Category Archives: Awards

Study on dangers facing environmental journalists wins award

Knight Center director Eric Freedman’s study of dangers facing environmental journalists was recognized as a Top Faculty Paper at the 2018 Association for Journalism & Mass Communications annual conference.

The award came from the organization’s Communicating Science, Health, Environment and Risk Division.

For the study, “In the Crosshairs: The Perils of Environmental Journalism ,” Freedman interviewed journalists from five continents who had been arrested, interrogated, sued, harassed, physically assaulted or threatened for their coverage. It explored the impact of such situations, including the psychological effects on these journalists’ sense of mission and professional practices.

Freedman said environmental journalists around the globe are at heightened risk because environmental controversies often involve influential business and economic interests, political power battles, criminal activities, and corruption, as well as politically, culturally, and economically sensitive issues concerning indigenous rights to land and natural resources.

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.

Knight Center awards new round of documentary grants

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The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism has awarded three $3,500 documentary grants to MSU faculty-student teams.

The winning projects were chosen from seven proposals submitted in a campus-wide competition:

“Teachers as Agents of Change.” The film will document future K-12 teachers’ progression to seeing themselves as change agents in regards to environmental decision-making. Faculty: Jane Rice, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Laura Markham, Center for Integrative Studies in General Science. Students: Abigail Barrett and Andrea Rickard, Special Education and Elementary Education

“Poop to Power.” The film will look at the environmental impacts of animal and human waste and feature an innovative facility in Washington, D.C., that converts human waste into energy. Faculty: Geri Alumit Zeldes, Troy Hale and Mike Castellucci, School of Journalism. Students: Zach Barnes, Ilene Gould, Evan Kutz, Lizzy LaFave and Audrey Matusz, Journalism.

“Forest of the Worms.” The documentary will highlight vermicomposting as a way to reduce the amount of food waste dumped in landfills each year. Faculty: Laurie Thorp, Residential Initiative on the Study of the Environment. Students: John Pynnonen, Civil Engineering; Alex Marx, Environment Studies and Sustainability; and Benjamin Hatley, Mechanical Engineering.

In addition to public dissemination of the projects, the Knight Center will use the documentaries on its website and for presentation in classes, workshops and other center activities.
This is the fourth year of the center’s grant competition.

Alums snare top prize for film on endangered sea turtles

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By Steven Maier
Michigan State alums and sibling filmmakers Laura and Rob Sams have won Best Engaging Youth Film at the Jackson Hole Film Festival for the second time in their careers
Their short children’s film, “My Haggan Dream,” follows a girl as she learns about the life cycle of the endangered sea turtles of Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands in the West Pacific.

My Hagan Dream

“I think we were a bit surprised we won this year because we were up against some really good films,” Laura said.
Laura was there at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming that night to receive the award. She announced the victory with a text to her brother, who had stayed at home in Portland, Oregon, to care for his wife, who would give birth to their second son the next day.
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