Monica Allen abourd the ship that took her and other writers to Ushuais, Argentina, South America's southernmost town and gateway to Tierra del Fuego.
Monica Allen, Coastal Editor
Bangor Daily News
Back in the 1980's, I had a good job as a
Sunday reporter for a newspaper in Vermont, but I felt like a landlocked
salmon. I missed the ocean; it had been a big part of my growing up in
Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. So in 1990 I applied to the URI
Marine Affairs graduate program with a plan to combine studies in journalism
and marine environmental issues.
My two years of study in Kingston and Narragansett
gave me a rare chance to learn without the pressure of a daily story deadline.
Free to roam the continents for research topics, I wrote about the effects
of sea level rise on Bangladesh, the economic impact of the EXXONValdez
oil spill on Native Alaskan fishing villages, and the development of aquaculture
in the Far East. Before graduate school, I was primarily a narrative writer
and did a bit of basic analysis in political reporting. In the Marine
Affairs program, professors pushed us to develop arguments, write public
policy and suggest solutions to regional and global coastal problems.
It was heady stuff.
When it came time to write a master's thesis,
I decided to combine my interests in journalism, international marine
policy, and history. I wrote an intellectual history of the "common
heritage of mankind" concept for ocean management. I knew this wasn't
the most practical, job-related thesis. But graduate school was a time
to explore ideas in deeper ways than I could with the daily demands of
full-time work.
At the end of the program, I was already
working part-time at The Providence Journal. I hoped to get full-time
work there and develop articles about the coastal and marine issues that
are so important to the economy and cultural identity of Rhode Island.
For more than a year, I wrote articles about marine issues and enjoyed
my newsy postings in various parts of Rhode Island including South County,
Newport, East Bay, and Pawtucket. But the longterm, full-time job at The
Journal eluded me.
For the next year, I worked for Boston University
writing science grants. I wouldn't have had the confidence to write about
science--everything from nanotechnology to climate change--without my
training in the Marine Affairs program. But the work didn't suit me. I
was soon writing freelance for National Fisherman magazine. When
the opportunity came along, I took a job as editor of one of the East
Bay Newspapers, The Barrington Times, back in Rhode Island. I knew
this would give me the chance to write about some of the coastal issues
I cared about and to shape the whole paper.
My work at The Barrington Times was
what I call intimate local journalism. A fishermen might stop by our tiny
office to show us a pockmarked striped bass and ask about the lesions
he found on the fish; we would ask researchers at URI what was causing
the disease. I met with activists who had worked to protect this coastal
area for decades, and we wrote about their volunteer watchdog projects,
often prodding state environmental officials to investigate pollution
concerns. We focused on what was happening to the Narragansett Bay ecosystem,
and what was causing the steady decline in the ecosystem of a beloved
small estuary called Hundred Acre Cove. We kept track of shellfish closures
and reported on efforts to stop runoff that was contributing to the closures.
We raised the issues of algal blooms and hormone disrupters (a theory
that toxins are affecting hormonal reactions in animals). During my tenure,
I was also invited to take a writers' trip to Patagonia and wrote a series
on the wildlife and forestry issues of this southern tip of Chile and
Argentina.
After more than two years in Barrington,
I moved into my current oceanic perch. As coastal editor for the Bangor
Daily News, I direct a team of eight reporters who cover both the
major marine issues and the general news in 30 to 40 mid-coastal communities
from Rockland to the Canadian border, an area of about 200 miles. Maine
is still a frontier state in many ways-lucky to be rich in marine resources
with wild salmon runs and an active fishing community. My job in Maine
is very challenging because while there is a strong need for information
about the coastal environment, there is also a suspicion of scientists
and regulators.
The Marine Affairs program gave me the confidence
to tackle and analyze many marine-related issues. And I feel fortunate
to have been able to combine two loves-journalism and the ocean.