Every story has a climate subtext; you just haven’t taught yourself to see it. This is what you need to learn about climate change reporting.
In many newsrooms, climate coverage often lives in isolation, with climate change stories appearing sporadically.
However, just like any other journalistic niche, climate change can be embedded to tackle issues of politics, health, business and even agriculture. This is what The Climate Change Masterclass, hosted by Day Star University, on August 11-12, 2025, in partnership with the Editors Guild, is teaching about climate change storytelling.
Let me break it down for you. Victor Bwire, the Director, Media Training and Development at the Media Council of Kenya, emphasises that, “Climate change has angles in gender, health, governance, and food security.” Speaking during the address, he emphasized that journalists must integrate these into their coverage.
For example, one can ask, how can you integrate politics in climate change reporting? One can explore areas related to budget allocations to climate resilience, local governance vs. green policy mandates. Similarly, in health, one can expound on the spread of climate-sensitive diseases like cholera and malaria during floods. In the education sector, journalists can explore curriculum gaps on environmental literacy, student climate strikes.
One aspect that makes climate change reporting not interesting is the lack of solutions framing. This is where many stories focus on impact, not action, making readers (and reporters) feel helpless. As Bwire put it, “The question is, how do we message our stories? Is it by solution-based journalism?”
These kinds of stories, if well-framed, immensely help newsrooms reframe climate as a human, economic, and social story, not just an environmental one.
See, Climate change affects everyone in profound ways, and when journalists fail to highlight these connections clearly, the result is widespread information gaps.
The state of the Climate in 2024 highlighted how 2024 was the hottest year on record. In this regard, many media houses took it upon themselves to report this unpleasing report.
On March 20, 2025, the Daily Nation published a story by Lilys Njeru titled “New report declares 2024 as Kenya’s warmest year on record.” It delivered strong impact reporting, floods, disease outbreaks, and school disruptions, but fell short on solutions.
The story didn’t explore how communities, health systems, or schools are adapting to these extremes. Moreover, there was limited evidence of what’s working: There were no case studies, innovations, or policy interventions evaluated for effectiveness.
Lastly, readers weren’t shown models or strategies that could be scaled or emulated elsewhere.
Dr. John W. Recha, a leading Kenyan scientist specialising in climate-smart agriculture and policy, who was present in the Climate Masterclass discussion, states that Kenya’s climate reporting is “mostly focused on the effects and not the causes.”
It is high time that journalists and newsrooms understand that, amid the race for national political headlines, climate change, and its impact on communities, there is a struggle to find sustained coverage.
