Emily Gertz: Deregulation Nation
Emily Gertz is a New York City-based journalist and Tow-Knight fellow who reports on environmental stories throughout the United States and abroad. Emily’s international field reporting includes stories from Norway, Finland, and Denmark.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity:
Orlando: Emily, your environmental reporting has taken you across the country and overseas. Tell me about a challenge you faced while reporting where you fought hard, overcame an obstacle, and won.
Emily: The biggest single challenge I have faced as an environmental reporter has been weather. I was once working on a story about development along the Mississippi River and had a busy schedule set up for a trip to St. Louis. These interviews and field trips had to happen within a few short days. When I arrived there was an ice storm sweeping across that part of the country, and every one of my interviews was cancelled. So I had to figure out how to cram three days worth of the best possible reporting into much less time.
It was terrifying because if I couldn’t get these interviews and see what I needed to see, I had no financial recourse. The publication I wrote for did not have the resources to fly me back out to the area to work on the story when weather conditions improved.
Initially it looked like a reporting disaster but I was able to regroup, make the most of my time on a tight budget, and even get some impromptu meetings in on the day everything was covered in ice.
This experience taught me that as a reporter you actually can walk into a place, such as a university, and say that you are a reporter and people will actually talk to you. Reporters hold a special status.
Orlando: From environmental reporting to entrepreneurial journalism. You have a project that you are working on as a Tow Knight fellow. Tell me about the problem your venture solves.
Emily: Deregulation Nation amplifies the reporting on the environmental policies of the Trump administration.
Although U.S. federal government policies around preventing pollution and cleaning up natural resources have a big impact on everyday lives, the news about it has a smaller readership most of the time. My hope is that Deregulation Nation will get critical environmental news in front of more of the general public.
Currently, there are reporters doing great reporting on the Trump administration’s environmental policies but these stories don’t get amplified. Instead, these stories are buried by the speed of the news cycle and level of outrageousness for what’s going on.
Secondly, there isn’t a lot of newsroom time being devoted to this work, and it’s often due to financial limitations.
So another goal with this project is to become a resource and encourage more editors and reporters to begin putting resources into these type of stories.
From the financial perspective, I’m looking at what are some ways we can sustainably fund the amplification, and hopefully more reporting. There are fewer full time jobs in journalism than there have ever been. Every beat, including this beat, is under-covered due to the failing revenue model where the bulk of money comes from advertising.
I myself have been through a few small start-up projects where there was no plan for how to stay in business. So, we didn’t. Or, we had a plan but the plan meant raising money by tapping into the same pool of resources as similar environmentally focused projects.
With Deregulation Nation, I’d like to come up with a new way for an environmental media outlet to fund itself.
Orlando: I’m glad you mentioned business models. It’s the focus of the program but just one of many benefits. What is one thing you hope to learn through the Tow-Knight fellowship?
Emily: One thing I hope to do is meet and talk to many of the people pioneering new business models and people who can speak to the ups and downs. The new business models that projects and companies are pioneering now and build off of what they’re doing.
Orlando: New York City is a great place to do that. Please complete this sentence. “2018 was a great year for Deregulation Nation because…
Emily: I stopped just thinking about it and launched something!
Orlando: Where can people learn more about your project?
Emily: The best place is Twitter. Our handle is @deregtracker. My personal Twitter is @ejgertz. I will make announcements there.
[This is part of a series of peer profiles introducing the 2018 class of Tow-Knight Entrepreneurial Journalism fellows at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.]
