The Greenland Connection’s key attributes:
– Creativity in composition and design.
– Relevance to local readers.
– Ambitious project for any news organization given the logistics and complexity of topic.
Few places are more vulnerable to rising seas than the aptly named Lowcountry of South Carolina. The sea level here rose an inch every decade during the last century. Now it’s rising an inch every two years – and accelerating.
It’s a climate emergency, one that calls for ambitious stories, stories that show local readers how global forces shape their lives.
“The Greenland Connection” does just that.
During the summer of 2021, senior projects reporter Tony Bartelme and photographer Lauren Petracca traveled to Greenland for a project that highlighted issues that have flown under the national radar.
With spectacular photographs and lively prose, they explained how Greenland’s massive ice sheet exerts a gravitational pull that pushes Charleston’s sea level ever higher.
Greenland’s melting ice also is gumming up the Gulf Stream, another under-reported driver of sea rise and extreme weather.
Throughout, Bartelme’s clear prose is lively and full of rich metaphors that make very difficult issues easily understood. The result is a story of unusual sweep.
Petracca contrasted photos of Greenland with those in South Carolina’s coastal areas to cement connections between these two regions.
We also created fast-paced explainer videos and a comic: “Flood Woman vs Climate Doom: The Greenland Connection.
All of it is housed on a dedicated landing page, www.postandcourier.com/greenland.
