Author Michael Kodas shares advice for reporting on growing health threats on a warming planet

When Michael Kodas was a young photojournalist, his frantic dash over fences to cover an emerging wildfire landed him unexpectedly on prison grounds. There, he captured a photograph of a prisoner firefighter running for his life as the wind turned and the flames suddenly threatened his life. 

That day’s experience left him with more than just a compelling image that was widely distributed across national media. Witnessing the integral role of prisoners in fighting wildfires offered an important insight that has guided his climate-related storytelling for decades.

“The real story and the important stories that we tell are behind the drama of the smoke and the flames,” said Kodas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, reporter and author who now serves as senior editor at Inside Climate News. 

While fires themselves are news events, journalists should also explore the myriad factors contributing to them, and their complex after-effects, he told a group of fellows at the 2025 Health and Climate Change Reporting Fellowship in Los Angeles earlier this month. The event was jointly presented by the USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism and Center for Climate Journalism and Communication.

“That defined how I approached covering wildfires for many, many, years: trying to look less at the drama of the wildfire and more at the political, economic, social, and cultural drivers of the fire crisis that we’ve seen blowing up across our country,” he said in his keynote address.

Covering health and climate change 

Kodas urged this year’s fellows to not just consider the health implications of climate change, but to also flip the equation, considering instead how health impacts climate change. For example, with so many prisoners serving as firefighters, what happens when a virus like COVID-19 sweeps through the workforce? As COVID ripped through the prisons, places like California lost a huge portion of the firefighting workforce during a serious fire season.

“That’s a fascinating story and those are the kinds of stories about fire that I think the public really needs to see,” he said. 

Kodas also emphasized the importance of examining the confluence of climate and other beats. That’s a big change from his early journalism days when even basic climate coverage wasn’t a guarantee.  About 25 years ago, Kodas approached his newspaper’s management to propose he cover climate as a beat. At the time, he was nearly laughed out of the room, he said. There was an overwhelming sense that no one was interested in reading or reporting on the topic.

Today, he works for a publication that is dedicated to exploring the intersection of climate and a vast array of topics, from agriculture to super pollutants. Specialization has become the norm at Inside Climate News and beyond.

“It’s gone from being the beat that people didn’t really think was a beat to being dozens of sub-beats,” he said.

Kodas offered numerous examples of how climate change permeates so many other beats, and the questions reporters can ask to explore the implications. These include:

• Environmental justice: Are we moving back to an era in which toxic facilities are disproportionately situated in communities already burdened with environmental problems?
• Climate and housing: Amid a housing crisis, what happens when people lose their last-chance homes, such as mobile homes or cars?
• Toxins and beauty products: Why are there so many toxins in beauty products sold to people of color, and why aren’t such exposures being addressed?
• Sea level rise and Superfund sites: What happens to toxic sites located near the sea when the waters rise? What about Superfund locations that experience megafires? He pointed to the wildfire risk and the implications of such a fire near the Libby Asbestos Superfund Site in Montana.
• Animals and climate change: Mosquitoes that carry life-threatening diseases like dengue are expanding their footprint. Meanwhile, extreme wildfires and droughts are driving increased human-wildlife interactions – and clashes.
• Smoke’s long path: The health impact of toxic smoke can affect people far from the fire source, with the plumes impacting air quality in distinct ways. What happens in places like Alaska or the Pacific Northwest where air conditioners aren’t common, yet it’s too smoky to open windows?
• Prescribed burns and public buy-in: How do forest managers garner public support for prescribed burns and what are the risks of this strategy at this point?
• Lightning increases: A warmer atmosphere is leading to increases in lightning, a natural cause of wildfires, even in unexpected places like the Arctic.
• Worthy of new beats: Among the sub-beats Kodas would like to see in the future include the intersection of climate and finance; climate and sports; and climate and culture.

Taking care of your mental health

Earlier in his career, Kodas spent a year training and working as a forest firefighter, part of what he called an “adventure journalism” endeavor. One day, his crew drove past a mountain in Colorado where fellow firefighters had died fighting a blaze. That experience encouraged him to think more deeply about the mental health of people dealing with the climate crisis on the ground.

He urged reporters at this week’s fellowship to consider their own mental health given the fact they’re covering an often “grim beat.”

Kodas experienced his own grief following a former student and climate activist setting himself on fire outside the U.S. Supreme Court. As he processed the loss, he intentionally accompanied a colleague on a story focusing on mountain lions – and their cubs. The experience of climbing into the lion’s den with biologists “was a real balm for my soul,” he said.

Finding ways to nurture your own well-being amid so many distressing stories is essential. Kodas advised journalists to focus on the small wins, their own stories, and the feeling of getting their work published. Go to conferences and seek out connections with colleagues, looking to collaborate instead of compete, he advised. 

“If you like their story, let them know and really work on building community,” he said. “We aren’t going to be very useful reporting on climate and health if we can’t maintain our own health.”