted over time, understandably, from the question of risk to the general public (very low) to one of political and economic impact. But those politicians and industry groups were still making claims about science and health risk, with little mention of uncertainty. Here’s a representative quote from the then-minister of health, Anne McLellan:

“I think we have the science now to make a scientific case for the Americans to lift the importation ban.”

So what? Well, at the time I was trying to make a point about risk communication, and, of course, finish my degree.

Here’s what I get out of it now. There’s nothing wrong with politicians and lobby groups talking about science — let’s hope they’re using some evidence to make decisions.

But, science is a process, not an outcome. And it’s a process that gains credibility (and power) by laying out uncertainties and the evidence to support its conclusions. In this kind of rhetoric, speakers end up using the word “science” to borrow that credibility without earning it by doing either of those things.

Lisa talks with her hands about why she uses social media on the job. (Photo credit: Miss604 on flickr)

This weekend at the Northern Voice conference, Kirk LaPointe from The Vancouver Sun and I spoke on a panel called “How (Should) Journalists Use Social Media.”

The visuals I used, created using a new-to-me online tool called Prezi, are posted online here.

I won’t recount the whole thing, but here’s a couple of key ideas I talked about.

Social media makes my city smaller

My city, but smaller and more interesting. (Photo credit: ecstaticist on flickr)

Smaller, more interesting, perhaps even more friendly.

In my talk, I told a story about my first job at CBC: a short-term stint as CBC Radio’s Nelson bureau reporter. There, it was a lot easier for the public to reach me, if they wanted to. No security desk, no switchboard in Toronto, just a one-room office and the phone number was in the book.

In a big city newsroom like CBC Vancouver, it’s very different. It would be easy (though not smart) to avoid “the audience” almost completely. In my opinion, good journalists don’t — with or without social media. I use tools like Twitter to reach out beyond the people I would otherwise know, to get to know my city better. My networks are bigger, and that makes my city smaller.

Social media as “social scanner”

So, if you see something on Twitter, do you go report it on air? No, of course not.

It’s like a police scanner to me. People who work in news sometimes listen to chatter on the police scanner to find out what’s happening. A fire in Coquitlam. A fatal MVA in Abbotsford. Just because you hear it, doesn’t mean you immediately go on air with it. You need to find out more. But now you know what to find out about.

That’s how I use Twitter, and other social media tools. If I see a tweet about something that could be breaking news (like the injuries at the Alexisonfire concert in Vancouver during the Olympics) then I start asking questions, and searching for more.

Stream vs. reservoir

Other reporters, or people starting to use Twitter on the job sometimes ask me how I keep up with my followers. And the answer is, I don’t.

For me, email : reservoir :: twitter : stream.

The water in the reservoir of a dam is contained and accounted for — stored until it’s eventually released through the turbines, or out some overflow. That’s email to me: I have an obligation to deal with what’s sent to me.

For me, Twitter and blogs and Facebook are streams I dip in and out of. I enjoy them while I’m there, but I don’t feel beholden to track every drop of water that flowed before and after my visit. Nor do I expect that of others.

How do you think journalists should use social media?

Thanks to notes from DameEmma, Stephen Hui, ivantohelpyou, shamelesshussy, Miss604, Gillian Shaw, Rob McMahon, di_marshall and Hummingbird604 for helping me decide what to repeat here.

I’m going to be speaking at the Northern Voice conference this weekend, joining Kirk LaPointe from the Vancouver Sun on a panel called “How (Should) Journalists Use Social Media”.

One of the tricky things in trying to prepare my presentation is that the subject matter is my job, but this is supposed a “Personal Blogging and Social Media Conference” — something the conference organizers reminded speakers about, oh, five or six times.

So, what to do?

Well, quite a few people are talking about their jobs, actually. Take uber-science communicator David Ng for example. Science is his work, but it looks like his Northern Voice talk will be a human take on the world he works in, and a project he’s passionate about.

And that’s what I’ll be aiming for. Using social media as a journalist is guided for me by personal interest and my own judgement of where lines are that shouldn’t be crossed, not just by CBC corporate policy. [See below for more discussion of this point]

If you’re at Northern Voice, maybe you’ll check it out. Or, just say hi in the atrium.

Update: We discussed this a bit in my talk, and I’d like to add in text here what I said there. I am mindful of CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices, and know I could be called on by my bosses to defend anything I write online. But the official rules haven’t kept up with the changing technology and ways of working, so I have to use my own judgement to decide how to apply them to new situations. And, I use social media because I want to, not because I’m told to.

I did a story for CBC News in Vancouver today that’s already getting a bunch of comments on our site. It’s about phone books being delivered that aren’t wanted, and what companies are doing about it.

Not one but two thick business directories arrived on Vancouver doorstops a few weeks ago. I didn’t think much more about them until I saw Darren Barefoot’s post about putting the new books straight into the recycling bin.

Others have also been griping about it too. Jonathon Narvey blogged about it and last year started a group on Facebook called The Yellow Pages Must be Stopped. His concern, as he said in my story:

I understand they are recyclable and I understand they’re made from recycled products, but the energy that goes into making a product that very few people want just seems to me a huge waste of resources.”

So what do the companies say? Both say their print directory is still well used. But, they’re responding to the concerns by letting people get off the distribution list if they want to.

Canpages: You can opt out now

This is the newer book in Metro Vancouver, but Canpages still delivers more than 800,000 business directories here (about the same number as their competition, the Yellow Pages Group, and at about the same time).

Their Director of Marketing, Michael Oldewening, told me you can opt-out now from Canpages directory — and you have been able to for years. This year, for the first time, he said, there is a feedback form in the directory (page 142 in Vancouver edition) where you can request removal from the distribution list. You can also do that online here.

Oldewening said only 50 to 60 people have done that so far in the Vancouver area. It’s unclear whether that low number is because the remainder want to receive the book, don’t know that opting out is an option, or know it is but can’t be bothered.

Yellow Pages Group: Opting out in 2009

Right now, you can’t opt out of the Yellow Pages Group directory, but that’s changing this year. (As Darren had translated from Montreal coverage of the topic)

I spoke to Paul Batchelor, the VP of Sales for for the Western Region. He said they also hadn’t had many requests to opt out. But, Yellow Pages is starting a program in time for the 2010 phone book to address concerns about the waste of unwanted books.

What about a reverse-onus program, where you have to opt-in to get one? Not something Yellow Pages would consider now, said Batchelor. According to their research, two-thirds of the population uses a phone book on a regular basis, so that wouldn’t make sense, he said.

If the recycling bin is in reach, you're more likely to use it.

I spent yesterday morning with the people behind The Clean Bin Project, Jen and Grant. As I showed in my CBC story (video link) last night, they haven’t taken out the garbage in seven (!) months. They’re buying almost nothing, except food, and even with edibles they’re following strict rules to reduce packaging and waste.

If you’re interested in reducing waste — and, like me, bored with stories about green living that encourage buying stuff — it’s worth checking out what they’re up to.

Sure, they’re on the far end from most people in the enviro-commitment spectrum. Taking the garnish home from the restaurant to put in the compost is, even in Grant’s words, “a bit silly.”

But other things they’re doing could suit the semi-committed:

• Make it harder to throw stuff away. The garbage bins they used to have around the house (bathroom, office) are gone.
• Make recycling easy. They have 10 bins, so everything has a place, and they’re all within reach.
• Don’t wait until you finish a food item to figure out whether its packaging is recyclable. Check it in the store.

We’ve been doing a bit of this at home, on the recycling front. I realized last summer that I was throwing out toilet paper rolls just because the garbage was easy to reach. So, I put a paper recycling bin in the bathroom, and now it fills up faster than the garbage.

Do you have any tips to reduce waste that you’ve used in your own home?

Not pretty, but hey, it's not in the landfill. Click for video. Credit: Keith Martin/CBC

We started composting at home about two years ago. I had been resistant: the smell, the slop, the fruit flies. My only previous compost experience was a big rotting pile at the back of a Kits rental that itself seemed to be returning to the earth.

But a friend who goes through a lot of dirt in his garden offered to take our kitchen scraps, and we happily started collecting them.

Now, we make way less garbage, and have sorted the smell and flies out.

But, I’m not surprised that composting rates are so low in British Columbia. According to Stats Can:

• Only 31% of B.C. households compost (99% recycle)
• Composting rates are far higher in places like P.E.I. (92%) and Nova Scotia (71%) where there are government programs to handle organic waste.
• B.C. is the only province where composting rates have been declining since the 1990s.

In front of a lot of compost. Click for video. Credit: Keith Martin/CBC

It’s a bit of a problem for a region with landfills that are filling up — where (according to Metro Vancouver) up to 300,000 tonnes of the stuff we dump each year could be composted instead. So, the region is right now making plans for two large-scale compost facilities.

That doesn’t yet put composting in the easiness category of recycling (with, say, curbside pickup) but it is a first step.

Here’s my CBC TV story on this, if you’d like to check it out.

I’ll admit it, I was a little resistant to taking on what are generally called “consumer stories” on my beat as an environment reporter. (Find out why after the jump)

But my editors have been keen on them, and I have to say they were right — gauged by audience response, at least.

Some of the topics I’ve tackled so far:

• What difference would it make if we stopped using plastic bags?
• How do you find a greener Christmas tree?
• How clean should your peanut butter jar be to get recycled?

Do you have questions about reducing your footprint, that you want answered? (Or at least asked?) Leave a comment.

What’s my beef with the consumer story? They can be overly obvious, like the post-Thanksgiving stories that recommend refrigerating turkey leftovers.

I also had the impression that a lot of “green living” pieces can boil down to the story line, “don’t buy this, buy that.” As if a sustainably-sourced bamboo end table is going to save the planet.

So, my editors and I agreed I’d aim to steer clear of stories that fall into those categories. Which is why I’m always looking for new questions to take on.

Lisa on Grouse Mountain

One thing I’ll do here is post about the stories I’m reporting. They range from newsy, like the crash in recycling commodity prices, to the more citizen/consumer focused. For example, I recently did a piece on the messy question, “How clean does my peanut butter jar have to be to get recycled?” (Pretty clean, it turns out.)

I used to be a biologist, or at least a biologist-in-training. That makes me a geek for all kinds of things that many journalists I’ve met dislike, including animal carcasses and math. The problem of communicating science and risk well in the news is an ongoing interest of mine.

I’ve also been working at another intersection lately — where mainstream media is experimenting with social media. I was part of the team that started the Your Story project in 2007, which was CBC’s first pilot in citizen journalism. In some ways, this is a natural next step, another tool for newsgathering. But there’s also a culture clash there — which makes it tricky, and interesting.

After a period of meaning to, I’ve now stumbled through enough code to put together this site, as a place to write about these topics.

Thanks for checking it out!