Author Archives: Barb Miller

Remote sensing satellites are revealing global methane emissions

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Anna Barnes

By Anna Barnes

Methane gas is a cornerstone in the climate change conversation. Reducing emissions is a critical part of mitigation but there is one ever-standing issue of this elusive gas: it’s invisible.

At the Society of Environmental Journalists Conference 2025, one panel focused on locating and mapping methane pools to increase targeted action against the pollutant. The panel, “Revealing the Invisible: How Remote-Sensing Satellites are Transforming Methane Accountability and Climate Action,” included Deborah Gordon, the senior principal at the Rocky Mountain Institute’s (RMI) Climate Intelligence Program.

Gordon said identifying methane has always been a struggle for scientists.

“It’s invisible, it’s odorless,” she said. “It wants to escape from any system it’s in. So here I was early on in my career, given a bucket of soapy water and a paintbrush, and I was going around to see where the pressure would form with a bubble that would come.” Continue reading →

Knight Center graduate student delves into the reasons for the decline of butterflies

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PoweshiekSkipper.jpg: The Poweshiek skipperling, a rare prairie butterfly, is one of many butterfly species facing drastic declines in the U.S. Credit: Ruth Thornton.

Knight Center graduate student Ruth Thornton recently completed her master’s professional project titled “Butterflies in decline and saving the Poweshiek skipperling from extinction,” publicly available online on her website.

In the first of a series of three feature articles, Thornton explores recent scientific studies describing a decline in overall butterfly abundance of nearly a quarter between 2000 and 2020 and investigating the causes of the drastic decline, including pesticide use, habitat loss and climate change.

She also talks to experts researching non-chemical control of a prominent insect pest of soybeans to try to reduce the amount of pesticides applied to agricultural fields, a key suspect in the decline of butterflies in the Midwest. Continue reading →

Public radio environmental reporting intern reflects on the experience

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By Clara Lincolnhol

Clara Lincolnhol

My Knight Center summer internship with PBS/NPR-affiliate WKAR in East Lansing recently came to an end. It’s safe to say the expectations I had going into the job were exceeded. I walked away feeling like I had grown significantly, both as a person and a reporter.

Throughout this internship, I worked as an environmental news and radio reporting intern. I had the opportunity to localize my favorite beat to the community I live in. It was incredibly fulfilling covering my own and other nearby communities in Mid-Michigan and being a part of both local journalism and public media.

Having the opportunity to go on-site and interview people who were directly involved in or affected by issues was an immensely valuable experience.

A challenge I faced was adjusting to writing for radio and then voicing it. As someone used to print, it was difficult at times to effectively cut back what I was trying to say into verbiage better suited for a spoken, minute time slot. Thankfully my mentors at WKAR gave me great guidance. I felt that towards the end of my internship, I better understood how to write engaging copy + record a voiceover–and found it fun too! Continue reading →

Knight Center researchers present studies on environmental journalism in Latin America

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Knight Center director Eric Freedman and Knight Center doctoral student and research assistant Iasmim Amiden dos Santos presented two papers on environmental journalism in Latin America at the 2025 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference, held August 7-10 in San Francisco, California.

Eric Freedman presenting at AEJMC

Freedman presented a case study of three Knight Center training programs for professional journalists and students in Bolivia, Chile and Peru. The programs were designed to strengthen skills, expand networks and build knowledge of environmental science and policy, while adapting to each country’s social, political and environmental context.

Freedman also addressed the challenges of conducting training during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Peru program shifted to a virtual format. Despite those hurdles, Freedman stressed the benefits of these initiatives in improving accuracy, ethics and fairness in reporting – especially in contexts with limited funding for investigative work, restrictions on press freedom and physical or legal threats that undermine journalists’ ability to cover environmental degradation and related social conflicts. Continue reading →