Category Archives: Alumni

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

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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!”

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Knight Center grad recognized as young environmental leader

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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.

Public radio summer internship opportunity

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Interlochen Public Radio is seeking an environmental news intern for the summer. This paid position is funded by the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and is open to students or recent graduates associated with Michigan State University. The internship will run at least three months, beginning in May and continuing into August, according to the intern’s availability. The deadline to apply is January 31, 2018

This is an extraordinary opportunity for any aspiring journalist interested in public media and the environment. The intern will learn to probe people for detailed information, connect ideas and facts into a larger context and tell stories that help people understand the natural world. In addition to working with the staff at IPR, you will participate in a weeklong workshop run by Transom.org, a national leader in radio storytelling.

Major responsibilities will include the following:

Research issues and story ideas, possibly for credit, during the spring semester.
Produce environmental news stories for public radio.
Produce related digital content.
Share stories with the Knight Center’s online environmental news service, Great Lakes Echo.
Help manage IPR News Radio’s daily broadcast.

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