The team for this year’s Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Subject-Related Series, won for a quartet of 2013 ENR covers on climate adaptation exemplifies the changing nature of B-to-B journalism.

 

To report, write and design the compelling narrative, News Director Andrew Wright assembled a team of writers and designers, including Buildings Editor Nadine Post, Environment Editor Pam Hunter, Energy Correspondent Pam Russell, Business Editor Debra Rubin and Art Directors Richard Demler and Jeffrey  Cox. “The team worked virtually from three cities,” Wright says. “They brought all kinds of expertise to the table.”


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Team Effort: (l-r) Wright, Post, Demler accepting the Neal Award.

The idea for the series came from New Orleans-based Russell. “After Hurricane Katrina, energy infrastructure was rebuilt to withstand the inevitable: rising sea levels and more frequent hurricanes,” she says. “After Superstorm Sandy, that same pattern repeated. I realized then what some engineers and scientists already knew: the key to dealing with climate change might not be in political solutions but in the planning and constructing of better, stronger and more resilient buildings, roads, bridges, power lines, and sewer and water systems.”

 

Hunter, who covers environmental legislation in Washington, D.C., says, “What’s interesting to me is that, while the debate in Congress continues on how to prepare and respond to the effects of climate change, water utilities have been thinking about this issue proactively for years. For them, sea-level rise, wildfire and droughts are all too real, and they are working with engineering firms and contractors to find realistic solutions. It isn’t something that is far off in the future that can keep getting put off until later. We already are seeing some of the effects.”

The Jesse H. Neal Awards, are sponsored by ABM, a division of SIIA, an association representing the software and digital content industries. The awards, which recognize journalistic enterprise, service to the field and editorial craftsmanship, are often called the Pulitzers of business journalism because they honor work that makes difference to an industry and to the public.