Rhett Butler
(He/Him)
As seen in:
Mongabay,
Color Research & Application,
ScienceDaily,
Substack,
Yale Environment 360,
Flipboard,
Memphis Business Journal,
The Christian Science Monitor,
Science Magazine,
The Epoch Times,
Common Dreams
and
Covers:
Conservation, tropical forests, rainforests, climate change, environment, nature, wildlife, oceans, biodiversity, agriculture, commodities, forest fires, deforestation, Indonesia, Brazil, the Amazon
I don't use Twitter, but you can follow @Mongabayorg for our updates. FYI: We no longer have access to the Mongabay handle. Why? Ask @Twitter.
Interview
What was your first job as a journalist?
Starting Mongabay
Have you ever used a typewriter?
Yes
How is social media changing news?
Contributing to a degraded information ecosystem with increasing disinformation, audience fragmentation, and short attention spans
Who's your favorite fictional journalist?
No one comes to mind
What does it mean to be a journalist?
Fact-based reporting
What's the funniest news-related #hashtag you've seen?
N/A
How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?
I don't take pitches
What tools and software do you use to do your job?
A basic text editor, a web browser, and Excel are the software I use the most. In the field, a drone, cell phone, and camera.
What's your favorite social network?
LinkedIn
Who do you wish followed you?
I'm not much of a social media user these days.
Why did you become a journalist?
To increase public awareness
Did you work for your high school newspaper? If so, what did you do there?
No
What story are you most proud of writing or working on?
Reporting on issues in the Amazon, Southeast Asia, and Madagascar over the past 20 years.
What advice can you offer to aspiring journalists?
Start writing somewhere to gain experience and build a presence
When's the best time to pitch you?
I don't take pitches any more
What's the best pitch you ever got?
N/A
What's the worst pitch you ever got?
Whenever I get a pitch from someone who has never looked at what Mongabay actually covers
What's your favorite drink?
Water
When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?
Hiking in nature
Aside from your own, what's your favorite publication to read?
The New York Times
What's the most common misperception about your beat?
That it's all doom and gloom
Would you like to take the Muck Rack Interview?
Create a Muck Rack profile.