Australian Bushfires - January 3, 2020

Going back a little over two years, one of the ways I could judge when a wildfire was having significant impacts (size, evacuations, deaths, structures destroyed) was when I saw an article in The New York Times, or heard a report on National  Public Radio (NPR) or other national broadcast outlets. The New York Times is delivered to my house daily, so reading their coverage took no real effort. Listening to NPR or watching cable news took a little more effort on my part. Of course, I have places that I check out on an almost daily basis such as Bill Gabbert's Wildfire Today and Mike Archers Wildfire News of the Day. So I usually have an idea of current major wildfires or bushfires and when they are having severe impacts. My old barometer for when I should start paying closer attention was seeing an article in The New York Times or other broadcast media outlets (NPR, cable news).

Things have changed in the last 22 months when I got a tablet and then got a smartphone six months ago. Now I have Apple News. Perhaps it is because of the articles that I read on Apple News, but I when I see news of a wildfires on Apple News then I know that this a big deal and I should pay some attention. Most of the time, I will see similar coverage in The New York Times.

I started seeing news of the Australian bushfires on Apple News sometime before Christmas, so I knew these bushfires were bad news. As an aside, I promised someone from New South Wales in Australia whom I exchanged a couple of e-mails with a few years ago that I would use the phrase bushfires in my blog when referring to Australia. I do so here except when a source is using the phrase wildfire.

I subscribe to a local daily where over the last few years the focus has been on coverage of state and local news. International news and to a lesser extent national news focus on major events. So, I walk to the end of my driveway this morning to pick up the papers. The New York Times, as they often do with critical wildfires, had a photo and an article above the fold. That was not a surprise. What was a surprise was to see a my local paper's, The Star Ledger (website), coverage of the catastrophic bushfires in Australia on the front page, above and below the fold with a large headline. The coverage took up about two-thirds of the front page. You are going to have to trust me on this, as I have no link to show you the front page. Anyway, I was very impressed because I do not often see wildfire coverage on the front page of The Star Ledger. And this was an international story to boot.

The point to this article is that because I personally found The Star Ledger's front page coverage of the Australian bushfires to be very significant.I wanted to use the fact of their reporting as a jumping off point to post about the bushfires in Australia. Unfortunately, I can not find their coverage online, perhaps due to their arrangements with the wire services that authored the coverage. More accurately, I am writing to suggest a couple of places you may go to find more coverage of the bushfires. And to offer my thoughts and mediations to all those fighting the bushfires and their support staff and especially for all those affected by the bushfires. My heart goes out to all.

xx (limited free articles) has a nice photo spread along with their reporting of the bushfires, starting with Friday and going back a week. The photos are great and they have some links to their other reporting. You may find the New York Times photo essay, The Australia Wildfires in Pictures here .

Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today has extensive coverage of the Australia bushfires going back to before Christmas. To get you started, there are two good stories dated January 2, 2020: video of the bushfire shot be evacuees and Australian wildifire ordeal to worsen Saturday (January 4th).