Category Archives: Alumni

       
 

Knight Center goes to the Society of Environmental Journalists conference

Andrew Blok, Dave Poulson, Brian Bienkowski and Andy McGlashen

Knight Center director Eric Freedman and senior associate director Dave Poulson represented MSU at the recent annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Fort Collins, Colorado. At the conference Poulson finished his second three-year term as the academic representative on the SEJ’s board of directors.

 

The MSU team included, in alphabetical order:

  • Alaska fisheries and environmental reporter Margie Bauman, a Journalism School alum who visits the Knight Center each fall to speak to our classes and network with our EJ students.
  • Environmental Health News senior editor Brian Bienkowski, a Knight Center master’s alum.
  • Detroit Public TV news director Natasha Blakely, a former Great Lakes Echo staff writer,
  • EJ master’s student Andrew Blok, a staff writer for Great Lakes Echo.
  • Audubon magazine associate editor Andy McGlashen, a Knight Center master’s alum.

Margie Bauman and Natasha Blakely

The SEJ conference, “Headwaters to the Plains: Where Rivers, and Politics, Change Directions,” took place October 9-13 at Colorado State University.

Knight Center students provide real news now

Members of Capital News Service picked up this story through a network of relationships established by the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism. Image: Barbara Miller

By David Poulson

The journey of a recent story with roots in Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism shows how journalism schools play important news roles.

Nowadays. students, alumni and university-based news networks aren’t only about education. They play a direct role in the rise of public service, nonprofit news reporting.  There are stories — like the one I’m about to tell you — that wouldn’t be reported or have the same impact without these university connections. Continue reading

MSU J-School alum recognized for making global science accessible to the public

Sue Nichols reporting in Nepal.

By Kara Headley

While in Beijing working on a story about the new turfgrass for the 2008 Olympic soccer games, Sue Nichols needed a picture of the entire field. There was no easy way to get it.

“So I slung my camera over my shoulder and climbed up what must have been a four-story pole in 95 degree heat in Beijing,” Nichols said. “It was the only way I could get this picture that I really wanted of the whole field!”

Continue reading

Knight Center grad recognized as young environmental leader

Haley Walker

Haley Walker

Knight Center alum Haley Walker recently joined the  Oregon Environmental Council‘s Emerging Leaders Board.

The council’s advisory board of “entrepreneurs, strategist, community leaders and visionaries under the age of 40 have agreed to share their extraordinary skills to support the mission of Oregon Environmental Council.”

Walker, who graduated from the Knight Center in December of 2010, is the senior communications director with The Freshwater Trust, the oldest wild fish conservation group in the Pacific Northwest.

While at MSU she wrote for the Knight Center’s award-winning EJ Magazine and was an early reporter for the center’s Great Lakes Echo environmental news service. The stories she covered for those publications were as diverse as climate change in national parks and gardens maintained by prison inmates and confessing to spending half her income on organic food.

As a student she was part of an award-winning team recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists for a series of stories about water quality problems at public pools. The Knight Center awarded her the Edward J. Meeman Service Award in 2010.