Despite hydropower’s long and significant history within the US energy system, past research has neglected to examine the ways in which news media have reported the history of that energy sector. The present study offers a qualitative content analysis of news articles covering the development of domestic hydropower in two major national newspapers, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, from 1923 to 2022. Hydropower experienced a significant rise and fall in significance within the American energy sector, going from accounting for 40% of electrical generation in the country in 1940, to just 6.3% of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation in 2021. The research illustrates how these newspapers have covered the rise and fall of hydropower’s significance through an energy justice framework. It highlights how the way media have presented news about hydropower has changed over time, and how different aspects of the energy justice principles became more apparent over time through that transformation. The findings suggest that reporting on the energy system positions different energy sources, in particular coal and hydropower, as both complements to and in competition with each other within the larger energy system, reflecting the complexity of reporting on systems at different levels. In addition, there has been a transformation in the content of the news articles around hydropower over time, showing that at the beginning the main concern was availability of energy, but over time other energy justice principles, such as sustainability and responsibility, emerged as priorities. Finally, I found that narratives of progress in the West Coast were uniquely used to connect hydropower to the foundational identity of the region. The implications of this research go beyond hydropower— offering important lessons for other energy sources on how energy justice and media coverage impacts energy development and community acceptance of a given energy system.
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