Category Archives: Research

Knight Center awards new round of documentary grants

The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism has awarded three $3,500 documentary grants to MSU faculty-student teams.

The winning projects were chosen from seven proposals submitted in a campus-wide competition:

“Teachers as Agents of Change.” The film will document future K-12 teachers’ progression to seeing themselves as change agents in regards to environmental decision-making. Faculty: Jane Rice, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Laura Markham, Center for Integrative Studies in General Science. Students: Abigail Barrett and Andrea Rickard, Special Education and Elementary Education

“Poop to Power.” The film will look at the environmental impacts of animal and human waste and feature an innovative facility in Washington, D.C., that converts human waste into energy. Faculty: Geri Alumit Zeldes, Troy Hale and Mike Castellucci, School of Journalism. Students: Zach Barnes, Ilene Gould, Evan Kutz, Lizzy LaFave and Audrey Matusz, Journalism.

“Forest of the Worms.” The documentary will highlight vermicomposting as a way to reduce the amount of food waste dumped in landfills each year. Faculty: Laurie Thorp, Residential Initiative on the Study of the Environment. Students: John Pynnonen, Civil Engineering; Alex Marx, Environment Studies and Sustainability; and Benjamin Hatley, Mechanical Engineering.

In addition to public dissemination of the projects, the Knight Center will use the documentaries on its website and for presentation in classes, workshops and other center activities.
This is the fourth year of the center’s grant competition.

Research director examines environmental journalism graduate education

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Bruno Takahashi and Perry Parks

Knight Center Research Director Bruno Takahashi and PhD student Perry Parks have published an article examining the experiences of environmental journalists and communicators during their Master’s program in journalism at Michigan State University. The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Science and Environmental Communication, reports that the graduates of the program reflected positively on the networking opportunities and hands-on experiences provided during their studies. On the other hand, respondents highlighted some challenges during their graduate studies, such as the perceived gap between communication theory, statistics and research methods, and the practice of journalism.

The results of the study suggest that graduate programs face an uphill battle in delivering competencies such as content knowledge and mass communication knowledge in ways that are effective or meaningful to students representing a broad range of backgrounds and professional aspirations. The study explains that graduate journalism programs face the challenge of building enough flexibility into curricula to respond to changing conditions in the media industry, considering the need for journalists to specialize and carve a niche in an a highly competitive media and information environment.

The manuscript is published as open-acess and can be read here.

Knight Center affiliate explores Rachel Carson’s impact on popular culture of environmentalism

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Perry Parks

During his studies in journalism and science communication, Perry Parks, a Knight Center affiliate and doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism, noticed recurring references to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in academic literature, environmental reporting texts and popular mass media. Parks was intrigued both that the 1962 book on pesticides was still so prominent in the culture and that nearly every reference credited Silent Spring in some way with launching the modern environmental movement.

Parks decided to investigate Silent Spring’s role in environmentalism and the causes of its staying power. So he read previous research on the book and conducted a historical and cultural analysis of every reference to the term “silent spring” in the New York Times and the Washington Post over 50 years. That turned out to be more than 1,000 news stories, editorials, letters to the editor, calendar listings and other items. Continue reading →

A lesson in style from Lady Bird

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By Eric Freedman
The cover is faded, and it’s certainly not the most dramatic or eye-catching item on display at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.
But it is important.

Lady Bird Johnson Style Guide

It’s Lady Bird Johnson’s newspaper stylebook — “Rules Governing Newspaper Style” — from her days as a journalism student at the University of Texas. She graduated with honors in 1934 and ventured into journalism — the media management side of things to be precise — in 1943 when she bought Austin radio station KTBC for $17,500. She later bought KTBC-TV, a CBS affiliate.
Those investments made millionaires of Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, the future president of the United States. When she died in 2012, her Dallas Morning News obituary noted that “she was the first wife of a president to become a millionaire in her own right. “
I’m not sure how much Lady Bird Johnson would have credited her use of the stylebook for her success as a media mogul — if she were alive, that is.
But truth be told, the Associated Press Stylebook is an important tool for learning to do journalism right and with precision. We use it in our School of Journalism classes and it’s the gold standard in newsrooms.
When Keith Shelton was a journalist-in-residence at the University of North Texas, he wrote a column called “Everything I ever needed to know I learned from my ‘Stylebook’” for Editor & Publisher magazine. I often hand out copies to my students and tell them the stylebook is their friend — with an admonition not to abandon their friend. Continue reading →