HISTORY

IJNR was created as a response to the peculiar difficulties and frustrations of newsrooms in covering natural resources, economic development and the environment. Our ongoing efforts to encourage positive change are grounded in these shared beliefs:

(1) Poor levels of public understanding of environmental problems are connected to a general lack of sustained, explanatory coverage of the environment by newsrooms.

(2) For the journalist, news stories about natural resources and the environment don't pull together easily. These stories usually raise more questions than they answer, and they typically lack clear, tidy endings.

(3) As natural-resource and environmental issues grow in complexity, the journalist's need for a broad spectrum of high-quality sources becomes ever greater.

(4) So does the need for clearer, fairer and more memorable reporting -- the kind of reporting that sheds light instead of heat and that fosters thoughtful discussion and calm, inclusive pursuit of solutions rather than hasty, emotion-driven judgments.

(5) Most journalists on the environment beat hunger for more knowledge of the complex subjects they cover. They want to do a better job. But deadlines and other newsroom pressures deny them the time they need away from the phone and out of the office in order to see and understand the essential people and places -- the context that shapes the issues.

In 1995, while Frank Edward Allen was still dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Montana, he recruited 16 accomplished mid-career journalists to participate as Fellows in the inaugural version of the High Country Institute, the pilot for IJNR. The journalists represented a broad cross-section of American newsrooms—from USA Today, CNN and National Public Radio to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, The Oregonian, the Idaho Statesman, The Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times. The American Forest Foundation, led by its president, Larry Wiseman, sponsored this pilot program.

All 16 of these Fellows "survived" the intensive, two-week expedition without being gobbled by a grizzly or getting left behind. All of them went home exhausted but excited, brimming with fresh story ideas, new friends, new sources and broadened perspectives. Soon they began to tell their journalism colleagues about the High Country learning experience, and the idea that later became IJNR was born.