By Victoria Witke

Victoria Witke

Victoria Witke was an environmental reporting intern at Circle of Blue, a nonprofit independent news service that covers issues of global water, food and energy in a changing climate, in collaboration with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.

My summer internship with nonprofit newsroom Circle of Blue gave me the opportunity to conduct in-depth reporting on water issues in the Great Lakes region. Going into that role, I was excited to have the resources to do this type of investigative work. By the end, I felt like my writing skills had improved immensely.

In May, I began the remote gig. This was my first time working remotely for an outlet, focusing on a specialized topic and primarily covering stories in-depth. Going into the internship, I was excited about all of these firsts. Circle of Blue’s remote model is commonplace among a lot of environmental news outlets, such as Grist, Inside Climate News, Mongabay and High Country News.

I found the independence and flexibility of working remotely to be daunting. I worked the hours I chose, not ones I was assigned. I didn’t have an editor or coworker in an office to bounce ideas off of. Rallying the motivation to complete assignments when working mostly alone was, frankly, hard for me.

But I appreciated the trust my editors gave me. I was treated as a capable reporter, not just a student, and was able to pitch my own stories, conduct research, interview people and write drafts on my own. Circle of Blue is a small newsroom, and I was given the opportunity to learn from seasoned environmental journalists with varied interests and writing styles. In weekly meetings, I received support and ideas from coworkers. My supervisors were easy to reach by phone when I had questions.

Despite being a fully remote job, I had in-person opportunities. In June, I ventured to Houghton – a city in the northwestern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula – to make connections with local activists at a Sierra Club meeting and explore wild areas in the state’s national forests at risk of losing federal protections.

A few weeks later, I met with the outlet’s founder, who is a renowned photographer, to take pictures and videos at a transmission station under construction. I had never used most of the equipment before that day, from the drones he flew to take aerials to the miniscule magnetic camera we attached to the top of a pole being raised. I also heard a handful of his tales from reporting across the globe for outlets like Time Magazine and National Geographic.

I learned a lot during my internship, especially about story structure. My first story was a long 2,000-word article about how fires affect water quality in Minnesota’s remote lakes. The lead was a multi-paragraph anecdote about a researcher seeing what were once pristine lakes in the Northwoods ravaged by fire for the first time.

Reporting in the field

My editor decided that this story needed to be broken into two parts and, most importantly, the main point of my story couldn’t be buried underneath a long narrative. While I included that anecdote later in the article, my lead became stronger and more to the point. I learned that a lot of early career reporters make that same mistake. My editor also helped me add more transition phrases to make the article flow better.

More broadly, Circle of Blue taught me that environmental issues don’t exist in a vacuum. Everything is connected – a water issue isn’t just about water. It’s the nexus of food, energy, health, climate, infrastructure, environment and even economics. When covering environmental stories, I want to focus on these connections and emphasize why my topic is important to readers.

Overall, my internship at Circle of Blue improved my writing and how I approach reporting. It gave me a better understanding of how remote jobs in journalism operate and what working in a small newsroom is like. I am leaving the role with more confidence in my reporting, writing and editing skills and with a new perspective on covering environmental stories.