The Planet Mission Statement 

This is a living, breathing mission statement, undergoing continual revision as editorial staff, reporters and the world change and grow. 

The Planet Magazine is dedicated to environmental awareness and advocacy through responsible journalism.The Planet Magazine is an entirely student-funded, written, edited and published environmental publication out of Western Washington University. Its mission is to provide resourceful and insightful community journalism while forming the next generation of environmental reporters and investigators.

Prioritizing diversity, inclusivity and community at the center of its discussions, The Planet aims to cover environmental issues, developments and justice, promoting community voices and ways to mitigate hazards, or forward solutions to public discourse through thoughtful, ethical and holistic journalism. Fact-checked and held to very high editorial and ethical standards by the team of student editors, The Planet is the award-winning bridge between education, journalism, environmentalism and community. Our staff, reporters and photographers are dedicated to journalistic excellence, and have been since the launch of this newsroom in 1979.

The student editors strive to maintain a publication that produces responsible journalism and addresses social and environmental inequities in our communities. The Planet staff stand for equity on all fronts and work to take an active stance against racism in our reporting. We acknowledge that we operate on the ancestral homelands of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation and Nuxwsa’7aq (Nooksack) Tribe and benefit from systems that continue to erase and obstruct Indigenous history and culture.

In order to hold ourselves accountable, the editors and reporters of the Planet staff have worked together to come up with goals and values to support change within the classroom, editing staff, reporting process and magazine content.