Covering the environment at Michigan Public

Anna Barnes was an environmental reporting intern at NPR affiliate Michigan Public in collaboration with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.

By Anna Barnes

As I wrap up my Knight Center summer internship at Michigan Public, I can say the experience was necessary and fulfilling. I am leaving the newsroom in Ann Arbor more prepared for my future career and for my last semester in the master’s program here at Michigan State University.

My internshipwas fully in-person and it showed me what a professional newsroom 9-5 experience is like. I went into the internship having no experience in radio and now I feel I could confidently work at any station. Some of my family and friends would call me just to tell me they just heard me talking through their car speakers, so that was definitely a highlight of the summer.

Working in the office also set me up for success in my last semester of college as my professional project will require me to spend hours in the office producing and editing a documentary. I am also no longer worried about audio editing because that’s one skill I got to focus on this summer. Continue reading →

What does Rapunzel have to do with environmental journalism?

Photo credit: Johnny Gruelle, 1922

A new paper by Knight Center researchers reaches back to a famous Grimm Brothers fairy tale to explain the importance of training environmental journalists how to report on academic studies.

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel: Let Down Your Golden Hair: Using Study-to-Story to Bring Environmental Research Out of the Ivory Tower” describes how students affiliated with the center’s Great Lakes Echo news service find, analyze, contextualize, translate and report on scholarly studies for general audiences.

Much like Rapunzel, many environmental researchers are imprisoned — or, more precisely, their work is imprisoned — in metaphorical ivory towers known as scholarly journals. Most of them are peer-reviewed publications that lack the glitzy public relations apparatus of such prominent and media-savvy mainstream journals as Science, Nature and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Most environment-related studies that Great Lakes Echo reports about appear in smaller and niche journals that few, if any other reporting usually look at. That gives our stories the impact and prominence of exclusivity because we are usually the first news organization to cover them.

The paper by Knight Center director Eric Freedman, graduate research assistant Julia Belden and undergrad research assistants Victoria Witke and Isabella Figueroa Noguira was presented at the August conference of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communications in New Orleans.

Julia Belden presenting the Rapunzel paper.

The authors say that the Great Lakes Echo model can be adapted by other journalism programs to encourage student reporting that draws on environmental research.

 

Knight Center researchers share their work in Latin America at international conferences

Knight Center Research Director Bruno Takahashi and doctoral researchers Iasmim Amiden dos Santos and Julia Belden participated in a series of international speaking engagements, sharing their research on environmental communication in Latin America.

Many of these presentations build on their recent co-authored publications, including an article in Environmental Communication that examines the experiences of Latin American scholars working in the field and another that explores Indigenous communication and decolonial journalism in the Peruvian Amazon.

Takahashi and Amiden dos Santos co-organized and participated in the second symposium of the Red Latinoamericana de Estudios en Comunicación Ambiental/Latin American Network for Environmental Communication Studies (Red LECA), hosted by the Universidad de La Sabana in Chía, Colombia.

The symposium focused on the relationship between democracy and environmental communication and brought together scholars from across the region to discuss emerging research and collaborative initiatives. More information about the event can be found here.

Amiden dos Santos moderating a panel on environmental journalism at the second symposium of Red LECA.

Following the symposium, Takahashi visited the Universidad de Montevideo in Uruguay and the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina.

In Uruguay, he taught in the Diplomado en Comunicación, Ambiente y Sostenibilidad and presented his research on environmental journalism and science communication to faculty, students, and professional communicators. He was also interviewed by news outlets, including Canal 5 Noticias. In Buenos Aires, he delivered a lecture on the development of environmental communication research in Latin America.

Takahashi in Canal 5 Noticias, Montevideo, Uruguay

Takahashi presenting at the Universidad de Buenos Aires

Takahashi and Amiden dos Santos also traveled to Peru to conduct fieldwork for a project funded by the Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA). The project examines communication practices among Indigenous organizations and environmental NGOs regarding Indigenous Peoples in Isolation and Initial Contact (PIACI) in the Peruvian Amazon.

Takahashi and Amiden dos Santos leading a focus group in Iquitos, Peru.

During this visit, they also presented their research at the Universidad Científica del Sur (UCSUR) and at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. More information about these engagements can be found here. Amiden dos Santos, now a visiting professor at UCSUR, also taught a class on strategic communication.

Amiden dos Santos presenting at the Universidad Cientifica del Sur, Lima, Peru

Takahashi and Amiden dos Santos with faculty and staff at the Universidad Cientifica del Sur, Lima, Peru.

In late June, the researchers presented at the pre-conference on climate change communication and at the annual conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), held in Dublin and Galway, Ireland, respectively. Their presentations highlighted the distinctive characteristics of environmental communication research in Latin America and emphasized the importance of expanding opportunities for scholars from the region to share their perspectives in international academic forums.

Amiden dos Santos presenting at IAMCR in Dublin.

Julia Belden presentng at ICA in Cape Town, South Africa

Incoming doctoral student Julia Belden presented at the conference of the International Communication Association conference in Cape Town, South Africa. The study, a collaboration with Takahashi and Amiden dos Santos, presents an analysis of the environmental communication academic literature from Latin America.

Later this summer, Takahashi and Amiden dos Santos presented research on decolonial environmental journalism in Bolivia and Indigenous decolonial communication in the Peruvian Amazon at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in New Orleans.

 

Takahashi and Amiden dos Santos presenting at AEJMC in New Orleans.

These international engagements reflect the Knight Center’s commitment to advancing environmental communication research and fostering collaborations with scholars, journalists, and practitioners around the Latin America. By sharing research and building partnerships across the region, the Center continues to contribute to more inclusive and globally connected conversations about environmental communication.

 

ICA 2026

Out of (South) Africa: Graduate students present research at ICA 2026

By Julia Belden

Graduate students Julia Belden and Alexandra Benitez Gonzalez presented Knight Center-affiliated research projects at this year’s International Communication Association (ICA) conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

Alexandra Benitez Gonzalez presents her work. Credit: Julia Belden

Julia and Alex were part of a large contingent of faculty and grad students from MSU’s College of Communication Arts & Sciences traveling to the conference. The conference theme, “Communication and Inequalities in Context,” provided an ideal backdrop for showcasing the Knight Center’s research.

Julia, a 2nd year journalism M.A. student and incoming Ph.D. student, presented “Visibilizing Environmental Communication at the Margins: A Bibliometric Analysis of Latin American Scholarship,” a work-in-progress study that’s part of a larger project to build and establish a database of Latin American environmental communication scholarship.

Julia Belden with her poster at ICA 2026. Credit: Julia Belden

(You can visit the database here, and learn more about our network of Latin American environmental communication scholars here!) Knight Center research director Bruno Takahashi and Ph.D. candidate Iasmim Amiden dos Santos are coauthors of this study.

Alex, a Ph.D. candidate in Media & Information, presented “Testimonios of Latin American immigrant scientists in STEM.” Study coauthors were Evelyn-Valdez Ward, Iasmim Amiden dos Santos, Bruno Takahashi and Sunshine Menezes.

The view from Cape Town’s Table Mountain. Credit: Julia Belden

This was the first time the ICA conference took place on the African continent. South Africa’s natural beauty was a big draw for attendees, who explored landmarks like Cape Town’s Table Mountain and Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens. Robben Island, home to the former prison where Nelson Mandela was held for decades, offered a sobering reminder of the struggles still faced by South Africans in a post-Apartheid landscape.