Author Archives: Barb Miller

Environmental journalism goes hi-tech

This is the 2^nd in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

By Julia Belden

Julia Benden

Global trade databases. Air quality sensors. Artificial intelligence.

Harnessing new technologies is easier than ever, and some can help environmental journalists hold power to account, according to a panel of experts at the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) Conference in Tempe, Arizona.

Many of the resources shared by the experts are free or low-cost, making them ideal for freelancers or under resourced newsrooms.

“Follow the money”

Jelter Meers, the research editor at the Pulitzer Center, presented a roadmap for investigating institutions and their environmental impacts. First, he said, “follow the money.”

Journalists can find information on company ownership, financiers and funders through company registries, stock markets, international databases and more.

Often, this information can be found on free-to-access online databases, Meers said. SEC.gov, OCCRP Aleph and OpenCorporates are good places to start.

Journalists affiliated with well-resourced newsrooms and universities can take advantage of paid databases like LexisNexis and Sayari.

The flow of money isn’t the only thing worth tracking, Meers said. Following a company’s supply chains might also yield critical information for investigations.

In addition to these websites, Meers recommended additional free databases such as the United Nations’s COMTRADE for tracking down supply chain data.

Finally, journalists can get creative with satellite and geospatial data, layering datasets on top of one another to “create a dialogue between them,” Meers said.

By combining satellite imagery from sources like NASA Worldview with geospatial data from websites like Protected Planet, journalists can get a dynamic bird’s-eye view of environmental impacts and create compelling visuals for their audience. Continue reading →

SCIENCE CONTROVERSIES

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How to report on science controversies

This is the 1^st in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

By RUTH THORNTON

Ruth Thornton

How can science journalists cover scientific controversies and scientists’ misconduct without decreasing the public’s trust in science itself?

A panel at this year’s Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference at Arizona State University discussed this gnarly problem.

The panel was moderated by Jackie Mogensen, a reporter with Mother Jones, and included panel members Stepanie Lee, a senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, a staff writer with Science magazine and Amy Westervelt, an investigative climate journalist and executive editor of Drilled.

Science controversies panel

Lee described her reporting about Brian Wansink, the now-discredited professor and researcher at Cornell University’s food lab who studied eating behaviors and food marketing.

“This was a lab at an Ivy League university with a lot of media attention and a lot of eye-catching and influential findings published in a lot of different journals,” Lee said.

Then, in 2016 or 2017, non-Cornell data scientists took a closer look at the numbers the studies reported, she said.

They “found a lot of very concerning red flags that somehow had not been noticed before, including straight-out impossible numbers,” Lee said.

She uncovered that the lab had been exaggerating and manipulating their calculations for years, she said.

“They were maniacally focused on getting media attention and buzz for their findings,” she said.

Lee said the faulty results impressed funders and pleased Cornell University.

And they were not detected by the journals. Continue reading →

Great Lakes Echo writers win Michigan Press Association awards

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The Michigan Press Association has named three Great Lakes Echo writers as winners in its college newspaper competition for stories published in 2024:

Column, Review or Blog: Reese Carlson, 1^st place for “New book explores a lifetime of Great Lakes resilience” and Clara Lincolnhol, 3^rd place for “Photobook illuminates the beauty of Michigan lighthouses.”

Feature Story: Jack Armstrong, 3^rd place for “Kids raise prehistoric fish as a science lesson”

Knight Center crew, alumni attend Society of Environmental Journalists conference

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MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism delegation

Michigan State’s delegation to the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe, Arizona, consisted of undergraduate and grad students, faculty members and alumni, including Knight Center founder Jim Detjen and current director Eric Freedman.

The conference – SEJ’s 35^th – was hosted by Arizona State University and focused on the theme “Heat, Water and Growth: Confronting the Past, Surviving the Future.” Despite the proliferation of cacti and daytime temperatures in the low 90s, the workshops, panels and presentations were highly relevant to issues in the Great Lakes, including mining, public lands, Indigenous lands, biodiversity, extreme weather, climate change and pollution.

Our student team members were Anna Barnes, Julia Belden, Isabella Figueroa, Clara Lincolnhol, Mia Litzenberg, Shea Paulis and Ruth Thornton.

Great Lakes Echo editor Jeff Brooks-Gillies and Knight Center master’s alumni Kelly House of Bridge Michigan and Kurt Williams of Oregon State University’s Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory rounded out the team.

Detjen was SEJ’s first president.