as an editor, is one of the largest problems we have. At the Herald 

 Journal, which is a small paper with a 12,000 circulation, we can't 

 afford to hire a full-time specialist who has all that nuts and bolts type 

 of information. If you send someone out on assignment who knows 

 nothing about environmental science and expect that person to come 

 back in an hour-and-a-half and turn out a good, readable, 

 understandable story, with 45 minutes until deadline, then your kidding 

 yourself. You can't do that. 



Part of that is our problem. We perhaps should take a look at 

 getting out of the graduate school or journalism graduate business and 

 insisting, as we used to do, that people going into journalism get an 

 education in something significant like political science or economics or, 

 in this case, perhaps we need to take a look at training more people to 

 deal with the environmental sciences. As I say, part of this problem is 

 the journalists and the news media's problem. The other half of the 

 problem--and I think it's about 50-50--is your problem, as sources of 

 environmental news. How many people do you know in state and 

 federal environmental or natural resource managment agencies who are 

 articulate enough to really get the message across. 



Another big issue between reporters and agency information people 

 arises when agency people say they're going to have to look at the 

 story before it's published, or "You're not going to publish it." Most 

 journalists will say no. I'm the journalist, you're the news source. 

 You've got to trust me whether you like it or not. Now, I think in the 

 best of all possible worlds, a really good journalist--if he or she was 

 into a topic that might be a little bit shaky as far as basic 

 understanding is concerned--would probably request the opportunity to 

 go back and say, "Take a look at this news release. Here's a rough 

 draft of my story. Let me know if there's anything technically, 

 factually wrong with it." The problem that we get into in those kinds 

 of situations is that a lot of people who are news sources fancy 

 themselves as reincarnations of Ernest Hemmingway. They're the best 

 writers in the whole world and newspaper journalists are the most 

 rotten writers in the whole world. They don't want it to sound like we 

 put it on paper. If you could ever get into a situation where people 

 would be willing to review copy for just the facts and whether or not 

 the concept had been interpreted properly, we'd all be okay. But 

 that, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the most important and serious 

 problems that we all face, expecially in the Rocky Mountain region. 

 I've spent 20 years in journalism of one kind or another in this region, 

 and I still don't feel that we have an adequately informed public on 

 environmental issues and this is probably the basic reason that we 

 don't. There just aren't enough people who really understand what's 

 going on in this area. 



Now I don't know how you affect changes. I don't know how you 

 really go about the business of getting people to talk more. 

 Symposiums like this one are a good opportunity to do it. I think. 

 Bill, in your situation, you indicate that things are shaping up in 

 Casper right now. You're having a little bit better luck. I think it 

 would help sometime if you would approach the newspap-er, the radio 



