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Abstract

This manuscript draws from the Latin American concept extractivismo, literature on journalism and geography, and scholarship on environmental and climate journalism to examine how local reporters and residents of a specific region vulnerable to disasters complicate the national and local boundaries of news production. We analyzed unstructured life story interviews with 9 reporters who live in proximity to the geographical spaces they cover, and 18 Black residents and activists who live in nearby communities. Using these interviews, we employ their critiques of reporting practices to conceptualize extractive journalism and challenge conventional arguments that portray local newsrooms as less extractive than national media organizations. We intervene in scholarship that fails to critically examine how local reporting practices extract from vulnerable communities of color and thus reproduce racial and class injustices.

Keywords

climate journalism community journalism environmental journalism extractivismo local journalism race and class

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Extractive journalism: Conceptualizing extractivismo in climate and environmental journalism

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