The application deadline for scholarships from the MSU School of Journalism is Jan. 30.
Many of the scholarships target students interested in environmental reporting. You can find a list of the scholarships and how to apply online here.
The scholarships are awarded spring semester for use the following summer or fall. Undergraduate and graduate students who will not graduate in the spring are eligible.
Author Archives: Dave Poulson
What's in a name?
Image: Eric Freedman
By Eric Freedman
It’s a long way from Paris to the western outskirts of the Adirondack Mountains, and thus a surprise to spot a New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) sign for Bonaparte’s Cave State Forest.
Bonaparte? As in Napoleon Bonaparte? If so, what was the former emperor of France doing in Northern New York, about an hour’s drive south of the St. Lawrence River?
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Can autocomplete be a tool for reporting?
By David Poulson
Important, great, cold, dangerous, low, polluted, big, clear, rough are reasonable adjectives for describing the Great Lakes.
But salty?
C’mon, they hold more than 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water. Their nickname is the Sweetwater Seas.
And yet “salty” is the ninth option autocomplete provides when you do a Google search on “Why are the Great Lakes so.”
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Painting extinction
Image: Laura Ball
By Eric Freedman
The Chelsea neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan has changed considerably since I lived in New York City. Well-maintained brownstones. Cafes and bistros. Lots of bikes. Bumper stickers opposed to fracking and climate change. Recycling bins. Even a sign by a corner park about an upcoming post-Halloween pumpkin composting site.
Chic has replaced cheesy. Upscale has supplanted rundown.
So Chelsea wasn’t an unlikely neighborhood for me to find extinction, or at least San Diego artist Laura Ball’s homage in watercolor to species in jeopardy of extinction.
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