Environmental journalism is a component of environmental communication that allows for debate on environmental issues in the public sphere. The Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) plays an important role in this regard by expanding the societal relevance of environmental issues through its journalist training services and its lobbying activities.

Historically, the appearance of the environmental journalism speciality within newsrooms is connected with the rise of the environmental movement and a new social consciousness of a global environmental crisis. Although pioneering environmental reporting dates back to the 1960s, environmental journalism per se developed alongside the mediatization, during the 1980s, of ecologically devastating events such as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. During this same period, the thinning of the ...