Fenix Presents: A Small Town's 15-Year Fight Against Natural Gas 🥊

Our most ambitious reporting yet.

Hi friends!

So… 2021 is looking a little different for me than expected.

Like many of you, I spent the first week of the year glued to my TV and Twitter account reading updates about the events at the Capitol. One of those articles will stick with me forever.

It’s the The New York Times journalists’ accounts of what happened that day. It’s a hard read, but I hope you do read it if only to bear witness to what happened.

Running a journalism company like Fenix has brought on all kinds of new challenges, but in the face of events like this, the toughest of all is keeping the faith that what we’re doing is not only valuable to readers — it is essential.

There’s a quote I think about on days when it feels exhausting to exist in the journalism space.

The only way to assert the right to publish is to publish.

It’s from the movie “The Post” with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep about the Washington Post’s coverage of the Nixon Administration.

It’s cheesy, perhaps. But it reminds me of why we should keep trying even in moments of despair when the very public we cover doesn’t seem to want us to exist. It’s simple. Our right to publish this type of work disappears if we don’t use it.

So, in that effort, I am proud to present to you our latest Fenix story with our most ambitious reporting yet.

A Small Town’s 15-Year Fight Against Natural Gas

Illustration by Stephanie Ocasio

For this one, our reporter Britany Robinson moved to the town of Coos Bay for two months to learn about how far its residents had gone to prevent a liquified natural gas terminal from destroying their bay.

Britany is the kind of reporter who will go crabbing with a source to get to know them (true story). She also takes great care of the reader in her writing, always looking out for ways to bring the story to life. On top of all of that, she was diligent with every fact-checking request I had and dug through more government documents and scientific reports than I’d care to count.

Below you’ll find an exclusive Q+A with Britany about her reporting process and how journalists stay inspired during these trying times.

What was it like to move to a completely different town to cover a story?

Moving to Coos Bay was exciting, but I had a lot of apprehension about it, too. It's always been a goal of mine to combine a semi-nomadic lifestyle with my work, spending significant time steeped in the stories I'm covering. Suddenly I was actually doing that! But also, there was a pandemic going on. So I felt limited in how much I could assimilate and connect with the community. It was lonely and isolating some days. But it also allowed me to devote so much of my mental energy to understanding a very complicated topic.  

The little details that became a part of my own life in Coos Bay really helped bring the story to life for me — and I hope they do the same for readers. 

Of course, spending two months in a place is nothing in the grand scheme of things. People have lived here for generations. And I'm sure I still hold some misconceptions or misunderstandings about everything I was trying to learn about while living there. I think in journalism, there is always that lingering fear of getting something wrong. But that fear is a good thing. An outsider's perspective is valuable, but it's so important to remember that you're an outsider and to keep asking questions that will help you tell the story for the people who know it better than you — the people who are living it every day and won't be done living it when the story is published. 

This story was full of complicated, scientific details. How did you wade through those details to find the riveting story in the finished product?

A lot of those complicated, scientific details were introduced conversationally, and then I had to go find the hard facts behind them and try to understand them. Honestly, at times it was a headache. I felt like I had to read 1,000 words for every ten I wrote when I got into the nitty-gritty of things. Science was never my strong subject in school! 

But I spoke to so many smart, passionate people who gave me the human side of those facts and figures. And the more I read and listened, the easier it was to understand the details. 

Also, after really struggling on how to craft a story that would pull people through all of this information without letting them get tangled in the weeds, I printed all 5,000 words out one day and started cutting up each individual paragraph and rearranging them on the floor of my rental. That was so helpful in finding a structure that worked! 

What was most surprising to you about this story once the reporting finished?

I thought a lot about the act of protesting this summer. In Portland, the city I call home, peaceful protesters were being tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets on a nightly basis. It was devastating to see that happen in a place I love — but also, I was so proud of all the people who keep showing up to force the city and the whole country to continue talking about racial justice and police brutality.

Watching all of that from a distance, while talking to people who are taking a much different approach to resistance on a different issue, really impacted my own ideas about a citizen's role in making change. I hate that people have to fight so hard for a world that is equitable and sustainable, but there is also so much hope and community wrapped up in the fight. And there are so many ways to fight.  

So basically, I was surprised by the parallels I saw between what was happening in Portland and what's been happening in Coos Bay for over a decade, and the realization that this quieter form of resistance is so necessary, too. I am just so impressed by the people I met while reporting this story, and the dedication they've shown to keeping a natural gas company out of their town. 

In addition to reporting, you also run a fantastic newsletter for freelance writers. What do you think motivates freelancers during such complicated journalism times?

Thank you! Complicated times are when we need journalism the most, so that's what motivates me. Actually, I was just down in Southern Oregon interviewing farmers about water shortages, and every person I interviewed said some version of "it's just so complicated." And that's so true. As someone who is very passionate about environmental issues, I came into that reporting process with an unavoidable bias about the situation, but these farmers showed me a completely new side to the story, and suddenly all of the assumptions I had were thrown out the window. And suddenly, I had no answers. It was just... really complicated. 

Honestly, it's been comforting to lean on journalism when things feel hopeless this year. Journalism is about questions, and if we keep asking questions instead of jumping to conclusions, there's always hope that we'll come to a place of better understanding. 

What are you reading right now?

I'm currently reading Downriver: Into the Future of Water in the West by Heather Hansman. It's about how water is used and managed in the west and the many complications that are worsening as we face a future with less and less water. It's a fascinating read, and I never would have thought to read it if I wasn't assigned the piece I'm working on now about water issues in Oregon. That really underscores why I love journalism so much. I'm constantly discovering new things to be interested in, and it's my job to then go learn about them!

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That’s it for now! We’ll be back in a few weeks with a story that looks at the ways grief has morphed since the pandemic made funerals potential super-spreader events.

Looking for more stories to read? Check out some of our previous reporting here:

The Disaster Flashpoint
The Online World of #Herping