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Get off your butt and report

Members of the Society of Environmental Journalists, wearing floatation vests for safety, interview a Texas Brine representative at the site of the sinkhole. Image: Eric Freedman

By Eric Freedman
The easy thing for you as a journalist is to phone a few experts and bureaucrats, do some Internet research for background and write a news story or feature about the mega-sinkhole sinkhole near the tiny southern Louisiana community of Bayou Corne.
Or you as a journalist could get off your butt, step away from the computer screen, tuck your cellphone into your pocket and see it up close and personal.
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Knight Center alum wins national SEJ award, gives tips for success

Brian Bienkowski

By David Poulson
A graduate of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism has won national recognition for a series of environmental stories about the Great Lakes.
Brian Bienkowski, now a reporter and editor at Environmental Health News, received second place in a beat reporting category in the contest sponsored by the national Society of Environmental Journalists.
The series is called Stories of the Great Lakes’ People, Places and Creatures.
Bienkowski, a former reporter for the center’s Great Lakes Echo news service, also received the same award in the same contest last year. He received his masters in journalism degree with a concentration in environmental reporting in 2012 and is the recipient of the center’s Rachel Carson award for outstanding graduate student in environmental journalism.
Here’s a quick Q & A that probes his formula for success:
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Journalists, Great Lakes explorers at rest in Congressional Cemetery

Image: Eric Freedman

By Eric Freedman
The Congressional Cemetery sprawls across 32½ acres in the southeastern part of the nation’s capital. Despite its name, most of those buried there – like Mathew Brady and Anne Newport Royall – aren’t former members of the House or Senate.
For those of us who care about journalism, Brady was the groundbreaking Civil War photographer who is credited as the “father of photojournalism.”
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Knight Center faculty, students to present ethanol headline research

Research Director Bruno Takahashi and Knight Center graduate students, Carol Terracina-Hartman and Katie Amann, are presenting research at the upcoming AEJMC Conference in Montreal, August 6-9, 2014.

The poster presentation, “Headlining energy issues: A content analysis of ethanol headlines in the U.S. elite press,” examines issue attributes, themes, tone, and sources in headlines between 1987 and 2011.

This study is a collaboration with Mark Meisner, executive director of the International Environmental Communication Association.

Knight Center faculty affiliate, John Besley (ADV/PR) is also presenting research at AEJMC. His presentations are: “Predictors of Perceptions of Scientists: Comparing 2001 and 2012,” and “Scientists’ prioritization of goals for online public communication.” The second study is a collaboration with Anthony Dudo, University of Texas at Austin