Mongabay Latam Program Director Visits MSU to Share Lessons in Environmental Journalism

By Shealyn Paulis

Michigan State University welcomed environmental journalist and Mongabay Latam Program Director Maria Isabel Torres during Oct. 13-15, 2026. Torres was invited by Professor Bruno Takahashi to deliver the Mary Gardner Endowed Lecture, which focuses on Latin American journalism, and to engage with faculty and students. The visit was co-sponsored by MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the School of Journalism.

Maria Isabel Torres, left, poses with Bruno Takahashi. (Photo by Chris Kohler)

Torres, a journalist from Peru, has been with Mongabay Latam as program director since the bureau’s inception a decade ago. Prior to this, she worked as an investigative journalist for multiple news outlets in Peru.

Latin America was named the most dangerous region in the world for environmental defenders by Global Witness in 2023, with one third of those murdered being Indigenous people. Similarly, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) tracks that Latin America records the most journalist killings outside of active war zones.

“Bruno’s work is really interesting because he is approaching that reality with different perspectives, talking about the coloniality in communication,” Torres said.

Torres, meets with Shawn Turner, interim director of Michigan State University’s School of Journalism. (Photo by Anna Barnes)

Her visit began with a lunch for students of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. Torres shared her experiences as a reporter and learned about students’ academic projects and future goals.

Torres shares stories over lunch with students and faculty. (Photo by Anna Barnes)

A highlight of Torres’ visit was the Mary Gardner Endowed Lecture. She emphasized the collaboration, originality and precautions required in her work and discussed examples of investigative projects her team has produced. Torres shared the trials and tribulations faced by Mongabay Latam journalists, as well as the accomplishments she is most proud of.

“We are pretty happy that we’ve been, for 10 years, covering the most important problems and solutions about the environment in Latin America,” Torres said. She emphasized that her team is proud of its successes. “That gives me, as a journalist, the idea that sometimes our job can have an impact in real life,” she said.

Torres said she measures success by impact rather than story popularity or website traffic. Achieving that impact, she explained, also requires adapting to changing news consumption habits.

Torres speaks about environmental journalism in Latin America during the Mary Gardner Endowed Lecture. (Photo by Chris Kohler)

“We have to acknowledge that the news consumption has changed, has shifted, and that young people, for example, read the news from social media and don’t go to the websites,” Torres said. “You wrote this story because you think it’s important for the audience. So, you have to meet the audience where they are.”

She shared details of a long-term, collaborative investigation conducted by her outlet that exposed 67 illegal drug trafficking airstrips across Indigenous territories in the Peruvian Amazon. The project required years of precise investigation and coordination, bringing international attention to the Indigenous communities affected by these illegal activities and the 15 Indigenous leaders who were killed defending their territories against drug traffickers.

Students and staff during the presentation by Maria Isabel Torres. (Photo by Chris Kohler)

Despite the dangerous realities of her work, Torres also shared some of the more creative and experimental stories Mongabay Latam has explored. They recently produced an interactive theatrical play, performed by her staff, depicting the investigation into the illegal airstrips. She hopes projects like this inspire young journalists to experiment with new formats to make serious news more accessible to modern audiences.

Throughout her visit, Torres offered the MSU community an insight into the challenges and opportunities of environmental reporting in Latin America and the importance of investigative journalism. Her experiences demonstrated that journalistic success is strengthened by collaboration, can be measured by impact and can help vulnerable communities.

Environmental reporting at Circle of Blue

By Victoria Witke

Victoria Witke

Victoria Witke was an environmental reporting intern at Circle of Blue, a nonprofit independent news service that covers issues of global water, food and energy in a changing climate, in collaboration with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.

My summer internship with nonprofit newsroom Circle of Blue gave me the opportunity to conduct in-depth reporting on water issues in the Great Lakes region. Going into that role, I was excited to have the resources to do this type of investigative work. By the end, I felt like my writing skills had improved immensely.

In May, I began the remote gig. This was my first time working remotely for an outlet, focusing on a specialized topic and primarily covering stories in-depth. Going into the internship, I was excited about all of these firsts. Circle of Blue’s remote model is commonplace among a lot of environmental news outlets, such as Grist, Inside Climate News, Mongabay and High Country News.

I found the independence and flexibility of working remotely to be daunting. I worked the hours I chose, not ones I was assigned. I didn’t have an editor or coworker in an office to bounce ideas off of. Rallying the motivation to complete assignments when working mostly alone was, frankly, hard for me.

But I appreciated the trust my editors gave me. I was treated as a capable reporter, not just a student, and was able to pitch my own stories, conduct research, interview people and write drafts on my own. Circle of Blue is a small newsroom, and I was given the opportunity to learn from seasoned environmental journalists with varied interests and writing styles. In weekly meetings, I received support and ideas from coworkers. My supervisors were easy to reach by phone when I had questions.

Despite being a fully remote job, I had in-person opportunities. In June, I ventured to Houghton – a city in the northwestern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula – to make connections with local activists at a Sierra Club meeting and explore wild areas in the state’s national forests at risk of losing federal protections.

A few weeks later, I met with the outlet’s founder, who is a renowned photographer, to take pictures and videos at a transmission station under construction. I had never used most of the equipment before that day, from the drones he flew to take aerials to the miniscule magnetic camera we attached to the top of a pole being raised. I also heard a handful of his tales from reporting across the globe for outlets like Time Magazine and National Geographic.

I learned a lot during my internship, especially about story structure. My first story was a long 2,000-word article about how fires affect water quality in Minnesota’s remote lakes. The lead was a multi-paragraph anecdote about a researcher seeing what were once pristine lakes in the Northwoods ravaged by fire for the first time.

Reporting in the field

My editor decided that this story needed to be broken into two parts and, most importantly, the main point of my story couldn’t be buried underneath a long narrative. While I included that anecdote later in the article, my lead became stronger and more to the point. I learned that a lot of early career reporters make that same mistake. My editor also helped me add more transition phrases to make the article flow better.

More broadly, Circle of Blue taught me that environmental issues don’t exist in a vacuum. Everything is connected – a water issue isn’t just about water. It’s the nexus of food, energy, health, climate, infrastructure, environment and even economics. When covering environmental stories, I want to focus on these connections and emphasize why my topic is important to readers.

Overall, my internship at Circle of Blue improved my writing and how I approach reporting. It gave me a better understanding of how remote jobs in journalism operate and what working in a small newsroom is like. I am leaving the role with more confidence in my reporting, writing and editing skills and with a new perspective on covering environmental stories.

Environmental reporting at Bridge Michigan

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

Isabella Figueroa Nogueira was an environmental reporting intern at Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit statewide news service, in collaboration with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.

My summer internship as an environmental reporter at Bridge Michigan gave me a better understanding of what it means to work as a professional journalist. Going into the internship, I was excited to report on environmental issues across Michigan and gain experience in a newsroom outside of college journalism.

By the end of the summer, I felt that I had grown not only as a reporter, but also in my confidence, independence and understanding of what kind of journalist I want to become.

One of the best parts of the internship was getting to work on environmental stories that mattered to communities across Michigan. I was able to report on issues ranging from data centers and their environmental impacts to wildlife, water and other environmental policy issues. I especially enjoyed the opportunity to talk with people directly affected by the issues I was covering. Being able to interview sources, attend meetings and take information from documents and turn it into a story made the work feel meaningful.

I also appreciated how much independence I was given. I was trusted to pitch stories, reach out to sources, conduct interviews and work through reporting on my own. At first, that independence could be intimidating. In life, there are always deadlines and assignments.

However, working in a professional newsroom requires you to manage your own time and constantly prioritize tasks, even as the deadlines keep coming. I had to learn how to stay organized and hold myself accountable without always having someone checking in on me.

One of the biggest challenges I faced was motivation. Working largely on my own meant that there were days when it was difficult to get myself into a productive mindset, especially when a story was taking longer than expected or I was waiting for sources to respond.

Reporting can involve a lot of emails, phone calls, research and dead ends before there is anything to show for it. I learned that motivation does not always come before doing the work. Sometimes, I had to start making the calls, reading the documents or writing the first few paragraphs before I felt motivated. That was an important lesson for me because journalism requires consistency, even when a story is not moving as quickly as I want it to.

Another part of the experience was learning how to balance a full-time internship with the rest of my life. Working 40 hours a week gave me a better idea of what a career in journalism could actually look like. It was an adjustment to have so much of my week centered around reporting, especially when a story followed me home mentally even after I was done working for the day.

At the same time, I learned how important it is to give myself time to step away from the work. Having a routine outside of the newsroom helped me come back to my stories with a clearer mind and reminded me that being a good journalist does not mean thinking about journalism every second of the day.

Overall, my time at Bridge Michigan helped me become a more independent and confident reporter. I learned that journalism is not always exciting interviews and finished stories. A lot of it is persistence, organization, rejection and figuring things out on your own. While there were moments when I struggled with motivation or felt unsure of myself, those challenges made the experience more valuable. I am leaving the internship with a better understanding of both the kind of reporter I want to be and the work it will take to get there.

Attacks on individual U.S. journalists are escalating, Knight Center director says

In today’s overheated political environment, individual journalists find themselves targets of aggressive criticism, slurs, insults and threats of violence, verbal attacks that go beyond the traditional criticism of news organizations by people unhappy with what the report.

Knight Center director Eric Freedman examines this deeply troubling trend in a column for Capital News Service.