Faculty Updates

This past year has provided new and exciting opportunities for engagement, teaching, and research. In the spring, I was immersed in organizing a special forum for environmental journalists in the cross-border Cascadia region. The event, titled “Reporting on Ecotopia: Cross-border environmental media in the Salish Sea and Cascadia” was co-hosted by the Journalism Department along with Western’s Border Policy Research Institute, the Center for Canadian-American Studies, the Salish Sea Institute, and Salish Sea Communications. A special thanks goes out to the WWU Alumni Association for their partnership and support.

Our panel forum opened new lines of inquiry about the evolution of ecological reporting and green media in the Canada-U.S. Cascadia region that includes British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. And we were able to bring together a slate of outstanding journalists from both sides of the border, including Jude Isabella from Hakai Magazine, Lisa Johnson from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Lynda Mapes of the Seattle Times, and Mike Sato of Salish Current and Salish Sea News and Weather.

Some of the key issues we explored in the panel were transboundary issues such as the North American energy economy and climate policy; the role of media outlets in producing cross-border conversations about the Salish Sea and Cascadia region; and the critical importance of place-based news in addressing environmental crises but also solutions in our shared bioregion. Our panelists provided amazing insights into not only how ecological media is produced quite uniquely in the Cascadia region, but how it plays a key role in influencing public policy. For example, reporters have informed public debates with necessary context and background about topics such as the expansion of petroleum pipeline projects, the protection of Pacific Northwest watersheds such as the Skagit and Columbia River basins, and the declining population of the Salish Sea orcas.

We were thrilled to have so many attendees from our student body but also our alumni ranks, as well as local and regional media practitioners. I’m grateful to our campus partners for making this forum a big success. If you are reading this and you were in attendance, let me thank you for attending and know that we are hoping to do an encore in the future.

Furthermore, our forum helped set the stage for a new journalism department class offered in conjunction with Canadian-American Studies during the summer of 2021. The course, Canadian-American Media Systems, gave students the opportunity to learn about the history, growth, and political regulation of news production, broadcasting, public communication, and digital media as they pertain to Canada and the U.S. Along with the imparting of media skills and tactics, the class opened up new channels for cross-border conversations, knowledge, and career growth. I am grateful to our students who took up this adventure in global media and for the unique directions they took the class in, including digital streaming content, cross-border professional sports markets, the advent of Hollywood North, and environmental non-governmental organizations. 

The past year has not been without its challenges but I consider myself fortunate to be embedded in Western’s supportive scholarly community — even if virtually — as we look forward to returning to campus in the future. My thanks go out to our journalism and public relations alumni and industry friends who continue to reach out and provide guest lectures, curricular insights, or share job opportunities and internships for our students. It has been very rewarding to see the larger Western community come together during this time. 

One of the highlights from the past winter was our online PRSSA Connections event, which put Western’s public relations students in touch with communication executives from many of the Seattle area’s leading companies, communication agencies, and non-profits. As faculty adviser for our PRSSA chapter, I’m grateful for the hard work of our student leadership group and the engagement of our industry partners — including student president Mackenzie Myhr and event co-organizer Lauri Hennessey of League of Education Voters — for making this mentoring event one to remember. We had 50 participants for this event and I look forward to seeing WWU PRSSA build upon this success in the months ahead.

Inside the classroom, meanwhile, we have made the big adjustment to virtual learning (for now) and our students, staff, and faculty deserve plenty of praise for embracing adjusted pedagogies and integrating new technologies and teaching formats. In our public relations courses, concepts and activities like media training, crisis communication, and corporate social responsibility are taking on new meaning during this era of unprecedented change.

Beyond the virtual classroom, I have enjoyed working on new research sponsored by Western’s Border Policy Research Institute. This ongoing project is focused on the news media ecology of the transboundary Cascadia region. As part of this work I have had the chance to interview journalists and media executives from Seattle and Vancouver, as well as those from smaller border communities in British Columbia and Washington state, to learn more about how Cascadia thematically drives news media coverage and reporting around the region. 

While the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada are feeling the same fiscal pinch when it comes to media economics, there are some positive takeaways from my findings. Firstly, our journalists, publications, and media sources continue to share expertise across the region, and across our international border. This is imperative for issues like climate change or the sustainable transportation aspirations of the Cascadia Innovation Corridor. Secondly, Cascadia’s entrepreneurial spirit has made it a hot spot for non-profit and start-up media outlets. And finally, growing expertise in salient reporting areas such as ecology, innovation, and urban planning mean that Cascadia’s stories are reaching national and global audiences. Not to be understated is the reporting role of Cascadia’s media during the COVID-19 pandemic and associated border shutdown. Cross-border media enterprises and community newspapers have been a lifeline for citizens caught up in the unprecedented border lockdown, such as those living in Point Roberts, Washington.  You can learn more about this BPRI research here or here.

I continue to be energized by our students’ passion for journalism and public relations, and by the connections fostered for them by our alumni. So thank you! For example, this past year our Western chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America was welcomed with open arms by leading companies and agencies across Washington who are led by our graduates; and our student interns continue to enjoy transformative career-learning experiences with outstanding publications and organizations.

In addition to advising our PRSSA chapter, another engagement opportunity I have thoroughly enjoyed is working with WWU’s Border Policy Research Institute, which explores issues such as trade, transportation, and the environment along the B.C./Washington border. As a 2019-2020 BPRI Research Fellow, I am studying the network of media outlets and communicators in the Cascadia region, which has emerged as a key international region for technology, sustainability, and aviation. Recently, companies such as Microsoft and Amazon have begun to promote the Cascadia Innovation Corridor between B.C. and Oregon, which includes an early-stage proposal for high-speed rail along the I-5 corridor and other business initiatives related to technology, ecology, and human mobility. 

My research in progress seeks to help strategic communicators and policymakers—including urban planners, environmentalists, and civic leaders—to navigate the future of this region by understanding how their messages are distributed through news channels, and how the media understands the idea of Cascadia as a political, economic, and ecological entity. Please don’t hesitate to reach me (derek.moscato@wwu.edu) if you are interested in learning more about this study, which will be completed in the summer of 2020. A formal report is forthcoming and will be made available to all who are interested.

Speaking of (ahem) cross-border developments, as a Canadian in the heart of Cascadia I am increasingly excited for the arrival of Seattle’s National Hockey League franchise. Hockey has always been in Washington state’s DNA – and my students from Everett, Spokane, Seattle/Kent, and the Tri-Cities have reminded me of the success of junior hockey franchises in those cities. I have no doubt Seattle’s foray into professional hockey will be a great success – except, of course, when they play the Vancouver Canucks.

This past summer I had the pleasure of teaching a new class called Environmental Public Relations and Advocacy. Given the ongoing debates over climate change and environmental resources in the media, it was a fantastic time to develop this course. Our students had the opportunity to visit Bellingham’s waterfront revival project and drop in on Sustainable Connections’ impressive operation. We also hiked the refurbished section of Whatcom Creek as we visited the site of the tragic Olympic Pipeline Explosion on its 20th anniversary. Our students took in a lot and are highly motivated to make their mark as environmental communicators.

A personal highlight from the past year was attending the Public Relations Society of America’s North Pacific District Conference in Seattle, where I presented research on environmental PR and green activism to industry practitioners representing chapters across the West. Western was well-represented by students and alumni, and several Vikings presented PR best practices and insights during an impressive slate of panels and workshops. Mostly, it was a great opportunity to engage with the growing network of strategic communicators from Western. Along these lines, I would like to thank the many media and PR professionals, including Western alumni, who took time to engage with our students (including members of our WWU PRSSA chapter) at the conference but also during classroom guest lectures and site visits throughout the past year.

Outside of the classroom, I am continuing my research work in corporate social responsibility, environmentalism, and international public relations, while contributing smaller articles for USC’s Center for Public Diplomacy. In the year ahead, I am looking forward to finishing my manuscript for a book about pipeline politics on the Great Plains, and also to spending more time on my snowshoes in the Mount Baker Wilderness!

My first year in the Western journalism department is in the books, and I’m well into year two! It’s been a great pleasure to get to know the Western community during this time, including the community of students, alumni, staff, and faculty in the department of journalism. Exploring Bellingham and the Puget Sound region has also been great fun. Outside of the classroom, I’m enjoying advising our ambitious and talented students involved in Western’s chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America. I’m also keeping busy with Western’s Community Engagement Fellows program. As a fellow, and in tandem with a leading city organization, I’m co-developing a new project devoted to urban and sustainability communication in the Bellingham area. Stay tuned for more details.

One of the great upsides of this region is this longstanding interest and leadership in issues of sustainability and ecology, and this is paramount across Western as well. Inside the public relations and newswriting classrooms, I have appreciated insightful dialogues with our students about topics that have global but also local ecological impacts, including the communication/mediation of environmental activism, corporate social responsibility, and outdoor recreation. There is a growing interest in how journalists, public relations professionals, and advocates factor into green policy decisions—and these topics hold extra weight within the Cascadia corridor.

My interest in this realm also factors into ongoing research. My recent article in the Journal of Communication Inquiry examines the contentious media debates, and moral implications, surrounding the legacy of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan. This ethical inquiry focuses on how producers of popular culture (in this case, the prominent manga author Tetsu Kariya) can establish new boundaries for environmental debate in the mainstream news media. Similarly, my recent study in the 2017 Arctic Yearbook investigated how the global public, through mass media, understands the polar region simultaneously as a site of environmental protection and degradation. At the heart of this research are reality television programs like “Deadliest Catch” and “Ice Road Truckers” and how they depict resources extraction in Alaska and the Canadian North, but also how they contribute productively (and perhaps counter-intuitively) to climate change debates in the press.

Back in Bellingham, I’m excited for the year ahead. It’s especially gratifying to watch our alumni and recent graduates grow into their careers and tackle some fascinating public relations and journalism opportunities both locally and globally. I look forward to staying in touch.