It’s because we have one Earth and it’s going down the drain, according to Richard Black, an environmental correspondent with the BBC news website who gave a talk called “News on the net: a green future?” at the UBC School of Journalism on Friday afternoon.

His presentation started with an animated graphic showing the Earth going into the drain of a kitchen sink. This brought chuckles from the audience and kept them interested in his talk because he asked the audience to make choices on what information would be displayed next. For example, he showed an endangered species website and asked someone to shout the name of an animal or plant species they would like to know if it was endangered. At another part of his talk he used an animated map and asked the audience to choose a city in Britain and we found out the exact number of votes cast for each political party during an election.

“The environment has changed more than any other subject in the last decade” which is similar to how online media has changed how people report on news and obtain information. Does this mean online media helps us to reach more people? It appears so, because people are visiting websites to get information on the environment from international sources. The World Wildlife Federation gets 53,000 hits per month while an environmental story on the BBC website receives 20,000 to 200,000 hits. Strangely, squid stories are the most popular amongst BBC website users.

The main strength of online media is an ability to provide user interaction and “give them something to play with” when they are searching for information online. Even Black’s presentation had elements of interaction making it more enjoyable than traditional talks where an audience member has to wait until the end to participate and ask questions.

The talk concluded with a warning that online journalism has both benefits and challenges in the future. Many new journalists who want to report on environmental issues will have lots of stories to write about but there is lack of trust in online journalism. Statistics show 34% of South Koreans rate online journalism as the most important news source, which is high compared to 9% in other countries. In order to harness the full potential of online media we need to find a way to increase public trust of online news websites.