EJ News
Knight Center News Briefs
Environmental documentaries
The Knight Center’s on-going documentary video production class—based on EJ magazine writer Alicia Clarke’s experiences on an arctic expedition—is in full swing.
The expanded version will include several interviews with MSU professors and researchers about the latest effects that climate change is having both in the Arctic as well as the Great Lakes. A state of the art editing system has been installed as part of the Knight Center’s ongoing commitment to the project.
Last year’s pilot program, Dying to be Heard, a documentary about the ground breaking research on the effects of DDT, was broadcasted on all six of Michigan’s PBS stations.
The class is also beginning work on a new Web site that will accompany video projects. It will include expanded interviews, photos and links to information that relates to each new documentary. —Lou D’Aria
Environmental journalists visit
The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at MSU brought award-winning journalists for its Fall 2007 Lecture Series. Christopher Bedford, an environmental filmmaker, Peter Thomson, founding producer and editor of National Public radio’s environmental program “Living On Earth” and author of “Sacred Sea: A journey to Lake Baikal” and Ken Ward Jr, a reporter for The Charleston (W.Va) Gazette spoke to students. Students met the speakers at an informal pizza and pop session after each presentation.
—Summi Gambhir
Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute returns to Michigan
Up to 25 Great Lakes-area journalists are participating in a summer institute offered by MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism in 2007. This year’s program is at an environmental research center operated by the University of Michigan. Fellowship winners will live, eat and work with scientists, faculty and students at the U-M’s Biological Station near Pellston. The issues they will study include endangered and invasive species, water quality, climate change, bio-fuels, forests, water use, wind power and agriculture. They will study computer-assisted reporting, collect and analyze plankton and algae and learn how the interaction between trees and the atmosphere is measured far above the forest canopy. This is the Knight Center’s ninth Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute, but the first one held at the U-M facility. It runs from June 26 to June 30. Since 1996, more than 200 U.S. and Canadian journalists have attended the institute, which is supported by the George Gund Foundation, the Knight Center and the MSU School of Journalism.
—David Poulson
eja update
MSU’s Environmental Journalism Association (EJA), a student group devoted to environmental journalism, is finishing up another semester. Events this fall included discussing environmental coverage with journalists. Plans for spring semester include the annual Nature Photo Workshop, a GPS training session and a tour of the MSU Student Organic Farm. To learn more about EJA, contact President Matt Hund at hundmatt@msu.edu.
—Matt Hund
Knight Center hosts green tailgate
The Knight Center hosted a green tailgate at MSU this fall. The tailgate went green by serving locally-grown food, limiting packaging waste and practicing energy conservation. Coverage for the green tailgate and additional tips and resources on how to make your own tailgates greener can be found on the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism Web site at ej.msu.edu.
—Jessica A. Knoblauch
Andy Balaskovitz, a journalism junior at MSU, is working as a designer at the State News. He will study English literature in Dublin, Ireland during the spring 2008 semester. He can be reached at balasko1@msu.edu or 231-557-4613.
Molly Benningfield, B.A. ‘07Journalism MSU, is the editor of the Lowell Ledger in Lowell, Mich. She can be reached at benninf@msu.edu and 616-560-7229.
Katie Coleman, M.A. 07, former EJ Magazine editor, is a development associate at the Environmental Law & Policy Center in Chicago.
Sandra Combs, Jim Detjen and Cheryl Pell won the third place award for innovative outreach to scholastic journalism in the 2007 competition sponsored by the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication. The three MSU School of Journalism faculty members were recognized for a high school journalism workshop,
“Cell Phones, Hurricanes and Mascara: Journalism and the Environment,” which was held at the Detroit Science Center in February 2007. Emilia Askari, a reporter at the Detroit Free Press, also played a key role in coordinating the event.
Jim Detjen, director of MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, lectured about global media coverage of climate change at the inaugural Salzburg Academy Program on Media and Global Change in Salzburg, Austria in July 2007. He taught 52 journalism students from five continents at the academy, which was held at the Schloss Leopoldskron, a palace where “The Sound of Music,” was filmed. He also lectured about the news media’s coverage of global climate change at the Knight Digital Media Center in Los Angeles in October 2007 and is serving as a judge for the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism, which is administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Tom Elko, a 2007 graduate of the Knight Center’s Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute, recently took a job as an Internet programmer for Minneapolis-based television station KARE 11. He also recently accepted
a fellowship from the Center for Independent Media, where his reporting is being published in the Minnesota Monitor.
Kristin Espeland, a fellow at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism’s first boot camp in Burlington, Vt. in 2006, is the first environmental reporter at Louisville’s Public Radio Partnership at WFPL, the National Public Radio station in Louisville, Ky. She can be reached at kespeland@wfpl.org and 502-814-6563.
Brian Foley, M.A. ’05, is working in San Francisco for the Commonwealth Club of California, the nation’s oldest public forum organization. He is also freelancing for www.greenlivingideas.com. Previously he worked at the San Francisco Examiner as a reporter. He can be reached at 650-400-2213.
Eric Freedman, a professor at Michigan State University, has co-edited a new book, “African Americans in Congress: A Documentary History,” with MSU alumnus Stephen Jones. The book was published by Congressional Quarterly Press.
Summi Gambhir, M.A. ’08, is getting married in India on Dec. 21, 2007. Her fiancé, Amit Leekha, is a software engineer in Connecticut. Gambhir is the design editor of EJ Magazine.
Madison Hall, M.A. ’07, is working on a Ph.D. in forestry at Michigan State University. She also works on the Boldness by Design Environmental Stewardship Team which is recommending ways to expand recycling at MSU.
Chris Jackett, B.A. ’07, is working as a staff writer for the Novi News, a Gannett newspaper in Novi, Mich. He also coaches a youth soccer team and is working on a business certificate at Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Mich. He can be reached at chrisjackett@yahoo.com and 313-204-4343.
Kristin V. Johnson, M.A. ’07, is working as a design editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She designs news, sports and features pages for the Post-Intelligencer in addition to writing the What’s Online feature for the features department. She can be reached at kvkjohnson@gmail.com and 608-438-6932.
Jeff Kart, a ‘93 graduate of MSU’s School of Journalism, won second prize in the 2007 Feinstone Environmental Award, a national honor for outstanding journalism. He won for a series of stories about the Tobico Marsh and the nearby Hartley landfill. The stories prompted the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to take action to clean up the landfill, which had been contaminating the freshwater marsh. Kart covers the environment and politics for the Bay City Times in Bay City, Mich.
Carol Navarro, B.A. ’07, and Mairin MacDonald, an MSU senior in journalism, won third prize in the outstanding student environmental reporting category in the national competition of the Society of Environmental Journalists. They were given their award at the SEJ national conference at Stanford University in September 2007 for an article they co-wrote in the Spring 2006 issue of EJ Magazine.
Hannah Northey, M.A. ’07, is the environmental reporter for the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Va. She can be reached at hnorthey@gmail.com and 540-574-6274.
Rosemary Parker, a fellow in the 2007 Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute, has been named the Michigan Farm Bureau’s Communicator of the Year in the print division. She is a reporter at the Kalamazoo Gazette in Kalamazoo, Mich.
David Poulson, associate director of MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, spoke on citizen journalism and the environment at the National Press
Club in Washington D.C. in September. He discussed GreatLakesWiki.org, a site created by MSU students that enables citizens in the Great Lakes region to share information in a multi-media environment. This site is one of 10 projects in the nation recognized by the Knight-Batten Awards for innovations in journalism. Cliff Lampe, an assistant professor at MSU’s department of Telecommunications, Information
Studies and Media, is the other project leader.
Tyler Sipe, B.A. 05, is working as a photographer for the Traverse City Record-Eagle in Traverse City, Mich.
Jessica (Hulett) VanderKolk, B.A. ‘04, is writing environmental, health and governmental stories for the Altoona Mirror in Altoona, Pa. She won third place for a feature story about an incumbent state senator’s last day in office in a competition sponsored by the Association for Capitol Reporters and Editors.
Ashley Waldorf, a MSU senior in professional writing, is attending the Galapagos Academic Institute for Arts and Sciences in the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador. She is the founder and co-editor of Amplifx, a new monthly magazine for the MSU and Lansing area that will be launched in January 2008. The magazine’s title was coined to mean “amplification of the effects.” It will report about environmental, cultural and political issues on the local and global levels. She can be reached at waldorfa@msu.edu and 586-781-3123.
Corrections
The Spring 2007 EJ article “ Big Ten ‘mini cities’ create big impact” should have the following corrections:
• The article should have defined a kilowatt-hour as the energy required to keep a standard 100-watt light bulb lit for approximately 10 hours.
• The explanation at the bottom of the kilowatt-hour table should have read, “GSF stands for Gross Square Feet, which is the area inside campus buildings.”
• The article should have stated, “On average, Big Ten universities consume approximately 18.47 kilowatt-hours of electricity per gross square foot (the area inside campus buildings) annually.”
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