The media plays an important role in the dissemination of information about climate change and helps form public opinion, for better or for worse. And the media in turn is highly influenced by the political agenda of the day.

But with the business model of the mainstream media in an extreme fight for survival, Australian media outlets are going through something akin to a mass extinction and rapid evolution. 

More than 1500 journalists, including many specialist reporters, have been lost from media companies in the last 18 months and newsrooms everywhere are under undergoing massive restructuring. At the same time there has been enormous growth in alternative information channels that effectively bypass the mass media. 

How is this revolution impacting on climate coverage and can we see differences in the coverage of the IPCC AR4 reports in 2007 and the AR5 report released this September? Are there lessons for us all in communicating climate change into the future?