Thursday, March 31, 2016

Promoting 'Cli-fi" in an online media climate where journalists and PR practitioners sometimes have a love-hate relationship.

 
 
This is how I worked with the media since 2013 to produce a series of very important news stories that appeared in a variety of outlets, from NPR to the New York Times, to Reuters, the AP and the Chronicle of Higher Education (and The Guardian in the UK, the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, Le Monde in France, Corriere della Sera in Italy and the Telegraph in London -- and 50 other media outlets.)

Journalists and PR practitioners sometimes have a love-hate relationship. In the new media era, how should PR practitioners working the ''cli-fi'' beat engage with the media? Furthermore, once a relationship has been established, how should you try to manage and foster that relationship in a way that leads to good press?

 news falls into two categories – “what” and “so what“. “What” is easy to understand – meaning “what happened?” and “so what” is the element that is easily ignored.
 THE ''SO WHAT'' FACTOR

When distributing press releases, most PR people are prone to just telling the stories from their own point of view. Many of them often miss the mark on understanding what makes a story newsworthy: the “so what” factor — why is this piece of news important to your readers and the media?

So, make sure you know who what you are doing when pitching a cli-fi news story to your journalist contacts. You need to know who your audience is before you send a press release.

A frequent question asked by many PR practitioners is this: to whom should I address the press release? According to one pundit, “if you are personally acquainted with the editor-in-chief of a newspaper, it is quite possible that you may get things done by going directly to him or her. If the relationship is a strong one, sure, go ahead and leverage it, however, you must be aware that there are a few potential disadvantages if you want to get things done through your personal relationship with the person at the top.”
  • The journalist will be the one who writes about you. Not the editor-in-chief.It is the journalist who ends up doing the real work. If the journalist feels that the work has been pushed onto him or her, the final article may not necessarily be what you want nor produce the desired communication impact.
  • The rise of social media has greatly increased journalists’ influence. In addition to the different media organizations they work for, most journalists also maintain their own presence and increase their influences on various social media channels, such as Twitter and FB. Make sure to establish a good working relationship with journalists, they are your friends and messengers. And they will write as they see it. If you build it, they will come.
So, how do you make cli-fi related press releases worthwhile and worthy of distribution?

1. Identify the right journalists who cover climate issues and literary things and cater to their interests.


2. Choose your cli-fi focussed media channels with precision. Find out who might be interested and ask around. Use your journalists pals around the nation as you contacts and ask them for advice. You have been in the newspaper business since 1967, so use your contacts and sources and treat them as you have them treat you, that is to say, sincerely and with humor and small talk when needed. Remember, journalists are your friends. You could not promote cli-fi without journalists getting behind the meme and feeling themselves that this is a good story, a story that needs to be told.
 
6 tips to keep in mind:
  1. Frequent communication should be maintained. 
  2. Don't be shy.
  3. Be polite and sincere. 
  4. Identify the right platform you need to reach your audiences. .
  5. Don’t rely solely on PR; friendships with reporters in the industry also can help..
  6. The media and PR pros are in the same boat, but they may have different end goals, of course, so it is important to respect these differences and when a reporter says "not interested" he or she means NOT INTERESTED, so it is best not to pester them any more after that point.  However, even with a new genre term like cli-fi -- especially with a new genre term like cli-fi -- there is always room for relationships with reporters and editors at major media outlets to be fostered and improved. If a PR communicator working the cli-fi beat can consistently offer more useful insights in the meme, it can help establish a stronger professional relationship.

Vanderbilt literature professor Teresa Goddu bringing "cli-fi" genre into focus for her students via the classroom and invited guests novelists

 
 
'Cli-fi' goes to college
 
Vanderbilt literature professor Teresa Goddu bringing "cli-fi" genre into focus for her students

 https://t.co/ZPV7oqaWDN

Vanderbilt literature professor Teresa Goddu bringing "cli-fi" genre into focus for her students via the classroom and invited guests novelists such as Nathaniel Rich and others.

EXCERPTS

Professor advances ''cli-fi'' in the classroom  


By Callie Rushton, Class of 2016

 
Dr. Teresa Goddu
Teresa Goddu
....Dr. Goddu has stepped down as Director of American Studies and has returned to the English department, shifting her attention to the emerging field of environmental humanities.

 “Environmental humanities encourage interdisciplinary thinking about environmental and sustainability issues in terms of culture and society, instead of just science,” she explains.


DR. GODDU VOWS NOT TO TEACH ANY COURSES NOT ENVIRONMENTALLY THEMED
 
Equipped with these stirring ideas, Dr. Goddu has vowed that she is “not going to teach any more courses that are not environmentally themed,” a promise that further demonstrates her sense of urgency and commitment to these critical issues.

This Spring 2016 semester’s course is entitled “The Coming Storm: Contemporary Cli-fi Novels and Movies" This genre, still in its infancy, is emerging predominantly within the realm of social media.
Climate fiction, or “cli-fi,” deals with climate change and society’s potential responses to it, both now and in the future.  

“Cli-fi is fascinating because it provides a medium for viewing contemporary culture’s thinking about the environment,” the professor says.


==================ADDEDNOTES====

Notes from a supporter of cli fi:



 I like "climate fiction" as a separate category of fiction entirely. I don't think it works as a sub-genre of sci-fi. Cli-fi can have roots in sci-fi, of course, but also in thrillers and literary fiction. Right now there's a fuzziness about cli-fi, though the term is clearly gaining traction. But I also think sales will dictate whether cli-fi gains a sharper profile.

Destruction of the human species is the dominant theme of cli-fi. Related to that, naturally (yes, pun intended), is the destruction of the environment in which we, as a species, have flourished. From there, authors take it to various fictional domains?dystopia, apocalypse, post-apocalypse. I haven't seen much cli-fi emphasizing adaption.

I'm hard-pressed to name the leading authors of cli-fi. While I've certainly read a fair number of them, I read far more literary fiction than anything else, so of course Margaret Atwood's work comes to mind right away. Ditto, Barbara Kingsolver.

I'm not sure we're going to see bookstores in ten years, so hazarding a guess about a "shelf" for cli-fi should be seen metaphorically. While I'd like to see a clear category of cli-fi, I'm not too sanguine about that. I think cli-fi takes on a subject that is deeply uncomfortable for people, who are caught in a classic case of cognitive dissonance: Those who accept climate change and are knowledgeable about it recognize that it calls for wholesale changes in their lifestyles, which most?to judge by the record?cannot accept. So what do they do? They turn away from dealing with it as much as possible, and that, alas, includes reading about the subject. For those who view reading fiction as an escape, cli-fi provides little comfort.

Already, Goodreads, Smashwords, and Amazon recognize the genre. Media such as The New Yorker, NPR, The Guardian, and The Christian Science Monitor have recently reported the new genre.

I think cli-fi has the potential to sway popular views about the looming disaster, but I don't believe that's likely to happen unless literary efforts are adapted to film or television. I think the more adventuresome TV that we've been watching for the past decade would be the best medium for reaching and, perhaps, even convincing large numbers of people.


 

Friday, March 25, 2016

UPDATE PERSONAL NOTE TO PAOLO BACIGALUPI: Climate activist Dan Bloom sincerely extends olive branch to Paolo B. and says sorry and says "Let's make peace and create a truce. And all this will end. Promise.

Paolo, I am  sincerely extending an olive branch to you and saying ''sorry'' and  says "Let's make peace and create a truce. And all this will  end. Promise.''
 
Paolo, if you feel that I have been acting in ways that you feel were hurtful to you and others, and if anything I have done has made you feel that way, then I sincerely apologize to you with this note here, and say "sorry." I didn't mean to do or say anything that was hurtful but if anything i did or said was, then I say sorry you, and I mean it, and just as someone else you know was able to extend his hand in friendship and make a truce and call for peace, just last week, and that truce has been holding up well and will for the rest of time, then I do feel you and I am also here extending my hand to you in peace and friendship and calling for a mutal truce. Just send me a signal by one of your tweets on your own feed, and I or one of my friends will see it, and I once I see that you accept this offer and a truce and peace, then all this over, and I promise to put an end to this, and no more  of this. Can do? I am waiting your signal. I am sincere in this. I know you are a sincere person too. We should both be fighting climate change in our own ways, and that's what most important. So let's put aside our differences now and let bygones be bygones, and we can then move on. You go back to your important work as a novelist, whose work I admire and respect deeply, and I can go back to my work, too.
 
Peace? I am for it. You? Send me a signal, and it's done.
 
Dan
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
[183/181]

Thursday, March 24, 2016

UPDATE for Paolo Bacigalupi's eyes: -- Paolo, I am sincerely extending an olive branch to you and saying ''sorry'' and says "Let's make peace and create a truce. And all this will end. Promise.''

 

Paolo, I am  sincerely extending an olive branch to you and saying ''sorry'' and  says "Let's make peace and create a truce. And all this will  end. Promise.''
 
Paolo, if you feel that I have been acting in ways that you feel were hurtful to you and others, and if anything I have done has made you feel that way, then I sincerely apologize to you with this note here, and say "sorry." I didn't mean to do or say anything that was hurtful but if anything i did or said was, then I say sorry you, and I mean it, and just as someone else you know was able to extend his hand in friendship and make a truce and call for peace, just last week, and that truce has been holding up well and will for the rest of time, then I do feel you and I am also here extending my hand to you in peace and friendship and calling for a mutal truce. Just send me a signal by one of your tweets on your own feed, and I or one of my friends will see it, and I once I see that you accept this offer and a truce and peace, then all this over, and I promise to put an end to this, and no more  of this. Can do? I am waiting your signal. I am sincere in this. I know you are a sincere person too. We should both be fighting climate change in our own ways, and that's what most important. So let's put aside our differences now and let bygones be bygones, and we can then move on. You go back to your important work as a novelist, whose work I admire and respect deeply, and I can go back to my work, too.
 
Peace? I am for it. You? Send me a signal, and it's done.
 
Dan

MIT's ''undark'' science website sheds light on ''cli-fi,'' as reporter Aleszu Bajak dives deep

Truth, Beauty, Science.

  •  

    Cli-Fi: A New Genre Reaching Readers Where Science Facts and Charts Normally Can’t

     

     

     

     

     

    Cli-Fi: Reaching Readers Where Science Can’t

    Last week, Rio Fernandes in The Chronicle of Higher Education pointed to the rise of cli-fi courses in college classrooms, quoting Dan Bloom, who does PR for the term, as estimating that more than 100 courses now assign the genre. By exploring fictional future worlds devastated by climate change, the thinking goes, students will come to appreciate the gravity of our environmental moment.
    And it’s not just students consuming cli-fi: The general public seems to enjoy reading about – and watching – stories of climate cataclysms and biological disaster. In recent years, The GuardianThe Atlantic, and The New York Times have all written about the rise of cli-fi novels and movies in popular culture.
    climate ficition
    Can cli-fi raise awareness of potential futures in a way current science can’t?
     
     
    But how established is the cli-fi genre, really? A study published earlier this year by ''cli-fi'' advocate Professor Adeline Putras-Johns in the UK attempted to provide an answer. The analysis, published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, presents a census of the genre’s seminal titles – from Arthur Herzog’s 1977 novel “Heat” to 2014’s “Odds Against Tomorrow” by Nathaniel Rich – suggesting that they are helping to shape both “a canon of climate change fiction” and a new tributary for literary and critical theorists to explore. Citing the 2015 literary criticism book “Anthropocene Fictions: The Novel in a Time of Climate Change,” the analysis puts the total number of cli-fi books currently at 150.
    Adeline Johns-Putra, a professor of English at the University of Surrey and author of the new cli-fi study, extracts two overarching themes that reach across the genre — what she calls “preoccupations with parenthood” and a “dominant tone of lament.” Anyone who has read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” or Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake” would agree. Climate fiction is concerned not only with climate change’s “existentialist challenges, but with its emotional and psychological dilemmas,” Johns-Putra concludes. Perhaps it’s by tugging at our heartstrings that the genre has become so successful.
    Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University, agrees.
    “I think what experience shows us is that various forms of non-fiction don’t reach most people,” Oreskes wrote in an email. “Moreover, non-fiction doesn’t actually get to the heart of the issue — and I mean that literally: Our hearts.” By presenting fictionalized imprints of the future of the planet, she suggested, the genre can cut deeper than non-fiction.
    In 2011, Oreskes published “Merchants of Doubt,” a work of non-fiction examining the perversion of science by the oil and tobacco industry. More recently, she tried her hand at co-authoring a climate fiction novel, “The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future.
    “I have no idea who has bought and read ‘Collapse,'” Oreskes said, “but I would venture to guess that many of the readers of that book do not overlap with the readers of ‘Merchants.'”
    In that sense, the evolution of climate fiction would seem crucial in the effort to galvanize minds around the scientific realities facing modern civilization. The most detailed PowerPoint presentation or scientific paper, no matter how exhaustively peer-reviewed, cannot communicate the immediacy or devastation that a fictional portrayal of a sunken coastline, an inundated city, or a barren wasteland can impress upon a reader – particularly if scientists are predicting those things as being hundreds of years away.
    Or perhaps just decades.
    “Despite all the good science that has been published about climate change, most people don’t really understand why it matters,” Oreskes said, “and we especially don’t understand why it matters to us — people living here and now, as opposed to future generations or in faraway places.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

    The week in books: from VOX website's

      on March 26, 2016,
    Vox
    SCROLL WAAAAAAAAAAy down....!!!!
     
    Cli-fi studies — the study of books about climate change — sounds intriguing and also like a good excuse to re-read all of Margaret Atwood's most recent novels
    Cli-fi studies — the study of books about climate change — sounds intriguing and also like a good excuse to re-read all of Margaret Atwood’s most recent novels.

    When Nan Talese speaks about ''cli-fi,'' the literary world listens and Publishers Row responds positively

    Files

    files

    An interview with ''cli-fi'' mystery story writer (and soon a novel) with Jay Carey

    FLORIDA in 2048?
     
    *** Tip of the hat and a big thanks for Robert LoPresti at the Cli-fi (in the ) Academy fFacebook group for introducing this blogger to Jay Carey. We found her online in New Jersey and after the long Easter weekend, we managed to do a short Q and A here:
     
    [NOTE TO READERS] -- Jay Carey's writes mystery stories for the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine which features the a Sarasota, Florida, police detective named Eureka Kilburn who "keeps the peace in torrid times."]
     
    QUESTION: When did you first hear of the cli-fi term? from the NPR broadcast in 2013 or the New Yorker blog in 2013 by Carolyn Kormann? Or where or when?
     
    JAY CAREY: I first heard the term cli-fi on the internet – who knows where or when.  It may very well have been something you wrote, Dan.  I've been reading about climate change pretty intensively since 2007, and I've always been interested in seeing what other people are doing.  The term eventually gained some traction, I noticed.  I read at least one article in the New York Times about it, and I now noticed that you started a discussion on the topic there at the Room for Debate forum in July 2014.  I had not read the very interesting Carolyn Kormann piece on the New Yorker website until you mentioned it.  As soon as I finished it, I ordered a copy of ''I'M WITH THE BEARS.''
     
    Q. Is there a cli fi novel in your soon to be published in future days? Working on it now perhaps?
     
    JAY CAREY:  I just finished a cli-fi mystery novel called ''WE'LL THINK ABOUT THAT IN HELL.''  [Dan Bloom adds: It is as yet published and her literary agent is shopping it around to publishers at this very moment.] It features the same Sarasota, Florida, police detective as the stories:  Det. Eureka Kilburn who "keeps the peace in torrid times," as Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine puts it.  After a sulfur gas asphyxiates a couple of people at a landfill, a televangelist comes to town claiming that Florida's climate problems are part of End Times.  The sun burning up the earth, sea salt destroying it, and creatures dying off of it were all predicted by the Bible.  Then someone kills the man's wife.

    Q. You said   ''I'm surprised that anyone writes anything else'', meaning anything other than cli-fi stories or novels when I asked about your feelings about writing cli-fi.  What did you mean by that?


    JAY CAREY:  Climate change is the single most significant and riveting issue of the day.  "We're already dead, and we don't know it" sounds like a tagline for a mystery or maybe a zombie movie, but it is also a good description for what is happening right now.  Trying to make this real to people seems to be the most exciting challenge there is.  There are other problems in the world, for sure, but they are more visible.  Changes in the climate will fundamentally alter if not destroy the world and its inhabitants, yet they appear so diffuse they don't fully register.  It is really really hard to capture climate change in fiction but I think it may be one of the best ways to communicate it.  The concentration required by the act of imagining something is persuasive in itself.

    QUESTION: Why don't you want anyone to confuse your mystery stories with ''science fiction''? 

    JAY CAREY:   I love certain science fiction:  Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard  – especially THE DROWNED WORLD – and John Varley's MILLENIUM.  

    But I do not want readers to confuse me with the science fiction/fantasy writer named Jacqueline Carey.  That is why, although I published my literary work under the name Jacqueline Carey long before this other Jacqueline Carey started writing, I use the name Jay Carey for the mysteries that are set in the near future.

    I also think "tomorrow's realism" (or cli-fi) is a better description of my work than science fiction.  It is extremely realistic, it is just a little ahead of time.  Det. Kilburn's world is a very recognizably ruined one.

    Q. The stories are set in the year 2048 in Sarasota, Florida, when climate change has redrawn the landscape and it is a whole new hot worldWHY DID YOU CHOOSE THAT YEAR AND NOT SAY 2025 or 2124?

    JAY CAREY:   I tried to choose a time when the alterations to the climate were plausibly severe, but weren't so far in the future that technological changes would distract from climate-related problems.  I was originally going to use 2040, but back stories kept causing problems.  I like 2048 because it is a sort of play on 1984.


    QUESTION:   Does the detectve's name have any symbolic meaning or just fun?

    JAY CAREY:   Eureka is obviously the perfect first name for the heroine of a mystery.  Kilburn was the last name of someone I knew of in my childhood, which makes it real in a primal way for me.  It is also a suburb of London that has the sort of very diverse population that will characterize Sarasota, Florida, in the year 2048.  

     

     






     BONUS NOTE:



    First-of-its kind English course at UCSB examines “The Rhetoric of Climate Change”
    Thursday, March 24, 2016 - 13:00
    Santa Barbara, CA
     

    ucsb-ken-hiltner-sustainability-champ-2015.JPG

    Ken Hiltner, UCSB
    Ken Hiltner

    Photo Credit: 

    Sonia Fernandez



    In a unique offering believed to be the first and only university course of its kind, UC Santa Barbara English scholar Ken Hiltner has created and launched a class examining climate change through the lens of literature.
    “The Rhetoric of Climate Change,” which just wrapped its inaugural quarter, studies the climate change debate — Is it real? Is it manmade? Can it be fixed? Should it be? — by analyzing popular narratives on all sides of the argument.
    “For the most part, scientists assume that the case is closed on this issue, but what fascinates me is that the case isn’t at all closed with respect to the public,” said Hiltner, a professor of English and of environmental studies. “There is still a great deal of denial literature being generated — narratives that are very convincing, that raise doubt. I thought it would be interesting to use the tools we have developed for literary analysis to approach it and see what we could learn.”
    Take Shakespeare’s use of narrative in “Othello” to simultaneously enamor readers with Desdemona and seed disdain for Iago. The writers of so-called climate change “denial literature,” according to Hiltner, employ similar strategies with similar success.
    “Going into this, I assumed most denial literature would be simplistic, preaching to the choir, but it is more complicated than that,” said Hiltner, executive director of UCSB’s Environmental Humanities Initiative (EHI). “They may offer counter arguments — it’s sunspot activity, it’s cyclical, happening every 1,500 years, it’s not human caused. Others acknowledge that the climate is changing and that it is human caused but question our ability to intervene, ‘How can we possibly stop it? What would the cost be to do it?’
    “The arguments out there are so varied that they sometimes become close to a standard non-denial argument, turning on the question of ‘What do we do as a culture?’” Hiltner continued. “Do we change our lives, throttle back, not drive cars and so forth, or do we not do anything and wait for science to take care of it?’”
    ‘A Human Issue’
    Co-teaching the new class is graduate student Christopher Walker, a Ph.D. candidate in English and current EHI research fellow who shares Hiltner’s passion for environmental humanities. (Walker himself is launching a new course this spring that will study the emerging literary genre known as “Cli-Fi,” or climate fiction.)
    “One thing that was fascinating to see unfold among the students is that some of the denial literature is quite effective even with a very educated audience, an audience that is perhaps predisposed to seeing climate change as real,” Walker said. “And what was very valuable for students and, quite frankly, for me, is that by learning how denial literature might be effective we come to better understand how the humanities can really get to the core of the cultural distinction between those that understand climate change is happening and those who aren’t yet on board.”
    Of the 25 students in this inaugural seminar, most, Walker and Hiltner concurred, were definitely on board with the idea that climate change is real and anthropogenic. Yet they also were decidedly enthusiastic about the opportunity not only to read opposing views, but to analyze and understand them. Across the board, students from the class attested to the importance of accepting diverse beliefs as a way toward solutions.
    “It’s fascinating to look at climate change in the context of humanities, because in reality it is a very human issue,” said third-year English major Jessica Russo. “The idea of addressing any type of issue in the way you’d address ideas about literature — taking that humanities focus and applying it — is really valuable. For so many issues related to the environment, society and culture, we engage in debates without really reading and analyzing what our opponents are saying. I believe there would be much greater progression in those arguments if we would do more of what we did in this course.”
    What they did was the critical examination that is at the heart of the humanities, by way of good, old-fashioned reading and writing. Hiltner and Walker identified the most prominent “denialists,” as such folks are colloquially known — S. Fred Singer, for example — and asked the students to read their most popular pieces. They tossed in key voices from the other side of the spectrum as well, such as author/activist Naomi Klein. Their framing document for it all: The latest comprehensive climate-change assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
    “I don’t know anyone who wants to sit down and read the IPCC report, but it is important to do so,” said Hiltner, who was UCSB’s 2014-15 Sustainability Champion. “If nothing else, you walk out of this class seeing the many sides of what I would argue is one of the most important issues — if not the most important issue — of this century.
    ‘A Place for the Humanities’
    “Not only are the climate change deniers a varied group, but the folks who want to do something about it are also of different minds as to what we should do and how we should do it,” Hiltner added. “At the end of the day, we wanted our students to realize how complicated this issue is — to sit down and take it apart. I think there is a real place in English, in the humanities, for tackling current, topical, important issues today, and this is certainly one of them.”
    His belief in the powerful role that the humanities can play in addressing such global concerns was enthusiastically affirmed, Hiltner said, by the course and by the engaged, enthusiastic response from students. At a time when, according to a national study recently published in the journal Science, one in three U.S. public school educators is teaching climate-change denial, it’s coming none too soon.
    “I went into this, our first official EHI course, thinking of it as an experiment, but it has both confirmed for me that we need to do more of this, as it answered a larger question that’s been asked a lot lately, ‘What are the humanities good for?’” Hiltner said. “The humanities need to be in the picture. Scientists are often surprised to find that this is a debate at all, but reading these texts we realize that this great battle is underway for American opinion, and it’s happening with words, it’s happening with our stock and trade. The science of climate change is being debated through competing narratives.”
    Student Edward Friedlander, a graduating senior who will earn a bachelor’s degree in English, put it this way: “You can have climate research and science pertaining to climate change, but it’s useless if you can’t enter into dialogue with people who don’t accept that science. What this class does, uniquely, is allow us to investigate modes by which we can both infiltrate that discussion and help carry it out.
    “We all have that uncle at family gatherings who is very adamant and determined pertaining to views about climate change,” Friedlander added. “This class gives you the tools to confront that uncle.”

    Contact Info: 



    - See more at: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2016/016588/case-closed-depends-who-you-ask#sthash.EmbGeUwo.MyDm96GV.dpuf