Category Archives: Alumni

Knight Center grad gets promotion

Andy McGlashen

Knight Center graduate Andy McGlashen (MA ’09) in June became communications director for the Michigan Environmental Council, a nonprofit organization that represents 70 environmental, health and social justice groups at the state Capitol.
McGlashen joined MEC in 2010 and previously was development and communications associate. He replaces Hugh McDiarmid, Jr., who accepted a position with the International Joint Commission.
A former correspondent for MSU’s Capital News Service, McGlashen was the 2009 recipient of the Knight Center’s Rachel Carson Award for Outstanding Graduate Student. His reporting has appeared in newspapers around the state, along with Midwest Energy News, The Daily Climate, Environmental Health News, Great Lakes Echo and other outlets. He also has covered health and medicine for MSU’s media relations office.
McGlashen even has shown some Great Lakes love on national television.
He can occasionally be found playing guitar around Lansing with Uncle Alice and the Gals, a fledgling old-time and bluegrass band that includes Knight Center graduates Alice Rossignol (banjo) and Brian Bienkowski (mandolin), and featured fellow alumnus Jeff Brooks Gillies on dobro before he moved to Colorado.

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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Knight Center alum launches two major productions

Andrew, Angie and Townsend Norman.

Knight Center alum Andrew Norman went full-time today as the executive director of Hear Nebraska, a nonprofit online music news community that he planned as his masters project before graduating from MSU in 2010.
Andrew and his wife, Angie, launched Hear Nebraska that same year. It is a nonprofit organization that cultivates Nebraska’s vibrant, fertile music and arts community. It provides resources and a voice for musicians and members of Nebraska’s creative class and the people and businesses that support them.

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New Knight Center graduate lands editing job, replaces another award-winning alum

Becky McKendry

Outgoing Great Lakes Echo reporter and copy editor Becky McKendry has landed a job as the news editor for the City Pulse, Lansing’s alt-weekly newspaper.
McKendry graduates from the MSU J-School this spring with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a concentration in editorial reporting. She was the co-winner of the school’s outstanding senior award and recognized with the Knight Center Service Award.
She has been affiliated with the center through Echo since January of 2013. She was also the assistant bureau chief and a reporter for MSU’s Capital News Bureau for two semesters.
In addition to covering Lansing City Council for the Pulse and writing assorted print and online news stories, she will be assigning and pitching stories, editing freelance contributions, assisting in layout

Andy Balaskovitz

duties, assisting with the Pulse’s radio and TV shows and overseeing interns.
She takes over the Pulse’s news section from managing/news editor Andy Balaskovitz, a 2009 graduate of the MSU J-School who won the Knight Center’s outstanding undergraduate award in 2008 and 2009.
Balaskovitz has accepted a position as a Michigan fellow for Midwest Energy News.