I had an interesting evening Thursday night on a call-in talk show about the media and the environment on Yellowstone Public Radio. Kris Prinzing hosted, and I was on the panel along with Todd Wilkinson, an occasional Outpost contributor and author of Science Under Siege; and Frank Allen, head of the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources in Missoula.

The Institutes recently completed a two-year study of environmental journalism in the West. The American Journalism Review wrote a story about it, and I wrote about it here, but apparently no other Montana newspaper has mentioned it.

It was a fun evening, although we probably all agreed on too many things for it to be riveting radio. I thought about throwing in a few contrarian opinions just to liven things up, but it's hard to take exception when people are saying things that I have been arguing for years: about the tyranny of "objectivity," the dangers of media consolidation, the political demonization of those who disagree, and the general lack of resources in Western newsrooms. Even the callers mostly agreed with what we had to say, except for one odd sort out of Red Lodge who wanted to talk about the Roberta Drew case and even took an incoherent shot at the proprietor of the City Lights blog. I thought about defending Ed, then I figured, hey, not my job. I hope you would do the same for me, Ed.

I think the whole discussion might be streamed online one day soon, but that entire topic is beyond my technological ken.