What is Climate Desk?
Climate Desk is a multi-media journalistic collaboration dedicated to exploring the impact—human, environmental, economic, political—of a changing climate. Our partners include bioGraphic, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Canada’s National Observer, Canary Media, Grist, The Guardian, High Country News, Inside Climate News, Mother Jones/Reveal, Slate, Pattrn (The Weather Channel), Undark, Vox, Wired, and Yale E360.
Why collaborate on a project about the climate?
Because even though it’s a fascinating and important story, it hasn’t been told well enough.
Why not?
1) Climate change is slow-moving, vast, and overwhelming for news organizations. 2) Coverage is often fractured and compartmentalized—science, technology, politics, and business aspects are covered by different teams, or “desks” of reporters, despite the intrinsic connections. 3) Cuts to news organizations are making matters worse. 4) Increasingly, the urgency of the situation has led to a greater appetite for coverage that no single news organization can possibly satisfy.
What’s the advantage to collaborating?
For one, more hands on deck and more outlets mean we can do more coverage, bringing our various strengths and audiences to bear. Partner outlets have broader access to coverage from our partners and an opportunity to have a bigger reach for their own work. We also occasionally collaborate on stories, whether it’s an investigative story, a UN conference, or a television special on the 2020 election. Also, given the transformation of the media business, collaboration is part of the future of journalism.
How do I contact CLIMATE DESK?
Send general inquiries to Senior Editor Michael Mechanic, mmechanic@motherjones.com. (Please include “Climate Desk” in the subject line.)
SHOULD I SEND YOU STORY PITCHES?
Probably not. Climate Desk is a content-sharing platform. The individual partner publications create the stories. So Your best bet is to contact those publications directly. Stories pitched by journalists and journalistic orgs are more likely than public relations pitches to get an editor’s attention.
Who works on Climate Desk?
Climate Desk was convened by Mother Jones in 2009 and has provided coverage to a global shared audience of more than 300 million. It is coordinated by Mother Jones and currently overseen by Michael Mechanic.
Mike is a veteran senior editor based in the San Francisco office of Mother Jones, where he also writes (mostly on wealth and inequality) and edits everything from blog posts to features for print and web. His 2021 book, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live and How Their Wealth Harms Us All, doesn’t touch much on climate issues, though it might have, given the outsize environmental impact of our wealthiest citizens. Mike came to journalism from a science background, with degrees in biochemistry and cellular and developmental biology from UC Berkeley and Harvard. He worked for years in the alt-weekly universe. His work has appeared in publications from the tiny Pt. Reyes Light to The Atlantic, Los Angeles Times, Wired, and (of course) Mother Jones. He still enjoys writing on scientific topics. You can follow him on Bluesky.
Mike is supported by Henry Carnell, a Mother Jones digital fellow working on video and Climate Desk production. He also contributes to the Washington Blade, covering LGBTQ communities and technology. Previously he was a 2023–2024 Ben Bagdikian fellow writing on climate, science, and gender. Baltimore-raised, he now lives in Oregon. You can follow him on Bluesky.