EJ News
Updates from the Knight Center and Its Alumni
- Knight Center offers variety of classes in 2005-2006
- Knight Center road trips to 14th annual SEJ conference
- EJ wins Audubon Society Award
- Environmental journalism training institute goes international
- EJA brings journalists and students together
- Names in the News
Knight Center offers variety of classes
in 2005-2006
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Jim Detjen, Knight Center director, teaching at MSU. Photo by Debbie Munson |
Students interested in environmental, health and science journalism will be able to enroll in a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses during the 2005–2006 academic year:
Environmental Investigative Reporting (JRN 408)
Knight Center Assistant Director Dave Poulson will teach this class in the fall. Students will study advanced reporting techniques and analyze investigative stories. Veteran journalists and environmental experts often are speakers.
The major task of the class is to develop and execute an environmental news project. Previous classes have reported on Michigan’s contaminated sites and examined the environmental impact of Spartan football. Versions of the projects and stories about them have been published in Michigan daily newspapers and aired on television and radio. You can see previous projects at the Knight Center’s Web site www.environmental.jrn.msu.edu
Enrollment is limited. You need not be a journalism major to apply to JRN 408. Writers, photographers, Web designers, copy editors, broadcasters and others are sought. Applications are on the Knight Center Web site, or contact Dave at poulson@msu.edu.
This course will be offered on Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:20 to 11:40 a.m.
Computer-Assisted Reporting (JRN 407)
Poulson will teach this course during the fall and spring semesters. In this class, students learn to analyze data with spreadsheet, database and geographic information systems software. Although students are not confined to environmental issues, there is a desperate need for savvy journalists who can ferret out and analyze environmental data and turn it into compelling stories. This class will teach you how.
This course will be offered in fall 2005 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:40 to 2:30 p.m.; in spring 2006 on Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:20 to 11:40 a.m.
Wilderness Experience and Environmental
Writing (CAS 492)
Laurie Thorp, director of the Residential Initiative for the Study of the Environment (RISE), will teach this one-credit course with Poulson and Knight Center Director Jim Detjen. On a September weekend students will camp in a wilderness area of Michigan, observe nature and keep nature journals. They will write nature essays based upon their experience, eat some gourmet camping meals and bond with other students. Enrollment will be limited to 25 students.
Health and science writing (JRN 824)
This popular graduate course will teach students how to effectively write about complex medical, health and science issues. It will be taught by Detjen on Thursday nights during the fall semester. Past classes have toured and met with experts at the MSU Abrams Planetarium, MSU National Food Safety and Toxicology Center, MSU Cyclotron, Sparrow Hospital and other research centers to learn how to communicate about complex scientific issues.
Environmental writing (JRN 412)
This is the core course in the environmental journalism program and will be taught during the spring 2006 semester by Detjen. Students will learn about the history of environmental writing and learn to research, report and write about the environment.
Students will write an in-depth article about an environmental issue with the goal of publishing it in a magazine. Environmental journalists from all media will lecture to this class. This course will be offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:40 to 2:30 p.m.
Environmental filmmaking (JRN 408)
This course will be co-taught by Detjen and Louis D’Aria, a veteran television producer who has made scientific and environmental programs for KRON-TV in San Francisco.
Students will work in teams to produce a short documentary about environmental issues. The films will be shown during a showcase of environmental films. This class will be limited to 12 students and offered on Tuesday nights during the spring 2006 semester. Students must have instructor permission to enroll in this class.
Knight Center road trips to 14th annual
SEJ conference
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MSU students in Pittsburgh, Pa., at the SEJ conference. From left: Matt Hall, Stefanie Carano, Jacki Halas, Yu-Ying Lin, Kai Guo, Tony Richards, Chad Dally, Debbie Munson, (front) Askar Kushkunbaev and Alieo Weinmann. Photo by Alieo Weinmann |
The Society of Environmental Journalist’s 14th annual conference, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University, took place October 20-24 in Pittsburgh, Penn. The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism staff traveled to the conference, bringing students from Michigan State University to meet with leading environmental journalists, government representatives, industry leaders, top scientists, and environmental advocates.
Conferees toured area sites, learning where to find the best environmental stories—in the field. To name a few, helicopter flyovers of W.Va. mountaintop removal mines, a 600-foot-below-ground visit to a longwall mining operation, brownfield redevelopment in the former heart of the American steel industry, and the continent’s largest bird-banding enterprise.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. assessed the Bush Administration’s environmental record during his keynote address. Later in the conference, Michael O. Leavitt—then EPA Administrator—weighed in with his perspective, and fielded reporter’s questions about environmental policy.
At sessions covering the most pressing environmental issues of the day, Knight Center Director Jim Detjen moderated a session on controversies in the Great Lakes region. Students with the Knight Center were provided full conference access, including individual meetings with SEJ members during a mentoring session.
“I talked to many senior reporters, such as Robert McClure from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Dawn Stover from Popular Science,” said Yu-Ting Lin, a graduate journalism student with the Knight Center. “As an international student, finding an internship can be intimidating, but attending the SEJ conference provided a glimpse of the abundant resources available to rookie reporters like me.”
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The Michigan Audubon Society has honored EJ Magazine with its annual Environmental Business Award for 2004.
“EJ Magazine has done an outstanding job informing its readership of many environmental concerns,” wrote Patricia L. Cady, vice president of operations for the society. The society applauded EJ for being a student-produced magazine and called it a “fine environmental publication.”
This is the second award EJ has won. In 2003, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs—an organization of more than 500 conservation clubs and 100,000 members—honored EJ with the Ben East Award, the highest state honor for environmental and natural resources reporting.
Environmental journalism training institute
goes international
Journalists attending this June’s Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute will see first-hand the challenges of preserving one of the Earth’s largest intact forest ecosystems.
As part of the Knight Center’s annual institute, reporters will fly to Wawa, Ontario, near northern Lake Superior, to visit Canada’s boreal forest. The nearly 750-million acre tract stretches across much of Canada, and represents what may be one of the few last chances for large-scale land conservation.
The U.S. and Canadian journalists will learn of controversial efforts to preserve a forest that feeds vast amounts of North America’s demand for wood.
Logging restrictions in the United States have shifted the pressure on forests to Canada. Roughly 80 percent of lumber and paper products made in Canada are sold in the United States.
Another transboundary connection: The boreal shelters many of the migratory birds that also live in the United States. One in three North American bird species depends on Canada’s boreal woods.
The trip is part of the eighth training institute the Knight Center has designed for journalists who cover the environment in the Great Lakes region. As always, the program features prominent journalists, scientists, policy-makers, activists and others who discuss some of the region’s hottest environmental issues.
This year’s keynote speaker is Margaret Kriz, who covers energy and environmental issues for the Washington D.C.-based National Journal. Kriz has journeyed below Nevada’s Yucca Mountain to write about nuclear waste, tromped through the Alaskan rainforests to cover logging and chronicled the politics of the nation’s air pollution control policies.
She will give a rundown of President Bush’s reinterpretation of environmental regulations during his first four years, and his plans for the next four.
This year’s Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute is supported by the Gund Foundation, the Canadian Forest Service, the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and Michigan State University’s School of Journalism.
EJA brings journalists and students together
Michigan State University’s Environmental Journalism Association had a season of growth during its sophomore year.
The association focused on providing professional development and networking opportunities for EJA members during the 2004-2005 academic year. Guest speakers who spoke at monthly meetings included Hugh McDiarmid Jr., environment reporter at the Detroit Free Press and Ron St. Germain, a freelance outdoors writer and photographer whose work has appeared in National Wildlife and National Geographic magazines.
EJA members also had a question and answer session over pizza with former CNN environment correspondent Natalie Pawelski while she was in town for a Knight Center speaking engagement.
Other EJA events included an informal dinner with Nancy Donnelly, a producer for National Geographic Explorer. And, it’s not over: Mark S. Carlson, one of Michigan’s top nature photographers, will be on hand for a full-day nature photography workshop at the Portland State Game Area on April 23.
Howard Bossen, MSU professor, authored Luke Swank, Modernist Photographer, to be published by University of Pittsburgh Press in July. The book is in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition of Swank's photographs.
Elizabeth Burch, Ph.D ’97, and Joe Harry, Ph.D ’99, published “Counter Hegemony and Environmental Justice in California Newspapers: Source Use Patterns in Stories About Pesticides and Farm Workers,” in the Autumn 2004 issue of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. Burch is an associate professor at Sonoma State University in California and Harry is an associate professor at Slippery Rock University, Penn.
Jim Detjen, director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, has been named an Outreach and Engagement senior fellow at Michigan State University by Hiram Fitzgerald, the assistant provost for University Outreach and Engagement. He also has been selected to serve on MSU’s Land Policy Council and the University Distinguished Professors Advisory Committee. He spoke on the role of the media in framing debates on environmental policy at a national conference on Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Neb. on April 7.
Andrew Guy, a master’s degree student, is the director of the Great Lakes Project at the Michigan Land Use Institute, a non-profit organization based in Beulah, Mich. He co-authored Liquid Gold Rush, a report on groundwater use in Michigan and writes extensively about water policy issues in the Great Lakes region. He also participated in the 2003 World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan where he lectured on community organizing to protect local waterways.
Susana Guzman, master’s ’04, covers health and the environment for Rumbo, a new Spanish-language daily newspaper in Austin, Texas. She continues to moderate PAL-NET, a Spanish-language listserv for environmental journalists in Mexico and Latin America, which is based at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. She is also helping organize the 15th national conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, which will be in Austin from Sept. 21 to 25.
Annelise Carlton Hug, Ph.D. ’01, works for the Center for Learning and Teaching in the West at Montana State University in Bozeman, Mont. She and her husband, Bill, are the parents of daughter Lilianna Rose, born on Aug. 13, 2004.
Jessica Hulett, B.S. ’04, is a reporter at the Ludington Daily News in Ludington, Mich. She was married on Oct. 2, 2004 to Jake VanderKolk.
Ike Iyioke, master’s ’99, married Ifeoma Ibemesi, an MSU graduate student. Ike and Ifeoma’s wedding ceremony was on March 12, 2005 at the St. John Student Catholic Parish in East Lansing, Mich.
Jeff Kart, B.S. ’93, is reporting about the environment at the Bay City Times in Bay City, Mich. He was a Knight Fellow in the environmental journalism program at MSU in 2003 and attended the Scripps Howard Institute on the Environment at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2004. He has won numerous awards for his reporting, including first place from the Michigan Press Association for a series of stories about a white supremacist preacher. He and his wife Suzanne are the parents of two daughters, Isabella and Lily.
Arjun Kashyap, master’s ’05, completed a semester-long internship at the Washington Business Journal. He works as a freelance reporter for the Lansing-Jackson Business Review and hopes to continue business reporting for a newspaper or magazine after he graduates.
Yu-Ting Lin, master’s ‘05, is a co-winner of the Nick Kerbawy Research Scholarship, awarded by the MSU School of Journalism.
Nate Matthews, B.S. ‘03, has been named associate editor at Field & Stream Magazine in New York City. This outdoors magazine has a circulation of 1.8 million.
Debbie Munson, master’s ‘05, assistant editor of EJ Magazine, is a co-recipient of the Len Barnes AAA Scholarship, awarded by the MSU School of Journalism for recreation, travel or environmental reporting. Munson will graduate in May and hopes to work as an outdoors writer and photographer.
Amy Nevala, master’s ’97, is working as a science writer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. From May 20 to June 3, she will travel on a research vessel to the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador where she will write daily stories about new research findings. She previously has participated in Woods Hole expeditions to the Indian Ocean off East Africa and to the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coasts of Washington and Oregon.
Rachel Perry, B.S. ’95 published a collection of short stories, How to Fly. Her work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, River City, Hayden’s Ferry Review, South Dakota Review, Elysian Fields Quarterly, The Baseball Review and other publications. She earned a master’s in fine arts degree from Bowling Green State University.
Dave Poulson, assistant director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, will moderate the Griffin Forum at Central Michigan University on April 19. This forum, which will be televised on MGTV, is entitled “That Giant Sucking Sound: The Multiple Threats to Michigan’s Water.” In January he attended the Investigative Reporters & Editors’ annual Map Camp at the University of Missouri. He was a guest speaker at the annual Michigan Traffic Safety Summit in March.
Abigail Pugh is living and writing in Toronto, Canada. She writes freelance news and features articles for a variety of print and Web publications. In May she travels to Syria.
Tony Richards, master‘s ‘06, is a co-recipient of the W. Cameron Meyers Scholarship, awarded by the MSU School of Journalism.
Corbin Sullivan, master’s ’04, is working part time for the Gongwer News Service in Lansing, Michigan and freelancing for various print and radio outlets. He is applying to medical school.
Kristen Tuinstra, master’s ’03, is an editor at the Zondervan communications company in Grand Rapids, Mich. She will be editing a series of books aimed at children from 10 to 12 years old about the intelligent design of the universe. She reports that the science and environmental education she received at MSU “will certainly come in handy!”
Aileo Weinmann, master’s ’05, editor of EJ Magazine, participated in a workshop with invited scientists and journalists at the University of Washington, Seattle. The workshop was part of an ongoing project to improve reporting of climate science news. He is a co-recipient of the Len Barnes AAA Scholarship, awarded by the MSU School of Journalism for recreation, travel or environmental reporting, and recipient of a merit award for outstanding scholarship from the School of Journalism Graduate Study Committee.
Randy Yeip, master’s ’02, is a designer for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Penn. He can be reached at ryeip@patriot-news.com.
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