Category Archives: Eric Freedman

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

Revisiting the Last Algonquin

Two Trees Island. Image: New York City Parks & Recreation Department

Two Trees Island. Image: New York City Parks & Recreation Department


By Eric Freedman
I rarely read a book more than once, unless it’s for a course I’m teaching. Even rarer is the book I’ll read three times — except, of course, those read aloud to my children and grandchildren. (I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve read the Little Engine that Could or Green Eggs and Ham?)
The Last Algonquin (Bloomsbury, 1982) is an exception, and I hope to read it a fourth time and a fifth in the years to come.
It’s the story of a young white boy, an elderly Algonquin Indian, the intersection of cultures and friendships and sustainable living amid a changing environment. Continue reading →

Being there

Rocky Flats elk herd. Image: Michael Kodas

Rocky Flats elk herd. Image: Michael Kodas


By Eric Freedman
On arrival, Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is, frankly, uninviting. A bevy of heavy trucks heading to and from the adjacent aggregates mining site churn up clouds of dust as they pass the multi-padlocked refuge gate A faded sign with the US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) logo announces “AREA BEYOND THIS SIGN CLOSED. All public entry prohibited.” Just outside the refuge entrance, RVs are crowded into a storage area at the edge of an underground natural gas pipeline. Six white wind turbines tower incongruously nearby.
I couldn’t have written that vivid description of Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado– the place where all of the country’s plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons had been manufactured during the Cold War and later a heavily contaminated Superfund site — unless I’d been there. Continue reading →

Knight Center director, J-School alums mark Pulitzer Centennial

Jim Mitzelfeld, M.L. Elrick and Eric Freedman at Pulitzer Prize Centennial in Washington.

Jim Mitzelfeld, M.L. Elrick and Eric Freedman at Pulitzer Prize Centennial in Washington.


Knight Center Director Eric Freedman and two J-School alumni took part in recent events in Washington, D.C., commemorating the centennial of the prestigious awards in journalism, literature and music.
M.L. Elrick, ‘90, won a 2009 Pulitzer for Detroit Free Press coverage of then-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s corruption scandal.
The Pulitzer judges cited Elrick and Free Press colleague James Schaefer for “their uncovering of a pattern of lies by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick that included denial of a sexual relationship with his female chief of staff, prompting an investigation of perjury that eventually led to jail terms for the two officials.”
Elrick is now a reporter at Fox 2 News (WJBK TV) in Detroit and a member of the of the MSU College of Communication Arts & Sciences alumni board.
As reporters in the Detroit News Lansing Bureau, Freedman and James Mitzelfeld, ‘84, won their 1994 Pulitzer for coverage of a corruption scandal in the Michigan legislature.
Continue reading →