T<\/span>he world has lost a lot of great newspapers over the last decade, but one place the art of journalism is alive and well is covering America\u2019s fastest growing industry \u2014 cannabis.<\/p>\n As with other adult pastimes like micro-brewing and cigars, pot journalism is here to stay, and it\u2019s more localized than it\u2019s ever been before. It\u2019s also more dynamic; today\u2019s newsrooms cover every nook and cranny of the cannabis industry as it makes its way to the light. Journalists are not just covering the strains and policies, but also the problems of the emerging market, ranging from pesticides<\/a> to general low-quality pot someone from Wall Street thinks is \u201cthe fire.\u201d<\/p>\n We reached out to Ricardo Baca,\u00a0Cannabis Now contributor<\/a>\u00a0and founding editor of the Denver Post\u2019s pot-centric site The Cannabist, for insight.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were the first outlet to really make the decision that we were going to use resources to cover this from a journalism-centric perspective,\u201d Baca said. \u201cThat marked a significant turn from a lot of the coverage you\u2019d seen in the mainstream media over the previous decades.\u201d<\/p>\n Baca said that previous media effort came in two buckets; in the first you had mainstream media coverage on the subject of cannabis.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just riddled with misinformation, and that\u2019s not necessarily the journalists\u2019 faults,\u201d he said. \u201cWe lived in a different era. Legitimate information was being suppressed and the public just didn\u2019t know any better and neither did these journalists, who were trying to talk to the people who should know the most.\u201d<\/p>\n The second bucket contained the activist-centered publications that have an interest in and opinion that this plant should be legal.<\/p>\n \u201cHigh Times<\/a> has been doing this for 42 years, and the work they\u2019ve done is invaluable,\u201d Baca said. \u201cThen, somewhere in between, you had the mainstream media start to recognize there was so much bullsh*t out there on this subject, and that was the first wave of people starting to cover through a different lens.\u201d<\/p>\n The progress early in the decade helped push the snowball down the hill, and the pros started taking note of this industry on the cusp. Remember, this was pre-Sanjay Gupta\u2019s groundbreaking specials <\/a>on CNN.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were not activists, we were not writing with our opinion one way or the other but we also just suddenly stopped and refused to quote the people or give credibility to the people that refused to live in a modern world,\u201d Baca said. \u201cThey kept repeating misinformation on things that had been long proven untrue and that was tipping point in this thing that has come to be known as cannabis journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n NORML<\/a> Deputy Director, Paul Armentano, has also had his finger on the pulse of pot media for decades.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is especially notable that the number of regional, hard copy publications dedicated to cannabis-centric news and profiles is growing at a time when the popularity of print journalism is generally considered to be waning,\u201d he said, adding that these print and online ventures are being backed by both small start-ups and established mainstream media outlets \u2014 an indicator that there is a large consumer market which desires these products. \u201cAnd that conventional media is not yet fully serving their needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Mason Tvert, who led Colorado\u2019s legalization effort for years and has now joined the industry at Denver-based firm VS Strategies, echoed Armentano\u2019s belief that policy shifts have fostered the development of cannabis journalism.<\/p>\n \u201cChanges in cannabis laws and the emergence of legal markets have fostered remarkable growth in the breadth and depth of cannabis-related reporting,\u201d Tvert said. \u201cThis is a major shift in social policy that affects various aspects of our society; it\u2019s historic, it\u2019s exciting \u00a0\u2014 and not surprisingly \u2014 it\u2019s being covered from every angle and across every medium.\u201d<\/p>\n TELL US, <\/strong>what kind of stories would you like to see covered by Cannabis Now Magazine?<\/p>\n The post The Rise of Cannabis Journalism<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
While the rest of the journalism industry struggles, cannabis-related publications are experiencing an upward trend. The world has lost a lot of great newspapers over the last decade, but one place the art of journalism is alive and well is covering America\u2019s fastest growing industry \u2014 cannabis. As with otherContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,99,1028,1029,1030,1031],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18302"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18303,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18302\/revisions\/18303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: The Rise of Cannabis Journalism<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"