By BILL KOVARIK AND KEN WARD

The 18th annual SEJ conference in Roanoke, Va., Oct. 15- 19, hosted by Virginia Tech, is shaping up to be one of the most memorable and practical yet.

• Memorable, because of the extraordinary speakers, the beautiful location, and the easy access to fun networking events.

• Practical, for you as a journalist, because of the wide variety of craft sessions in fully equipped computer labs focused on helping you survive and thrive in a changing news business.

 Here are some of the details:

By BILL DAWSON

 "Doing more with less."

The phrase is now often lampooned as a preposterous cliché, but newspaper executives must have thought at first that it was an artful way to spin the bad news of escalating staff cuts.

Publisher Joe Pepe of The Commercial Appeal, for example, used the words when he announced in late 2005 that the Memphis newspaper would slash its workforce of 774 by 170 employees.

By MARK NEUZIL

Editor's note: We are fortunate to be able to excerpt a small bit of The Environment and the Press: From Adventure Writing to Advocacy, by Mark Neuzil, that many SEJ members will find interesting, a history of environmental journalism and its roots. We have removed the footnotes from this section, taken from Chapter Two, "Journalism's Prophetic Voice." 

By PETER DYKSTRA

When Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species in May, the political trench warfare over global warming flared up anew. Environmental groups professed surprise that a reluctant Bush Administration acted at all. Global warming deniers said the decision was ludicrous. They cited a polar bear population — a five-fold increase since the 1970s, a doubling since the 1950s, a quadrupling since the 1960s.