It’s possible to integrate international content into a variety of journalism courses, including environmental journalism, Knight Center director Eric Freedman said on a panel at the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication annual conference in San Francisco.
Drawing from the experience of MSU’s JRN 472/JRN 872 Environmental Reporting course, he explained how Knight Center students report about issues and events that cross the U.S.-Canadian border in the Great Lakes region. To illustrate, he pointed to four student-produced stories that appeared on Great Lakes Echo.
Continue reading
Category Archives: Eric Freedman
Local stories produce the megapicture of environmental issues
Eric Freedman
This column originally ran on Domemagazine.com.
By Eric Freedman
Earlier this summer, one of our MSU environmental journalism students, Kevin Duffy, wrote a Great Lakes Echo article about a new book on the history of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge as an illustration of a successful effort to bring conservation to cities.
Also this year, Great Lakes Echo ran an article by student Qing Zhang about volunteer stream quality monitors in the Huron River watershed. Eamon Devlin wrote about a gravel pit dispute in Plainfield Township, while Logan Clark told about the Upper Peninsula’s suitability for cougar habitat and Colleen Otte reported about proposals for new passenger train routes in Michigan.
Continue reading
Russian students enthused about environment face reporting challenges
B Eric Freedman after an interview by the independent news website 74.RU in Chelyabinsk, Russia.
By Eric Freedman
I recently spent a week in Russia, lecturing at three universities about environmental journalism. The students in Saint Petersburg and Chelyabinsk sounded enthusiastic about journalism as a profession, and covering environmental issues.
The U.S. State Department sponsored my lectures and gave me a chance to speak with some of Russia’s brightest future journalists on these themes:
- Environmental Journalism: The Challenges Ahead
Вызовы экологи ческой журналистки - “Real People” Make Environmental Stories Real
«Реальные люди» – делаем «экологические» истории настоящими - Finding the Environmental Stories Nobody Else Covers
Поиск «экологичного» – эксклюзивные истории
However, it’s a tough time in both spheres in Russia: Environmentalism and journalism.
Continue reading
Knight Center director lectures on environmental journalism in Russia
Eric Freedman at St. Petersburg University.
Knight Center director Eric Freedman recently spent a week giving guest lectures in two Russian cities about environmental journalism.
He spoke at the University of Television and Cinema and at Saint Petersburg State University in Saint Petersburg, the former Russian capital under the czars, and at Chelyabinsk State University in Chelyabinsk in the South Urals.
Both host cities face severe environmental challenges. In Saint Petersburg, the Neva River running through the heart of the city has been heavily polluted, primarily by industrial wastes, and it’s ranked the country’s third-most polluted city. Chelyabinsk and its environs have been described as among the world’s most contaminated places, due in large part to radioactive contaminants from a now-closed nuclear material processing facility, but also due to discharges from industrial plants.
Continue reading