The Upper New is seeking volunteer bioregional correspondents across the biosphere to contribute to a library of bioregional resources for ecological learning: we need groundtruthers reporting evidence of bioregional activities, wherever their chosen bioregion may be within the biosphere.

A “typical” news correspondent gathers information, conducts interviews, and creates news stories from specific locations or on specialized topics for media outlets. Usually, this can include investigating breaking news, writing and editing copy, and transmitting stories from remote locations. The job requires strong communication skills, the ability to work under pressure, and the capacity to maintain sources and verify facts. Bioregional correspondents have some key differences, mainly involving timeframes for media production. Verifying sources and facts are the most critical aspects of bioregional correspondence.

The core responsibility of any bioregional correspondent within any defined bioregion include research and investigation across various topics in politics, science, and business, as well as gathering information through interviews and observation. Bioregional correspondents will write, edit, and revise narratives, ensuring accuracy, grammar, and adherence to chosen styles and formatting associated with intended media types. Bioregional correspondents must produce media content, including photos, videos, data visualizations, and audio recordings in service of correspondence narratives. The Upper New provides cloud tools for storage and management of submitted media content, including a dedicated Google Workspace account for each volunteer correspondent.

Depending on the nature and requirements for properly communicating the essence of any given narrative, bioregional correspondents might employ the use of prose, photography, illustrations, diagrams, maps, audio, and video. Typically narratives can be up to 10,000 words before considering the need for serialization. All photographs should be geolocated, and any media sources should be produced specifically in service of the narratives or properly cited if harvested from other sources. As the Upper New website and The Upper New Review are digital media outlets, we encourage bioregional correspondence to take a multimedia approach, combining media types as relevant to the topic at hand.

Generally speaking, topics of interest in bioregionalism are centered around what consumers of the contents might do with the topical information: bioregional learning, planning, and building. Bioregional correspondents would, essentially, document, embody, and demonstrate these processes of learning, planning, and building. Narratives and media produced by bioregional correspondents will be used in a variety of ways throughout the communications and publishing network of The Upper New, including The Upper New Review, Local Watersheds, Ecotheater, Basin Books, Basin Maps, Eco Challenges, and as case studies or exemplars for various curricula for workshops and longer courses on bioregionalism hosted by The Upper New.

The mission of The Upper New is to seek out and foster place-based work in the watersheds of the world as an avenue for humans’ continued individual and collective growth toward ecological literacy and increased practice of ecological stewardship in bioregional communities across the biosphere.

The Upper New is a hydrological (watershed-based) bioregion, intersecting and complementing other bioregions. We are a case study for bioregionalism, as our bioregion is (relatively arbitrarily) divided by the political boundary between NC and VA. We want to serve as a model for bioregional communities (of practice) across the biosphere. As we foster bioregional expression across the biosphere in our literary arts magazine The Upper New Review, we can also engage with bioregional correspondents to provide us with complementary media narratives that will amplify the learning experiences we provide across all our projects.