Who We Are
Climate Desk is a multimedia journalistic collaboration convened by Mother Jones in 2009. It is dedicated to exploring the impacts—human, environmental, economic, political—of a changing climate. Current 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, The Weather Channel (via Pattrn), Undark, Vox, Wired, and Yale E360.
Our Purpose
Climate change, broadly speaking, is the most important story in the world, affecting virtually every beat we follow, from culture and food to business, economics, and sports. It is also a vast and overwhelming subject, too much for any single newsroom to cover comprehensively. The growing urgency of our situation—the soaring greenhouse gas emissions; the collapse of natural ecosystems; the devastating global droughts, fires, floods, and storms that are making our communities increasingly uninsurable, even unlivable—demanded that we team up to offer the widest possible coverage to the largest possible audience.
Why We Collaborate
Each partner organization has its own unique strengths and loyal audiences. Sharing the best of our coverage with the partners helps us all offer our followers a more comprehensive and geographically diverse view of the problem than any one outlet could provide. Partners sometimes collaborate among themselves, too, in the reporting of important stories, and contribute write-ups to the Climate Desk Weekly email newsletter. Click here to subscribe to that, along with the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.
Who’s in Charge
Each partner publication gives input, shares stories, and helps coordinate Climate Desk efforts, but the partnership is administered by Mother Jones. Point editor Michael Mechanic is a Bay Area-based senior editor for Mother Jones who holds a couple of science degrees and enjoys writing on scientific topics. (You can follow him on Bluesky.)
He is supported by Henry Carnell, a Mother Jones digital fellow working on video and Climate Desk production. Baltimore-raised, Henry now lives in Oregon. (You can follow him on Bluesky, too.)
How to Reach Us
Please don’t pitch us stories. All Climate Desk stories are produced by the individual partners, so your best bet is to reach out to those publications directly. General inquiries can be directed to Michael Mechanic (mmechanic@cir.org) and/or Henry Carnell (hcarnell@cir.org). Please include “Climate Desk” in the subject line.