Category Archives: Masters


 
Any MSU School of Journalism masters student can enroll in an environmental journalism class to fulfill graduate requirements or electives.
Students can also complete a specialized master’s degree environmental option that combines environmental journalism, science or policy courses. Students learn advanced reporting techniques for covering complicated environmental issues. The environmental option appears on a graduate’s transcript.
FAQ for masters program.
Students must be admitted into the M.A. Program in Journalism and have selected the Environmental Option. The MSU environmental journalism option requirements are here.

Knight Center and affiliated faculty teach a rotating schedule of graduate-level environmental journalism courses. Consult schedule of courses for the latest offerings.
Graduate students are encouraged to join the student Environmental Journalism Association and report for Great Lakes Echo, the Knight Center’s award-winning non-profit environmental news service.
They are encouraged to augment their study with environment classes and programs elsewhere at MSU such as through the Environmental Science and Policy Program.
    
 Apply
 
Applications to the School of Journalism’s masters program are accepted on a rolling basis. Students should submit an electronic application and send GRE scores and two copies of their official undergraduate transcript. International students should submit TOEFL scores. Send to:
 
MSU Admissions Office
250 Administration Building
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Mich. 48824
 
 
Applicants should also send the following:

three letters of recommendation
a 750-word autobiography
a 1,000-word statement of purpose
a resume
and an indication of interest in an assistantship or other financial aid
to the Journalism School:
 
MSU School of Journalism
c/o the Graduate Secretary
School of Journalism
305 Communication Arts Building
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1212
 
For questions, contact graduate student coordinator Nancy Ashley, ashleyn@msu.edu
  
Aid
 
Limited graduate assistantships are occasionally available, depending on faculty research grants. Students may also qualify for scholarships.
 

 
 

Wildfires are changing and the way we report on them should change too, says experts

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By Clara Lincolnhol

Clara Lincolnhol

This is the 5h in a series of feature stories on environmental topics by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

Urban wildfires differ from those that burn through remote forests, and forest management won’t stop them from happening, fire ecologists at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference said.

Fire historian and author Stephen Pyne says we’re dealing with a fire crisis. There’s too much bad fire, too much combustion and not enough good fire, he says.

“We have broken the serial ice ages of the Pleistocene and transformed a minor interglacial into a fire epoch — what I call the Pyrocene,” Pyne said.

The major culprit for increased “bad fires” is human fossil fuel combustion which contributes to climate change and makes wildfires more intense, he said.

Thinning forests is a way to prevent out-of-control fires, but those treatments are rarely done near communities and structures, rendering them unhelpful to deal with the problem of urban wildfires, said Dominick DellaSala, the chief scientist at Wild Heritage, a forestry organization.

These methods are called “fuel treatments” because they attempt to eliminate natural overgrowth and an abundance of kindling materials that fires use to grow and spread.

Thinning and logging can also create problems and contribute to the problem of “bad fires” since deforestation releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

Brian Kittler, the chief program officer of American Forests, says building fire-resilient communities requires preparing the communities and not just the forests nearby.

Updating zoning laws, infrastructure, using ignition-resistant materials while building and having defensible space around one’s property are more effective than “fuel treatments,” he said. Continue reading →

Knight Center alum investigates toxic plume in Ann Arbor

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Elinor Epperson

What began as a professional project at Michigan State has turned into a feature project at Michigan Public radio.

Elinor Epperson spent 18 months researching, writing, fact-checking and editing a series of threelongform articles about the Gelman plume, an area of groundwater contamination under Ann Arbor that is several decades old.

The contamination comes from the disposal of industrial wastewater disposal by Gelman Sciences, a one-time medical filter manufacturer.

She also wrote a reporter’s notebook and appeared on the Stateside podcast to provide a more condensed version of the project.

Epperson earned her master’s degree in journalism from the MSU School of Journalism in fall 2024 and still works at the station as an intern.

SCIENCE CONTROVERSIES

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How to report on science controversies

This is the 1st in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

By RUTH THORNTON

Ruth Thornton

How can science journalists cover scientific controversies and scientists’ misconduct without decreasing the public’s trust in science itself?

A panel at this year’s Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference at Arizona State University discussed this gnarly problem.

The panel was moderated by Jackie Mogensen, a reporter with Mother Jones, and included panel members Stepanie Lee, a senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, a staff writer with Science magazine and Amy Westervelt, an investigative climate journalist and executive editor of Drilled.

Science controversies panel

Lee described her reporting about Brian Wansink, the now-discredited professor and researcher at Cornell University’s food lab who studied eating behaviors and food marketing.

“This was a lab at an Ivy League university with a lot of media attention and a lot of eye-catching and influential findings published in a lot of different journals,” Lee said.

Then, in 2016 or 2017, non-Cornell data scientists took a closer look at the numbers the studies reported, she said.

They “found a lot of very concerning red flags that somehow had not been noticed before, including straight-out impossible numbers,” Lee said.

She uncovered that the lab had been exaggerating and manipulating their calculations for years, she said.

“They were maniacally focused on getting media attention and buzz for their findings,” she said.

Lee said the faulty results impressed funders and pleased Cornell University.

And they were not detected by the journals. Continue reading →

Knight Center student presents series on fire

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Marie Orttenburger

Knight Center student Marie Orttenburger recently completed her professional project, culminating her graduate studies at the Michigan State University School of Journalism.

Orttenburger successfully defended her project before her committee, composed of Knight Center faculty Eric Freedman, David Poulson and Bruno Takahashi, on Aug. 16.

Her project is a series of three articles on the importance of fire in Michigan ecosystems accompanied by illustrations by artist Spencer High of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The articles cover research about Michigan’s early fire history through its fire-scarred tree stumps, an assessment of the ecological need for fire in Michigan and the barriers to meeting it, and a look at how climate change is calling for a shift in how Michiganders think about wildfire.

Orttenburger said inspiration for the series came from her job as the Land Conservancy of West Michigan’s communications manager, as well as years of working as the assistant editor of Great Lakes Echo.

“I was fascinated by the conservancy’s use of prescribed fire and wanted to use this project as an opportunity to dive deep into the subject and how it is applied elsewhere in the state,” she said.

Orttenburger’s goal with the project was to explore long-form journalism and essayistic reporting. Her proposal was inspired in part by The Atlantic’s “Life Up Close” series.

With the successful completion of her project, Orttenburger graduates with a master of arts in journalism focused in environmental reporting. She began her studies in 2015 and gradually completed her degree over the course of six years while working full-time.

“I’m really grateful to have had the support of the Knight Center faculty as I took the long road to finish my degree,” Orttenburger said. “I wouldn’t be here without them.”

Orttenburger’s complete professional project can be read at https://sparksandflamesmi.com.