Category Archives: Researcher stories

DEADLINE LOOMS! Join the MSU J-School’s Environmental Solutions SWAT team and save the world

DON’T MISS OUT! ONE MORE DAY TO APPLY1

Get paid to tell the world’s most important stories on creative news platforms.

MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism is hiring an MSU student team to report on climate change, food systems innovation, social injustice, alternative energy, endangered wildlife, toxic air and myriads of issues that transcend every beat.

You don’t even have to like the environment – just be passionate about reporting solutions and pioneering journalism. You’ll come to love the world’s most important beat.

We’re one of eight student newsrooms in the nation that the Solutions Journalism Network chose this year to fund and train in a new way of framing stories. We have additional support to turn research by the Cooperative Institute of Great Lakes Research into environmental news stories that demand to be read.

We’re hiring writers, podcasters, TikTok producers, solution seekers, videographers and others.

Your stories will appear on the award-winning Great Lakes Echo news service, The Food Fix podcast and on Knight Center affiliated social media – including our new TikTok channel.

Reporters work regularly scheduled six to 10 hours a week. You’ll build your resume, sharpen skills and help save the world. (And did we mention we’ll pay you?)

Want in? Email Echo Editor David Poulson, poulsondavid@gmail.com, a resume, about 100 words on why you’re right for this job, example(s) of or links to your work and at least one reference with contact information. Work examples can be published or coursework.

Helpful – so mention if you have it – but not required:
• Interest in the environment
• Experience in producing any form of journalism

Required:
• Willingness to work hard and learn
• Reliability

Application deadline is 11:59 p.m. Friday, Sept. 2, 2022.

The climigrants are coming, the climigrants are coming – maybe. Is the Great Lakes region ready?

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Eric Freedman

Knight Center director Eric Freedman is the lead author of a package of stories on the possibility of climate migrants moving to the Great Lakes region to escape forest fires of Western states, flooding along the saltwater coasts and ever-rising temperatures causing drought in different corners of the continent.

His main story for Crain’s Detroit Business, Crain’s Chicago Business and Crain’s Cleveland Business tackles the question of who may make the move and how well-prepared – or ill-prepared – Great Lakes communities are to accommodate them.

His sidebar looks at how changing environmental, social and economic climates have long fueled other migrations to the region, including settlement by European immigrants and their descendants in the 1800s and the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the factories of Detroit, Youngstown, Akron, Chicago, Gary and Cleveland in the first half of the 20^th century.

Knight Center director in podcast on climate change in Central Asia

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A fishing ship abandoned as the Aral Sea shrank near Nukus, Uzbekistan. It’s part of what has been nicknamed a “ghost fleet.” Credit: Eric Freedman

Knight Chair Eric Freedman was a panelist on a podcast about climate change and environmental challenges in the former Soviet republics on Central Asia.

The Majlis podcast from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty examined the signs of climate change in the region and how the governments there are responding. Those signs include melting glaciers, extreme weather and habitat destruction.

The other panelists were Bakytgul Chynybaeva of RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz bureau, who was reporting on the COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference from Glasgow; independent journalist and environmental researcher Ryskeldi Satke; and Bruce Pannier, the author of the Qishloq Ovozi blog. RFE/RL media-relations manager Muhammad Tahir moderated the discussion.

Vivid evidence of desertification of most of the Aral Sea that spans the Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan border. Once a vital fishing resource, the Aral largely disappeared when the rivers that fed it were diverted for irrigation to grow cotton and other crops. Credit: Eric Freedman

Freedman is a former Fulbright Scholar in Uzbekistan who has been a guest speaker and researcher in three other Central Asian countries: Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. His books include Environmental Crises in Central Asia: From Steppes To Seas, From Deserts To Glaciers (Routledge).

The MSU School of Journalism is now collaborating on a capacity-building project with the Journalism & Mass Communication University in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. The project includes assistance in developing curricula on environmental, health and risk reporting and training for Uzbek faculty members and professional journalists.

A Kazakh villager carries a bucket of water from a well in a desert that once formed the bed of the Aral Sea. Credit: RFE/RL

My environmental journalism internship experience has been nothing but eye-opening for me. I can’t say enough good things about it.

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Prior to my internship, I wasn’t too interested in the environment and wasn’t sure what stories needed to be told. It only took a little under a week for me to understand the severity of how many stories were craving to be published. I was never extensively searching for a story pitch because there was always something happening.

But then I began to understand that most of the general public was, like myself prior to my internship; uninterested in the environment. Which broke my heart because without a healthy environment, we would cease to exist. While also considering the amount of environmental journalists compared to regular journalists, my mind was blown. I knew I was playing a very important role in society by sharing stories that weren’t being told.

My biggest skill that I’ve learned is that there’s always more than what meets the eye. This can be interpreted a lot of ways, including types of stories being shared, what’s happening in the world or even what someone is saying. It’s our job to dive deeper and provide context to any situation. This is true for all types of journalism.

I’ve had my fair share of stories, but there’s a few favorites that definitely stick out to me. These include

MSU researchers enlisting the help of volunteers to help document coastal erosion. https://www.wkar.org/environment/2021-06-10/msu-researchers-enlisting-volunteers-to-document-coastal-erosion-in-mi
MSU dedicating a new space on campus for research and protection of pollinators. Where I got to suit up and observe beehives that were being taken care of by the proposed new facility.
McCoy Scribner

https://www.wkar.org/environment/2021-06-22/msu-dedicates-new-space-on-campus-to-the-research-and-protection-of-pollinators

And my personal favorite, the Emterra Material Recovery Facility opening in the mid-Michigan region. In this feature, I was able to provide in-depth coverage of a new recycling sorting facility that opened in Lansing for the Lansing and East Lansing communities. https://www.wkar.org/wkar-news/2021-08-20/emterra-material-recovery-facility-opens-in-the-mid-michigan-region

If there’s ever an opportunity to become an environmental journalist, I highly recommend taking the opportunity and running with it. My experience has been absolutely incredible.