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Deadline looms for documentary funding

Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism will award up to three grants of $3,500 each to support the making of environment-related documentaries (video, audio or other digital media) by MSU faculty-stu-dent teams.
The deadline for submission: Dec. 1, 2016, at 5 p.m. Decisions to be announced approximately Feb. 1, 2017. The competition is open to faculty and students from all departments at MSU.
The maximum award is $3,500 for one year.
These must be documentaries, not public service announcements or advocacy pieces.
The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism must be credited for underwriting the project and allowed to use your documentary, including linking on our website and presentation in classes, workshops and other activities.
Allowable expenses include travel, essential equipment, supplies, pay for students and festival & competition entry fees. All expenditures must comply with MSU procedures and rules. Any equipment purchased remains the property of MSU. Grant funds must be expended within one year from the date of approval by MSU Contracts and Grants.
Submit:

  • Working title
  • Medium: video, audio or other digital media
  •  Project summary (200 words maximum): What compelling story will you tell?
  • Estimated timeline (Be realistic)
  • Most likely audiences: Whom do you expect to watch or listen to it?
  • For video & audio documentaries, what length do you expect the nal version to be?
  • Distribution plans: How will you disseminate your product?
  • Budget plan: How do you plan to spend the money?
  • Team members
  • Faculty: name, rank and department or school and project role, with abbreviated CV
  • Students: name, year, major and project role, with resume
  • Potential problems and obstacles
  • Links to any relevant projects by team members or bring a digital recording to the Knight Center office at 382 Com Arts Building by the deadline

Email questions to Eric Freedman, director, freedma5@msu.edu.
Email submissions to Barbara Miller, mille384@msu.edu.

Marking a half-century of journalism history

Berl Schwartz, left, and Eric Freedman

Berl Schwartz, left, and Eric Freedman.


 
Knight Center director Eric Freedman moderated a public conversation with Lansing City Pulse founder and publisher Berl Schwartz about his 50-year-and-counting career in journalism.
That career brought him in contact with such figures as Sen. Teddy Kennedy, philosopher Noam Chomsky, anthropologist Margaret Mead, boxer Muhammad Ali, President Gerald Ford and musicians ranging from Alice Cooper, Janis Joplin and Billy Joel to John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Yoko Ono. Continue reading

What you see is only part of what you get

SEJ members kayaking in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers delta. Image: Eric Freedman

SEJ members kayaking in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers delta. Image: Eric Freedman


By Eric Freedman
One of the joys of journalism — environmental journalism in particular — is getting out of the office or other writing space and going somewhere, especially outdoors. Not only do we get to interview people face to face but we also become eyewitnesses to events.
And that provides an opportunity to bring audiences with us in words as well as visually and aurally.
Here’s an example from a recent article I wrote for the magazine Earth Island Journal:
Continue reading

Baba Brinkman brings beats to SEJ conference


By Marie Orttenburger
SACRAMENTO – Baba Brinkman uses rap to communicate about otherwise esoteric subjects.
The Canadian artist peformed recently at the 26th annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Sacramento and even wrote a rap about the meeting and about outgoing executive director Beth Parke while he was there.
His most recent album, The Rap Guide to Climate Chaos, will be released September 30.
It focuses on climate change and the science and politics behind it. Reporter Marie Orttenburger caught up with him at the conference to learn more about his craft. Listen to the interview and to his performance of IPCC – a reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.