The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism is part of the School of Journalism in the College of Communication Arts & Sciences at Michigan State University. It trains both student and professional journalists to cover the environment, and it has published EJ Magazine since 2002.
The center, located on MSU’s East Lansing, Mich. campus, was founded in 1994 when the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation created the nation’s first endowed chair in environmental journalism. In 2005, the Knight Foundation reaffirmed its confidence in the Knight Center by awarding it a $2.2 million grant, which MSU matched with an additional $2 million, to support more Knight Center activities.
Over the course of more than 10 years, the Knight Center became an internationally recognized program where both students and professional journalists can receive the best training available in environmental journalism. Some of the center's current activities include:
- Hosting a national "Boot Camp" for training environmental journalists, to be launched in October 2006 in conjunction with the Society of Environmental Journalists' conference in Burlington, Va. This workshop will be modeled after the successful Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institutes organized by the Knight Center.
- Holding international workshops for training journalists about environmental reporting in India (2005), Mexico (2006) and China (2007).
- Organizing three environmental journalism summits and leadership retreats planned for between 2006 and 2010. These summits will examine the ways to increase environmental reporting on television, attract more journalists of color to report on the environment and increase in-depth environmental stories in the media.
- Researching the state of environmental reporting, pioneering environmental journalists and other topics.
- Creating an "option" in the Journalism School's Master's degree program. This option will include courses in environmental science and policy, a required internship and a strong ethics component. A course in broadcast environmental reporting will be created.
- Developing online course modules about air and water pollution, land-use issues, environmental risks and other topics.
- Writing and publishing a textbook for journalism students and professional journalists.
- Digitizing the Meeman Archives, a collection of more than 1,500 outstanding environmental journalism articles from the past 20 years.
