Barb Miller wins Jack Breslin Award
Knight Center secretary has been key to the
department's growth

Barb Miller, secretary of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, has been awarded one of Michigan State University’s highest honors — the Jack Breslin Distinguished Staff Award.

Barb, who began working for MSU’s environmental journalism program in 1995, has been a key part of the program’s growth during the past nine years. When she began, she worked part time for Jim Detjen, the Knight Chair in Journalism, in room 342 of the Communication Arts Building. In 1999 the program expanded to become the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism with an additional $500,000 grant from the Knight Foundation. The program moved to larger offices in room 382 of the Communication Arts Building. In 2002 the center’s activities expanded again with an additional Knight Foundation grant of $250,000, which made it possible to hire Dave Poulson as assistant director, and to employ Barb full time at the Knight Center.

Through all of the growth Barb’s responsibilities have continued to expand. She now oversees the scheduling, budgeting and other activities of the Knight Center. She works closely with students and faculty to publish EJ Magazine, helps organize the annual Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Institute and other workshops, brings in guest speakers and carries out numerous other tasks.

In nominating Barb for this award, Detjen wrote that she has been “indispensable in the growth and success of the Knight Center.” Journalism professor Bill McWhirter added in his letter of support that “when she is not excellent, she is also an uncommonly nice and graciously warm person.” And Poulson wrote, “Saying that Barb Miller provides support to our department is like saying that a wheel provides support to a unicycle. She is that vital to our success.”

Barb is one of six people at MSU who will receive this prestigious award along with a check for $2,500 in 2004. Since 1978, 157 recipients have been given this award.

Barb was honored at a special ceremony in a meeting room on the mezzanine level of the Breslin Center on Monday, April 12.

Three new EJ courses offered in fall 2004

In the fall of 2004, Knight Center Director Jim Detjen will teach a series of three one-credit classes. Each five-week course will be offered from 10:20 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. on Fridays and will include a field trip. JRN 200 and JRN 300 are prerequisites for journalism majors. Non-journalism students may apply with the permission of the instructor.

The courses include:

• Wilderness Experience & Environmental Writing (CAS 492 Section 001) — Professor Detjen will co-teach this course with Laurie Thorp, director of the RISE (Residential Initiative for the Study of the Environment) program during the first five weeks of the semester. This class includes a wilderness camping experience in Northern Michigan the weekend of Sept. 10 to 12 and will examine excellent writing about the wilderness experience. Students will also write about their own experiences in the wilderness.
• Reporting about Great Lakes Environmental Issues (CAS 492, Section 302) — This course will examine current controversies (such as the withdrawal of water from the Great Lakes region by industry, debates over shoreline development and chemical and biological pollution affecting the world’s largest body of fresh water.) This class will meet from Oct. 8 to Nov. 5, 2004 and will include a field trip to the Great Lakes.
• Nature Writing (CAS 492, Section 303) — This course will examine excellent examples of nature writing (both historical and current) and will be taught from Nov. 12 to Dec. 10, 2004. Students will write nature essays and descriptions about natural issues. Speakers will include some outstanding nature writers. The class will include a field trip to a natural area of Michigan.

For more information, contact Professor Detjen at detjen@msu.edu or (517) 353-9479.

New class unravels toxic legacy
Students take inventory of Michigan's
contaminated sites as part of fall class

By Dave Poulson

In the fall of 2003, a group of Michigan State University journalism students decided to inventory the contaminated sites throughout Michigan.

The idea was to figure out where they were, asses their threat and examine the bureaucratic, legal and fiscal challenges to cleaning them up.

Incredibly, no media organization had ever taken on such a comprehensive look at Michigan’s toxic legacy. That made it ripe to become the centerpiece of a new Knight Center course offering: “Investigative Reporting: Environmental Issues.”

Before taking it on, the group of upper level undergraduate and graduate students studied investigative reporting techniques and analyzed news stories about the environment. They discussed in-depth reporting with environmental print and broadcast journalists from throughout the country.

Law enforcement officials, academics, state regulators, activists and others briefed them on some of the hottest environmental controversies facing the state.

The project they chose sounded deceptively simple. But students soon encountered the same problems that face any reporter working an in-depth news story.

The state’s databases of polluted sites promised to be a trove of information on which to hang the stories. But the journalists soon found them incomplete, and that regulators in different regions had different interpretations on how to compile them.

Balance required interviews that explained how relaxing some regulations spurred economic development, a trade-off that many in the state believe to be positive.

Getting a sense of Michigan’s contaminated landscape required interviews and record searches to interpret politics and the complex changing of laws that decide who has to pay to clean up pollution.

And to get a sense of whether sites would ever come clean, the students had to delve into murky budgets and funding strategies.

Among their findings:

• Michigan’s voter-approved cleanup bonds are running out much faster than sites will be cleaned. The only consistent source of funding is unclaimed bottle deposits that, instead of paying for new cleanups, must be used to oversee the cleanups already underway.
• The state law governing toxic sites has little power to force most property owners to clean up pollution unless they’re proven responsible. Court battles last years.
• Funding shortfalls have meant little or no oversight of some cleanups by those responsible for contamination.
• A federal fund to pay for cleanups at Superfund sites — the worst in the nation — ran out in September. Michigan has 67 Superfund sites.
• More than 9,000 underground storage tanks have leaked petroleum products in the state, posing the single greatest threat to the water that almost half the state’s population drinks. New spills are reported faster than old ones are cleaned up.
• Contaminated lake and river sediments that continuously poison the Great Lakes are a widespread and expensive threat. Federal authorities say one-fifth of Michigan’s shoreline holds contaminated sediments.
• Fourteen of the most contaminated Great Lakes waterways are in Michigan, according to international experts. Some estimates are that it will cost about $119 million to clean up the sediments at nine of them; problems at the other five are so massive that costs haven’t been calculated.
• Contaminants at sites across the state have been linked to cancer, developmental problems, organ failure and brain damage. Children are most at risk.

To drive home the impact of these issues, the students localized the four-story project for major communities across the state. One student produced a radio spot that aired on Michigan Public Radio.

The stories were localized for readers in Ann Arbor, Bay City/Saginaw, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Livingston County, Muskegon, Petoskey and Traverse City.

You can see them posted on the Knight Center’s Web site at
http://environmental.jrn.msu.edu.

Investigative Reporting: Environmental Issues is next offered in the fall of 2004. For information, contact course instructor and Assistant Knight Center Director David Poulson at poulson@msu.edu.

Knight certificate to be offered to students

The Journalism School faculty have approved a new certificate program that will be given to undergraduate journalism students who successfully complete a specialization in environmental studies and take six credits of environmental journalism courses.

Jessica Hulett, a J-School senior, will be awarded the first Knight Center for Environmental Journalism certificate at a journalism awards ceremonies at the Kellogg Center on April 17.

The new certificate program was approved by journalism school faculty at their Feb. 26, 2004 meeting. The certificate recognizes those students who have successfully completed a rigorous program in environmental studies and environmental journalism at MSU.

“I’m delighted that students now will be awarded a special certificate for completing a rigorous program of studies in environmental subjects at MSU,” said Professor Jim Detjen, director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. “We hope this certificate will help students obtain jobs by showing employers that students have a solid background in this important specialization.”

The new certificate builds on an existing program in which J-School students can earn a specialization in environmental studies at MSU. To earn this specialization students must take four courses dealing with environmental issues that are on an approved list of the Residential Initiative on the Study of the Environment (RISE) program. The College of Communication Arts and Sciences has been an affiliated member of the RISE program since 1997.

To earn the Knight Center certificate students must meet the requirements of the RISE specialization, and take JRN 412 (environmental writing) and three other credits in environmental journalism. The other courses can include three-credit courses, such as JRN 408 (investigative environmental journalism), JRN 408 (environmental filmmaking), JRN 892 (reporting about health, science and environmental controversies), JRN 407 (Computer-assisted reporting about environmental issues); one-credit courses, such as CAS 492 Section 301 (Wilderness Experience and Environmental Writing), CAS 492 Section 302 (Reporting about Great Lakes environmental issues), CAS 492 Section 303 (Nature Writing) and reporting about land-use issues; independent study courses dealing with environmental journalism; or other courses approved by the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism in cooperation with the Undergraduate Affairs Committee and the Director of the Journalism

To find out more about the RISE specialization contact Laurie Thorp, the director of the RISE program, at 432-4944 or thorpl@msu.edu; Detjen at 353-9479 or detjen@msu.edu; or Nancy Ehret, the Journalism School advisor, at ehret@msu.edu 355-7540.

Population expert to speak at
Knight Center in April

Paul R. Ehrlich, the author of The Population Bomb and a world expert on population issues, will speak at the Knight Center conference room on April 15, 2004 from 10:30 a.m. to 11:20 a.m.

Ehrlich is the Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University and the president of the Center for Conservation Biology. He will meet informally with environmental journalism students in room 382 of the Communication Arts Building. Coffee and snacks will be provided.

Professor Ehrlich is one of the world’s most honored experts on population and conservation biology. The publication of his landmark book, The Population Bomb, in 1968 brought to public attention the issue of population growth and its impact on the global environment. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the president of the Center for Conservation Biology. He is the winner of numerous honors, including the Crafoord Prize of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, the MacArthur “genius” award, the Volvo Environmental Prize, the United Nations’ Sasakawa Environment Prize, the Heinz Award for the Environment and many others.

Names in the News

Kate Baldwin, who graduated from MSU’s J-School in May 2003, is working part time in the president’s office at Lansing Community College.

Dr. Elizabeth “Liz” Burch, who earned a Ph.D. from MSU in 1997, received a $3,000 research, scholarship and creative activity grant from Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. to study bias in the news. The project is entitled, “We Got Him! (Saddam Hussein): A Cross Cultural Comparison of Bias in News of the Middle East.” Dr. Burch is a professor in the communications studies department at Sonoma State University.

Stefanie Carano is a first-year master’s degree student in the environmental journalism program at MSU. She has a bachelor’s degree from Bowling Green State University and has worked as a reporter for Michigan Community Newspapers and the Charlevoix (Mich.) Courier. She is studying health and environmental journalism.

Jim Detjen, director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, will speak at a symposium on environmental journalism at the Nieman Foundation of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. the weekend of May 13 to 15, 2004. He will also teach the Reporting in the British Isles course with Sandra Combs Birdiett from June 17 to July 24, 2004. They will take a group of 23 students to England, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland. Professor Detjen, his wife Connie and their two sons, Chris and Brad, were honored by the Chief Okemos Council of the Boy Scouts of America on March 11, 2004. The Detjen family was named the “scouting family of the year” by the council in recognition of the contributions the Detjens have made to Boy Scouts in the mid-Michigan area.

Mindy Golub, a journalism junior at MSU, published an article about inland lake pollution and solutions for improvement in Nurture Nature News, an environmental newspaper in Livingston, Mich.

Jessica Hulett, who will receive her bachelor’s degree in journalism from MSU in May 2004, will be the first student to receive a Certificate in Environmental Journalism from the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. She will have earned this distinction by completing a specialization in environmental studies and taking six credits in environmental journalism courses at MSU.

Ivona Lerman, who received her master’s degree in environmental journalism from MSU in 2001, is the associate editor of the Croatian edition of National Geographic Magazine. She works in Zagreb, Croatia.

Debbie Munson, a master’s degree student in the environmental journalism program, will serve as a graduate assistant at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism during the 2004-2005 academic year. She will serve as the Knight Center’s webmaster, as an assistant on the EJ magazine and will work on special projects.

Amy Nevala, who received a master’s degree from MSU in 1997, is working as a science writer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She and Eric Stoermer have bought their first home and are spending their weekends frequenting Home Depot in search of sandpaper and putty knives. Amy and Eric will be married on Sept. 18, 2004 on Cape Cod, Mass. Among the events during their wedding celebration will be kayaking, a barbeque and a chance to pet llamas. She and Eric can be reached as 2 Willett Circle, P.O. Box 179, Cataumet, MA 02534. Her e-mail address is amy_nevala@hotmail.com.

Dave Poulson, the assistant director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, is leading 21 students on a summer study abroad in Australia. The students will camp at the Kakadu National Park, dive the Great Barrier reef, visit aboriginal spiritual and cultural centers and learn Web skills in Sydney. The program has a particular emphasis on media and the environment. While in Australia, Dave will investigate the Knight Center forming a relationship and possible student exchange with the University of Tasmania’s environmental journalism program.

Laura and Robert Sams, who received top grades in the environmental filmmaking class taught by Jim Jabara and Jim Detjen in the fall of 2002, have produced a new 16-minute children’s film, “Bearly Alike,” which comically compares a day in the life of an Alaskan brown bear with that of a young man named George. The film was shown on February 29, 2004 at the East Lansing Children’s Film Festival.

Corbin Sullivan, master’s degree ’04, has been named the outstanding master's degree student by the MSU journalism school for the 2003-2004 academic year.

Aileo Weinmann, who will earn a master’s degree in journalism from MSU in 2005, will serve as the editor of EJ Magazine during the 2004-2005 academic year. Aileo also won the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing’s 2003 New Horizons fellowship. He attended CASW’s annual New Horizons in Science Briefing in Knoxville, Tennessee, where scientists and science journalists discussed new research and toured Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Elaine Wolff, who received her bachelor’s degree from MSU in 2000, is working in the Command Center of the U.S. Public Health Services in Washington, D.C. as a public health service officer. “We handle a wide range of health situations (such as SARS, influenza and a variety of disease outbreaks,” she notes. “We also deal with incidents that could have an impact on human health or the health system infrastructure (such as Hurricane Isabel and California wildfires).”

Geri Alumit Zeldes, who received her Ph.D. from MSU, became a Mom in September with the birth of Jordyn Alexis Zeldes. Geri will join the faculty of MSU’s J-School in August as an assistant professor teaching broadcast journalism courses. She and her husband Steve live in Farmington Hills, Mich.