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Collaborating to tell India’s climate story

A first-of-its-kind collaboration between The Associated Press and the Press Trust of India resulted in seven powerful climate and environment stories co-published by both organizations.


The enterprise stories, centered around Kochi, a bustling coastal city in southwest India, are the product of a months-long effort between the two news agencies, supported by the Stanley Center for Peace and Security, to build climate journalism knowledge and skills and tell India’s climate story.

T. P. Murukesan rows a canoe stocked with mangrove saplings along a waterbody off the shore of Vypin Island in Kochi, India, March 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Shawn Sebastian)

Seven AP Climate team staffers paired up with journalists from PTI for a peer-to-peer mentorship to share best practices for climate and environmental coverage. PTI journalists shared their experiences covering India, the world’s most populous country and one of the most important when it comes to climate.

A five-day on-the-ground workshop in Kochi allowed PTI and AP journalists to put into practice in real time the skills they developed to report on the impacts of climate change, ultimately helping to build out PTI’s climate journalism capacity, from visual storytelling to field reporting. PTI is one of India’s most important news organizations and a long-time AP customer.

Global Climate and Environment News Director Peter Prengaman said: 

Collaborations are increasingly important in journalism, as they allow organizations to learn from one other and do stronger journalism than each could alone. That was certainly the case in India, where PTI, AP and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security combined forces to build something together. Perhaps best of all, AP and PTI journalists developed relationships that will lead to brainstorming, exchanging of ideas and possibly future collaborations around climate and environment stories.

AP and PTI journalists attend a 5-day workshop in Kochi, India. (AP Photo)

The stories were used by more than 500 news organizations around the world, ranging from The Washington Post to the Times of India.

The stories are available here.

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