EJ News
Knight Center News Briefs
Environmental Media —
Knight Center instructor Amol Pavangadkar’s client-based media design class recently premiered Michigan: Winds of Change, a video on the potential of wind energy in Michigan. The project included a seven-minute video interview with some of the Michigan wind industry leaders, as well as a Web site devoted to the wind industry in Michigan. The culmination of the project was a presentation at the Michigan Wind Energy Council meeting, hosted by the Michigan Public Service Committee. It was a packed house, with some 150 people attending, and the video was well received. The council and the public service committee may use the video in the future to promote wind energy.
—Amol Pavangadkar
EJA Update —
Members of MSU’s Environmental Journalism Association in Spring 2008 attended an environmental video workshop where they learned how to both shoot and edit outdoor footage. Members also toured the MSU cytogenetics lab where they looked at chromosomes under microscopes and learned to identify genetic mutations that may harm people. Events slated for next year include a collaborative writing project and a nature photo workshop with professional environmental photographers and editors. For more information about upcoming events, contact incoming EJA president Matt Cimitile at cimitile@msu.edu.
—Matt Hund
Environmental Journalists Visit —
The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at MSU brought award-winning journalists for its Spring 2008 Lecture Series. Jane Stevens, a journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Brant Houston, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter, and Mark Schapiro, an investigative journalist for more than two decades, gave lectures to MSU students. Students and faculty met the speakers at an informal pizza and pop session after each presentation.
—Jessica A. Knoblauch
Climate Change Fellowship —
A dozen fellowship winners will be flown to Alaska August 13 to August 16 to directly learn about the impacts of global climate change. Fellowship participants will not only learn more about climate change, but also how to write relevant climate change stories for audiences back home. The fellowship is sponsored by the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
—Jessica A. Knoblauch
Names in the News
Paul Brinkmann is a business reporter at the South Florida Business Journal in Deerfield Beach, Fla. He writes about environmental, legal and real estate issues. Paul, an alumnus of the Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute, previously worked as a reporter at the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Wisconsin. He can be reached at pbrinkma11@hotmail.com.
Dee DePass, an alumna of the 2007 Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute and a business writer at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, won an East-West Center fellowship and visited China for two and a half weeks last fall. “The air pollution in Beijing is so bad that the sun has been rendered into an impotent moon,” she wrote. She also reported that development in Shanghai is off the charts. “It looks like seven Manhattans are being built. Plans are to double the size of this already massive city by 2012.” She also visited India as part of a reporting assignment. She can be reached at ddepass@startribune.com.
Jim Detjen, director of MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, will be the professor in residence at the New York Times’ Institute on the Environment in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic in April. He served as a judge on several environmental reporting contests, including the John Oakes Awards given by Columbia University and the Phil Reed Award of the Southern Environmental Law Center. He lectured about environmental journalism at Florida A & M University in Tallahassee, Fla. in December 2007 and the University of Michigan in March 2008.
Madison Hall, M.A. ‘07, is working on a PhD in forestry at MSU. She will participate in a summer 2008 study abroad course in the Svalbard Islands. After completing the course, she will research sustainability projects in Germany and the Netherlands before returning to MSU. She is moving into a new house in March. She can be reached at madisonhall@hotmail.com.
Chris Jackett, B.A. ‘07, covers education, business, state politics and other topics for the Novi News, a weekly metro Detroit Gannett publication. He continues to coach, play and referee soccer and will earn a business certificate from Schoolcraft College in May 2008. He can be reached at Chrisjackett@yahoo.com.
Kristin Johnson, M.A. ‘07, is a layout design editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and is a front-page designer for the newspaper. She also writes a daily feature for the newspaper, What’s Online. She played a major role in converting the newsletter of the Society of Environmental Journalists into a magazine and designing the first issue. She can be reached at kvkjohnson@gmail.com.
Chris Kennedy has been officially hired to help Knight Center Administrative Assistant Barb Miller. She can be reached at kenne115@msu.edu.
Jessica Knoblauch, editor of the Knight Center’s EJ Magazine, has a full-time paid internship at Plenty Magazine in New York City this summer. Jessica can be reached at knoblau7@msu.edu.
Chelsea McMellen, B.A. ‘07, is the sustainability coordinator at the University of Texas in Austin. She started a newsletter called “Synergies: The Sustainability Newsletter of the University of Texas at Austin” (utexas.edu/safety/ehs/sustainability). She is developing the university’s first Sustainability Directory and Sustainability Report. She can be reached at Chelsea.mcmellen@austin.utexas.edu.
Amy Nevala, M.A. ‘97, will travel to Greenland in July and August to report about geology research conducted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass. Amy is a science writer at the institute and editor of the institute’s magazine. Stories covering the research can be found on http://polardiscovery.whoi.edu.
Alex Nixon, M.A. ‘04, is the business reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette. He writes about business news in Southeast Michigan and has started a business blog called “Follow the Money” (http://blog.mlive.com/followthemoney). He has also created a blog dedicated to the craft beer industry and local home brewers, called KalamaBrew. (http://www.mlive.com/kalamabrew/ ). In December, Alex purchased a home, which he is remodeling. He can be reached at anixon@Kalamazoogazette.com.
David Poulson, Knight Center Associate Director, was a panelist for the Media Re: public Assessing the State of Participatory Media conference for Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The conference at the University of Southern California in March was part of an attempt to help research and policymaking efforts regarding participatory media. In May he spoke on data and mapping for visualizing rural health to reporters at the Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism at the University of Missouri.
Abigail Pugh, an alumna of the Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute, is living in Berlin with her partner and dog, Pippin. She is freelancing for the Toronto Star and other newspapers. “Berlin is a very environmentally friendly community compared with Toronto,” she writes. “Street lights are gas here, cars are tiny (and fewer than I’m used to) and bike lanes are everywhere.” She can be reached at apugh@sympatico.ca.
Kendra Snyder, B.A. ‘05, is working as a science writer at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. She previously had science-writing internships at Fermilab near Chicago and at CERN in Switzerland. She can be reached at ksynder@bnl.gov.
Ashley Waldorf, B.A. ‘08, is the co-founder and co-editor of a new alternative magazine, Amplifx, which reports about environmental, social justice and sustainable issues at MSU and the Greater Lansing area. (amplifx.org) After graduating in May, she will join Teach for America. She can be reached at waldofa@msu.edu.
Karessa Weir, B.A. ’96 and M.A. ‘04, is teaching journalism and advising student newspapers at Spring Arbor University and Jackson Community College. She is also editing the MSU Echo e-newsletter, which provides environmental news to subscribers in the Great Lakes’ region. Her husband, Brian, is the editorial page editor of the Jackson Citizen Patriot. They have two children, Elliott, 4, and Alec, 2. Karessa and Brian are expecting their third child in August.
Lt. Elaine Wolff, B.A. ‘99, is working in the Office of Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Management for the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. She has been examining border security issues along the United States and Mexican border. She recently visited a Customs Border Patrol station in Arizona where illegal immigrants are caught and processed. “Today was a ‘slow’ day—on slow days they catch ‘only’ 150 to 200 illegals. Starting in a few weeks it will pick up and they usually catch between 300 and 500 illegals,” she reported. She can be reached at Elaine_Wolff@ios.doi.gov
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