Knight Center co-sponsors two films at upcoming MSU Latinx Film Festival

The first is titled “Karuara, People of the River.” According to the festival’s website: “A vibrant hand-painted animation brings whimsical Karuara spirits to life in Peru’s Amazon. Their mission: maintain the Marañón River’s ecological balance as the Kukama people fight for the river’s legal personhood.”

J-School professor Bruno Takahashi will be presenting the film alongside one of the directors.

The second is called “Through Rocks and Clouds (Raíz).” According to the website: “Feliciano, an 8-year-old alpaca herder, feels euphoric: Peru has a chance to qualify for the World Cup. Meanwhile the pressure of a mining company puts Feliciano’s village at risk and threatens his world and his dreams.”

Both showings are free and will take place Thursday, Feb. 19 in Wells Hall.

For more information about these films and the rest of the festival, visit https://msulatinxfilmfestival.com/

Open call for 2026 proposals for high school journalism and environmental science collaborations

To encourage collaboration between high school journalism and environmental science classes, we invite teachers to submit proposals for innovative class projects in which journalism students will report about field research by environmental science students. Our principal goals are:

to help young prospective journalists better understand and explain to the public how science is done
to help environmental science students learn to use the media to explain their work to the public.
to promote environmental and science journalism.

The Knight Center intends to award 1-year grants of $2,000 to up to 2 high schools: $1,000 to the journalism program and $1,000 to the environmental science program for equipment, software or scholarships. In addition, the Knight Center will pair each school with a professional journalist to serve as a mentor to participating students and teachers. Continue reading →

Paid summer reporting internships available for MSU students at six Michigan news organizations

Michigan State University students are eligible for six paid internships this summer at major multi-media Michigan news organizations.

These internships through MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism meet the MSU J-School’s internship requirement. Environmental expertise or particular interest is not required. But you’ll gain both.

The application deadline is Saturday, February 28, 2026.

Four internships are with members of the Great Lakes News Collaborative, a group of independent multi-media news organizations. These are for students with diverse backgrounds and life experiences. Please review the job descriptions for each newsroom. When applying, please rank which newsroom(s) interest you from the most to the least, based on the job descriptions and your ability to fulfill the location requirements. Circle of Blue, for example, is entirely remote, while Bridge Michigan, Detroit PBS and Michigan Public are hybrid or in-person. Continue reading →

Five science writers share tips on how to make science stories entertaining and funny

By Clara Lincolnhol

This is the 6th in a series of articles by Knight Center students who attended the recent annual conference of the National Association of Science Writers.

“Welcome to how to engage an audience,” said Kathyrn Jepson, the editor-in-chief for Symmetry Magazine and a science fiction editor.

Jepson and four other journalists spoke at a panel at the National Science Writers Conference in Chicago to share how writers can implement humor in their writing to get readers hooked on a scientific story.

Blythe Terrell, the executive editor at Science Vs., said a critical way to tell a funny science story is by getting the scientist in on a joke.

“One of the critical ways we do that is by giving scientists a space where they hopefully feel comfortable opening up and having just a little bit of fun,” Terrell said. “And that is often on our tape in our audio.”

She said they will write weird questions and see if the scientist wants to go along with them.

“It’s not like we aren’t taking the topic seriously. We are treating it with seriousness. The rest of the episode is serious, but we find space for these things and we find that really engages listeners,” Terrell said.

Kate Gammon, a comedian, and freelance journalist, said she writes a lot about crises, like the biodiversity crisis, the climate crisis and political crisis. “It felt sometimes like I was writing an obituary for nature,” Gammon said. “So I had to make jokes.” Continue reading →