Graphic Content — Journalistic Lessons From Crossing Genres

Feature: Graphic Content — Journalistic Lessons From Crossing Genres

By Meera Subramanian

Over the 20 years I’ve been freelancing as an environmental journalist, I’ve written myriad narrative stories thick with science and long, complex sentences, but always attempting to make environmental issues understandable to a wide audience. 

An excerpted page from  "A Better World Is Possible.” To see more excerpted pages, view the slideshow at the bottom of the story, here. Excerpted from "A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis" by Meera Subramanian and Danica Novgorodoff, copyright 2026, used by permission of First Second Books.

This spring, I published a book that could be seen as a wild divergence from my previous work. 

Or it could be that I’ve taken those decades of skill-building and honed them into a haiku. 

From chance encounter to collaboration

The new book, “A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis,” is a collaboration with illustrator Danica Novgorodoff. It’s a nonfiction graphic novel (clunky phrasing, but we have yet to find a better alternative) about youth climate activists. 

Back in 2020, I bumped into Novgorodoff at a mutual friend’s book event in Brooklyn. We had run in the same broad circles when we both lived in New York years earlier, and I’d long admired her artwork.

When I asked what she was up to, she told me she had a book deal with First Second, a Macmillan Publishers imprint, for a graphic novel about climate change and youth activism, targeted for a teen and young adult audience, but was struggling with the story and getting the science right. Her first attempts felt like a textbook, she said. 

“I do narrative!” I blurted. “And science. Let’s talk.” 

As the pandemic locked us all down, we continued our conversation remotely and quickly connected our agents to work out a deal: Novgorodoff would hire me to take the lead on a manuscript that she would illustrate, making it wholly collaborative in shared authorship. 

That’s exactly what the project became. And as a freelancer used to working solo, having a creative partner has been such a great pleasure.

Finding the narrative frame

Seeking a framework for the book, we decided to use the 2019 climate strike in New York City. Hundreds of thousands of people took part in this protest, and Danica was there with her baby. 

I then put on my researcher’s cap and set to work looking for our main characters. I searched news reports, found out who helped organize the event and took detailed notes from a YouTube recording. 

After I’d developed a long list of possible teenage sources, we reached out to those who captured geographic and experiential diversity, eventually settling on four youth. (Fun fact: I was influenced by the structure of one of my favorite novels, “The Overstory” by Richard Powers, which follows multiple characters who eventually come together.)

 

What led this young person

to such powerful action

on climate change

at such a young age?

 

I was always zeroing in on the question: What led this young person to such powerful action on climate change at such a young age? 

The stories of the four teens we selected provide the narrative drive of the book, but we also included deeply researched and fact-checked interludes on climate science, biodiversity, extreme weather, eco-grief, environmental justice, corporate fossil fuel disinformation campaigns, religion and — of course — climate solutions, from the easy to the ambitious. 

Long, complex sentences were banished. Every page had to get to the immediate essence of the message we were trying to convey in a combination of words (on some pages, no more than a few dozen) and images. 

Danica’s gorgeous watercolors bring the science and story to life, and hopefully make this an engaging learning tool that is also a delight to read. 

Teens as sources

All along, I approached the project as a journalist and treated the teens we reached out to as I would treat adult sources. We stated clearly that we were working on a book and asked if they were interested in sharing their stories. 

These were young adults who were still minors, but who had autonomy and were all public figures in their own way. One had written a book. Some had started nonprofit organizations. They were used to talking to the press, and because of that, I honestly never even thought about whether we needed to get parental or guardian permission to speak to them. 

This decision to use real kids as our sources got the manuscript caught up in Macmillan’s legal department for too long, but otherwise, our process was smooth, if extended.

While the four youth we featured in the book had all experienced traumas that had shaped their views on the climate crisis — including floods, wildfires and asthma attacks from air pollution — we were not interviewing them in the immediate aftermath of those traumatic experiences. 

 

Their experience of living

in a rapidly warming world

is existential, an ongoing

and unfolding trauma.

 

At the same time, their experience of living in a rapidly warming world is existential, an ongoing and unfolding trauma. We addressed this reality directly in the book, and it’s important to keep it in mind when talking to any young people about the climate. 

So, what are the rules for writing the stories of teenagers? They are not as black and white as journalists might like. 

Columbia Journalism Review sums it up well: “Children are not passive witnesses to the politics, conflict, and culture on which journalists report. They are active participants, and they are as impacted by current events as adults.” 

And, CJR states, you don’t always need a parent’s or guardian’s permission to speak with them. Youth activists, being on the cusp of adulthood, are able to articulate their own experiences. 

When teenagers are in the streets raising their voices, journalists should take note, but also keep in mind their age. Be clear. Be honest. Be straightforward about the process. Things we should be doing with sources of any age.

Activism as a topic

Another challenge for me as a journalist was writing about activists in a graphic novel form, where I was essentially writing in character. The book is a story about people who choose advocacy, and it encourages others to take action. 

 

I’ve come to realize that

to be fearful of covering

activists is to miss

important stories.

 

But I’ve come to realize that to be fearful of covering activists, as much of legacy media seems to be, is to miss important stories. 

“If you’re covering climate change, history shows that one of the smartest things you can do is pay attention to activists,” writes Covering Climate Now. “Time and again, they have inadvertently indicated where the climate story was heading — and thus what journalists had to be prepared to cover.”

And isn’t that the essence of good environmental journalism? To figure out what the next story is going to be and find the people who will bring it to life? 

In spite of all the challenges and conundrums I faced over the six years of creating “A Better World Is Possible,” I am glad it ended up taking the form that it did. 

I found the joy of a deeply collaborative project, while also getting inspiration from those real-life teens who have now grown into adults who continue to advocate for a better world, maybe sparking a new generation to come. Or even some old folks. 

Resources for journalists writing about young climate activists

• “As the World Burns: A New Generation of Activists and the Landmark Legal Fight Against Climate Change” by Lee van der Voo.
• Young Climate Leaders to Know: A list compiled by Covering Climate Now.
• Our Children’s Trust: A nonprofit public interest law firm that does youth climate litigation.
• Interviewing Children: Tips from Trauma Aware Journalism. 
• Climate Journalism & Trauma: More tips from Trauma Aware Journalism. 
• Journalism & Children: Public Media Alliance toolkit. 
• “A Better World Is Possible” resources page: Suggestions welcomed via the contact on the same website.

Meera Subramanian is an award-winning freelance journalist and author whose work has appeared in publications such as Nature, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review and Orion, where she is a contributing editor. A National Geographic Explorer, Meera has received numerous grants and fellowships and teaches creative nonfiction at Sewanee School of Letters. She last wrote for SEJournal about getting inside the head of a book editor, and previously discussed her last book, “A River Runs Again,” which was reviewed by our BookShelf column. You can find her at meerasub.org and on Substack.  

 

---

* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 11, No. 19. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.