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. 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, politics, and sports. It is a vast and overwhelming subject, too great 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—demands that we team up to offer the widest possible coverage to the largest possible audience.

Why We Collaborate

Each partner organization has 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 also sometimes collaborate in the reporting of important stories and contribute write-ups to the Climate Desk Weekly email newsletter, which you can sign up for here, along with the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

Who’s in Charge

The partnership is overseen by Mother Jones, though each publication contributes stories and expertise, and provides input on Climate Desk efforts. Point editor Michael Mechanic is a longtime Bay Area–based senior editor for Mother Jones who holds a couple of science degrees and sometimes writes on scientific topics. (You can follow him on Bluesky.)

How to Reach Us

Send general inquiries to Michael Mechanic (mmechanic@cir.org). Please include “Climate Desk” in the subject line. Please do not pitch us stories. All Climate Desk content is produced by the individual partner publications, so your best bet is to reach out to those publications directly.