Last year, the Associated Press announced an initiative to enhance the global understanding of climate change, its impacts, and solutions through quality climate journalism that is inclusive of local perspectives and contexts, and in places where climate is under-reported. The initiative created a standalone AP climate desk and placed more journalists in countries, primarily in the Global South.
There’s another important component of the expansion worth highlighting: efforts to provide in-depth climate journalism training to AP news partners seeking to bolster their climate coverage at the local level.
The first training under this initiative took place last month in the climate-vulnerable coastal city of Kochi, India, where journalists from the Press Trust of India (PTI), India’s largest news agency, joined journalists from the AP Global Climate Desk for a training and mentoring program. Developed and implemented in collaboration with the Stanley Center for Peace and Security, an operating foundation and MIF member with experience organizing programs for climate journalists, the India Climate Journalism Program was co-designed with the AP as a ‘proof of concept’ for future trainings across the Global South. Now armed with a training model, evidence of impact, and a series of published stories that resulted from the program, the AP hopes to find support for many more trainings in locations worldwide.
For funders, the program illustrates the strong outcomes that can come from a bold philanthropically supported initiative to bolster climate coverage globally, coupled with support and program implementation expertise from smaller foundations or project-oriented funders with shared goals.
To learn more, the Stanley Center recently published this article about the partnership with the AP and PTI on the India Climate Journalism Program.
About the Author
Devon Terrill
Program Officer Journalism and Media, Stanley Center for Peace and Security
Devon Terrill is an Emmy-nominated documentary film producer and program officer for journalism and media at the Stanley Center for Peace and Security, where she leads the center’s work with journalists, editors, and visual storytellers who are reporting the facts on the ground. Since joining the Stanley Center in 2015, Terrill has collaborated with media partners around the world to create and implement reporting fellowships, workshops, media forums, journalism training and other programs designed to foster strong and independent reporting related to three global peace and security issues: climate change, nuclear weapons policy, and mass violence and atrocities.
Previously, Terrill worked as a media professional in Los Angeles. After winning a prestigious internship in story development from the Academy of Television of Arts and Sciences, she held positions at several production companies, developing and producing television series and films for HBO, The Sundance Channel, A&E, Discovery Networks, Fox Searchlight, and Amnesty International. In 2014, she was nominated for a Long Form News and Documentary Emmy® as a producer on the HBO documentary, American Winter – a film that was also nominated for a Ridenhour Prize for truth-telling in the public interest. Her role in American Winter’s outreach and impact campaign led to hundreds of screenings and events nationwide in partnership with nonprofits and advocacy groups and inspired a US Senate hearing featuring testimony from four of the film’s subjects. A common thread in Terrill’s work as a media producer has been a commitment to storytelling that engages the public and policymakers around critical issues and inspires positive change. It is a thread that has continued in her role at the Stanley Center.
Terrill has a Master’s in International Policy and Practice from George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and a BA in comparative literature from the University of Iowa. She completed a year of study abroad at the Institute for European Studies in Vienna, Austria. In her twenties, Terrill backpacked, studied, and worked across the globe, and at one time could speak German and basic Spanish and Malay.
