Category Archives: Eric Freedman

Eric Freedman is the director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism

Knight Center researchers present studies on environmental journalism in Latin America

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Knight Center director Eric Freedman and Knight Center doctoral student and research assistant Iasmim Amiden dos Santos presented two papers on environmental journalism in Latin America at the 2025 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference, held August 7-10 in San Francisco, California.

Eric Freedman presenting at AEJMC

Freedman presented a case study of three Knight Center training programs for professional journalists and students in Bolivia, Chile and Peru. The programs were designed to strengthen skills, expand networks and build knowledge of environmental science and policy, while adapting to each country’s social, political and environmental context.

Freedman also addressed the challenges of conducting training during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Peru program shifted to a virtual format. Despite those hurdles, Freedman stressed the benefits of these initiatives in improving accuracy, ethics and fairness in reporting – especially in contexts with limited funding for investigative work, restrictions on press freedom and physical or legal threats that undermine journalists’ ability to cover environmental degradation and related social conflicts. Continue reading →

Knight Center director explores the fiery passion of scientists searching for new species

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A new article by Knight Center director Eric Freedman profiles four scientists – Finders, he calls them – who have discovered or, in one case, rediscovered, plant and animal species.

Last year, Grant Fessler discovered a population of pink lady’s slippers in Illinois. The flower hadn’t been reported in the state since 1999. Photo by Grant Fessler.

His article in the summer issue of the environmental magazine Earth Island Journal explores the experiences of Lohit Garikipati of the American Museum of Natural History’s Richard Gilder Graduate School who discovered the Sonoran tiger mantis in Arizona, Natalia Garcia of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who identified two new bird species in Brazil, Rob Gandola of the Herpetological Society of Ireland who discovered the Mahamavo skink in Madagascar and Grant Fessler of the Chicago Botanic Garden who rediscovered the pink lady’s slipper in Illinois.

Rob Gandola (with a helmeted iguana) helped discover a new species of skink in Madagascar in 2011. Last year, he found a species of newt in Ireland that hadn’t yet been recorded there. Photo courtesy of Rob Gandola.

Freedman’s interest in Finders was spurred by his late great-uncle, Aaron Nadler, who was a citizen-scientist decades before that term was coined. He drew a comfortable income in the financial world but his true love was collecting insects, whether overseas or on his in Brooklyn, New York, where he lived most of his life.

University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum Presentations

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Five Knight Center undergraduate assistants have presented their year-long research at MSU’s annual University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum at the Breslin Center.

 

Shealyn Paulis and Anna Barnes

Shealyn Paulis and Anna Barnes, who worked with Knight Center research director Bruno Takahashi, presented their project “Environmental Communication in Latin American Context.”

Patrick Ferrino and Katherine Dyal

 

Katherine Dyal and Patrick Ferrino, who worked with Knight Center director Eric Freedman, presented their project “The Lived Experience of Journalists in Exile.”

 

Clara Lincolnhol

Clara Lincolnhol, who worked with Great Lakes Echo editor Jeff Brooks-Gilles, presented her project “Experience as a Great Lakes Echo Environmental Reporter.”

 

Can college campuses be biodiversity arks?

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Knight Center director Eric Freedman’s new feature article examining how universities can protect biodiversity appears in the spring issue of the environmental magazine Earth Island Journal with photos by journalism master’s student Donté Smith.

In reporting the story, Freedman and Smith traveled to Albion College in southern Michigan for a campus bio-tour with prairie ecologist Sheila Lyons-Sobaski.

Freedman also interviewed Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, plant biologist William Sanders of Florida Gulf Coast University, environmental science doctoral student Mikaela Sako of Baylor University in Texas and Daniel Orenstein, an associate professor of urban and regional planning at the Israel Institute of Technology, or Technion.

The article also drew on research by scientists in Indonesia, Portugal and China.