Category Archives: Eric Freedman

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

Marking a half-century of journalism history

Berl Schwartz, left, and Eric Freedman.

Knight Center director Eric Freedman moderated a public conversation with Lansing City Pulse founder and publisher Berl Schwartz about his 50-year-and-counting career in journalism.
That career brought him in contact with such figures as Sen. Teddy Kennedy, philosopher Noam Chomsky, anthropologist Margaret Mead, boxer Muhammad Ali, President Gerald Ford and musicians ranging from Alice Cooper, Janis Joplin and Billy Joel to John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Yoko Ono. Continue reading →

EJ students visit Ontario environmental sites

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Environmental journalism students at the Canadian customs plaza construction site in Windsor for the Gordie Howe Memorial International Bridge. Image: John Parent, Windsor Detroit Bridge Authority

Knight Center director Eric Freedman’s environmental reporting class spent two days in Sarnia and Windsor to give students Canadian perspectives on major issues – perspectives that don’t always mirror U.S. concerns – and to generate ideas for stories they’re writing for Great Lakes Echo and in future courses and their careers.
In preparation for the trip, Andrew Hupfeau, the Consulate General’s environmental policy expert in Detroit, came to campus the previous week to background the students on the history of U.S.-Canadian environmental cooperation in the Great Lakes Basin and the Canadian government’s position on key environmental issues. Continue reading →

What you see is only part of what you get

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SEJ members kayaking in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers delta. Image: Eric Freedman

By Eric Freedman
One of the joys of journalism — environmental journalism in particular — is getting out of the office or other writing space and going somewhere, especially outdoors. Not only do we get to interview people face to face but we also become eyewitnesses to events.
And that provides an opportunity to bring audiences with us in words as well as visually and aurally.
Here’s an example from a recent article I wrote for the magazine Earth Island Journal:
Continue reading →

Urban farming in Detroit

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Afro Jam is a revenue-producer for Detroit’s Oakland Avenue Urban Farm. Image: Eric Freedman

By Eric Freedman
In recent years I’ve read a lot about — and written a little about — urban farming but hadn’t put my boots on the ground at one until recently when I joined MSU faculty members and grad students on a tour of the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm in Detroit’s North End.
It’s a place of contrasts, physical and otherwise. There’s the agricultural activity — raised vegetable and flower beds, pear trees, 120 blueberry bushes, rows of tomato plants, two hoop houses and large piles of compost and mulch. There are bee hives, beets, butterflies, empty small chicken coop and plans for an apple orchard Continue reading →