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, 1st place for “New book explores a lifetime of Great Lakes resilience” and Clara Lincolnhol, 3rd place for “Photobook illuminates the beauty of Michigan lighthouses.”
Feature Story: Jack Armstrong, 3rd place for “Kids raise prehistoric fish as a science lesson”
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 35th – 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.
BY ANNA BARNES, SHEALYN PAULIS
Symposium participants
From Mon. March 31, to Wed. April 2, 2025, Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) hosted the Counter-Hegemonic Environmental Discourses in Latin American Contexts Symposium and Workshop. The event featured a full day of panels where visiting Latin American scholars representing eight countries presented their research on environmental communication.
Latin American perspectives are often marginalized from international academic spaces. Systematic barriers prevent researchers from being included in global conversations, such as language, translation difficulties and emphasis on work produced in the Global North. Additionally, the availability of funding is a stark contrast for academics in the Global South compared to their northern counterparts. These barriers have made scientific inclusion and cooperation between the Global North and South challenging.
The event highlighted research and scholarship from Latin America, with discussions centered on the communication of environmental health issues, sustainability, environmental journalism, and hegemonic perspectives. It also explored the audiences and sources of environmental communication, with particular attention to Indigenous and marginalized communities. Continue reading
Five Knight Center undergraduate assistants have presented their year-long research at MSU’s annual University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum at the Breslin Center.
Shealyn Paulis and Anna Barnes
Shealyn Paulis and Anna Barnes, who worked with Knight Center research director Bruno Takahashi, presented their project “Environmental Communication in Latin American Context.”
Patrick Ferrino and Katherine Dyal
Katherine Dyal and Patrick Ferrino, who worked with Knight Center director Eric Freedman, presented their project “The Lived Experience of Journalists in Exile.”
Clara Lincolnhol
Clara Lincolnhol, who worked with Great Lakes Echo editor Jeff Brooks-Gilles, presented her project “Experience as a Great Lakes Echo Environmental Reporter.”