A storm of camera clicks echoes in Brown University’s Grandoff Center for the Creative Arts, the sharp snap echoing in the cold, metallic halls. The source of the noise, a camera mere inches away from abstract wood sculptures, was held by Rhode Island Environmental Journalist Colleen Cronin. At a meticulous pace, Cronin spends her last days working in Rhode Island, moving from sculpture to sculpture, carefully bending down to reveal its carved grain. 

The story that she wrote highlighted how a dying 100-year-old elm tree on Brown University's campus was transformed into an art exhibit by one of the university’s makers-in-residence. This piece, Cronin’s last article with environmental news outlet EcoRI, highlighted the peculiar nature of environmental coverage where everything is about the environment to some degree. Cronin’s three and a half years at ecoRI were spent covering a multitude of topics, including transportation, environmental justice, housing, local politics, and many more that readers may not expect from environmental coverage. Cronin believes that through covering these topics, there is a way to explain an impact on the environment that readers might not consider. She explains how there were many conversations that she had between her and her editors on what warrants environmental coverage and what doesn’t, “I'm probably the person at ecoRI who stretches the line the most on what's considered environmental coverage.” 

When covering public transportation, Cronin explains that although her stories weren’t always written from an environmental angle, she believes that covering transportation is always an environmental story. According to the national Environmental Protection Agency, greenhouse gas emissions from transportation account for about 28% of total greenhouse gas emissions; any car off the street is helping lower that percentage. If the public transport systems were properly maintained and supported, then more people could rely on public transport instead of private vehicles. Rhode Island would be able to mitigate part of its own greenhouse gas emissions and the growing crisis of climate change. Cronin’s reporting on the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) echoes this notion and presents the case that every story is an environmental story through this lens. 

She explains, “I got to highlight a lot of different aspects of what is a complicated problem with RIPTA, because there's so many different people who are impacted, and there's so many different ways you can think about it. It's an environmental issue, it's a social issue, it's an economic issue, it's a political issue.”

Cronin believes that this focus on environmental policy is part of what makes ecoRI’s reporting matter to Rhode Island. She continues, “I like to think of us as being sort of like politico but for environmental topics in Rhode Island. I think we are more than that, but I think that that's where we sort of found our niche… I think that what we write about is important enough that decision makers in the environmental field do read us.”

Cronin’s experience covering environmental news began when she interned at the Cape Cod Times and the Provincetown Independent in college. She talked about her experience growing up in Cape Cod and frequently learning and living next to the ocean since most of her early education revolved around it. When she returned in her junior and senior years of college to intern at the two papers, she found herself consistently writing about the environment. She wrote about whales, salt marsh restoration, and stories talking about the ecology of the Cape. As she explains, "because the Cape is such a fragile ecosystem, everything you write about is going to come back to the ocean.” 

Bonnie Phillips, Cronin’s editor at ecoRi, agreed that Cronin understood the limitations of the Environmental beat very well. Phillips explained that ecoRI didn’t cover transportation before Cronin wrote for the publication, but now, due to Cronin’s strong coverage of transportation, it has transformed into its own beat. Cronin didn’t only cover transportation, as her other beat was the rural beat, outlining environmental news in the far corners of Rhode Island. According to Phillips, the rural beat was another area where Cronin’s energy and tenacity were on full display. She talks about how, in a recent story written about how a few Glocester farm wells were contaminated with PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances), Cronin knocked on the farmer’s door to get the interview for the story. 

Phillips continues, “she just recognized that that's what reporting is. You got to get out of the office. You got to go to the towns you're writing about. Part of her beat was rural towns like Glocester and Exeter so she would spend time there and meet with people and just write about them.”

One tool in her reporting arsenal that Cronin used over and over again to find stories was public records requests, or going to the government to ask for the information that they’ve gathered. As Cronin explains, “people don't realize what might be a really important piece of information for the public as a whole, but some very particular policy person knows because they just like, love the wonkiness of [a policy].” 

Cronin describes the thrill that she has when finding these “nuggets of truth” in the reporting process, where she gets to dig into information that seems to be uninteresting on the surface but actually reveals very complicated and important information. She got her own news coverage by WPRI Channel 12 for a story where she was able to take the government data of recycling violations and write a story out of the patterns they revealed. Cronin, along with the EcoRI team, etched the data onto a geographic map of Providence, revealing that the neighborhoods with the most violations were also the lowest-income neighborhoods in Providence. This data was able to question the enforcement patrol patterns of the Providence government and how the unfair fine of $50 hurt the communities of South Providence.  

In addition to her two beats, Cronin also explained that she would write smaller, simpler stories focused on the environment itself, covering worms, moths, and other critters. Balancing complicated environmental policy and justice stories and these smaller, more educational articles, Cronin talks about how reporting on nature for nature’s sake helps readers understand and connect with the environment around them. Cronin explains how oftentimes to get people to care about the environment, you need to give the public a reason, as she explains, “I think the ‘why’ [of environmental reporting] is often, ‘okay. How does this affect us? Why is this important to us?’ But there's also a ‘why’ that [highlights how] there's a lot of beauty in the world and environment, and we're destroying it.”

Now, after three and a half years of working with ecoRI, Cronin took a job with the Boston Herald and plans on covering the “Cops and Courts” beat. She remains both optimistic and excited to jump into a new environment, publication, and beat, but she also explains how there is a bittersweet feeling about leaving ecoRI. She explains, “I think that I feel really proud of the stories that I wrote about. But I feel like, especially when it comes to the environment, I feel like there are always more stories that I can solve.”