Category Archives: Students

 
Journalism and non-journalism students at Michigan State University explore how to better report environmental issues to the public at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.
 

Environmental journalism courses can help students meet the School of Journalism’s elective requirements. They can also be used as part of an environmental theme to complete the school’s concentration requirement by combining them with environment-related courses outside the journalism program. See your academic adviser or contact the Knight Center.
 
Non-journalism students interested in environmental issues are encouraged to contact instructors to discuss waiver of pre-requisites. Often a journalism environmental course may meet communication course requirements of other departments.
 

 
Undergraduates are also encouraged to join the student Environmental Journalism Association and write for Great Lakes Echo to gain resume-building experience and clips.
 
Undergraduate students are eligible for several awards and scholarships in environmental journalism.
 
They are encouraged to augment their study with environment classes and programs elsewhere at MSU such as the Residential Initiative on the Study of the Environment.
 
 

Knight Center awards fifth round of documentary grants

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

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

  • “The Ground Beneath our Feet” — The film will document how a community of ordinary people, acting extraordinarily, can show that others can take a stand for their communities against big industry polluters. Faculty: Geri Zeldes, School of Journalism and John Valadez, Department of Media & Information. Students: Evan Kutz and Taylor O’Neil, Journalism; and Jon Famurewa and Jason Howard, Media & Information.
  • “We Are Flint” — The film will look at the narratives of Flint residents/families talking about the city, the environment they live in and their lives there. Faculty: Judy Walgren, School of Journalism. Students: Courtney Pasek, Sylvia Jarrus and Nic Antaya, Journalism.

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.

Canada is on-the-road classroom for MSU environmental journalism students

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Knight Center for Environmental Journalism students interview Eugene Bourgeois and Marti McFadzean, leaders of two Kincardine, Ontario, organizations opposing the Deep Geological Repository, a nuclear waste storage facility proposed at the site of Bruce Power. They met in the cabin Bourgeois built from reclaimed timber. Image: David Poulson

By David Poulson

I had tried for weeks to arrange a meeting of my environmental journalism students and First Nations officials during a field reporting trip to Kincardine, Ontario.

I came close. But now things were falling apart. Just before we hit the road last semester, tribal officials phoned to say they decided not to meet with us to talk about a controversial radioactive waste disposal plan on Lake Huron’s Bruce Peninsula. They wanted to assess their community’s reaction to the plan before speaking about it with outsiders.

Our three-day Canadian roadtrip was part of a Knight Center environmental journalism class on transboundary issues. The plan was to directly learn of some of the environmental challenges that the U.S. shares with Canada.  At the same time, the half-dozen students would gather ideas and sources for classroom assignments and for our center’s news service which carries stories relevant to the eight states and two provinces bordering the Great Lakes.

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Contaminated fish threaten human health in U.S., Chile

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An angler at the Flint River. Image: Rocío Cano Muñoz

By Rocío Cano Muñoz

Next to the Flint River in Flint, Michigan, is a park full of trees with a plaque that commemorates the 25th anniversary of Earth Day.

The sound of the water flowing through that river and the nature around it, helps explain why that plaque is there. Near a red bridge, people photograph the landscape.  Nearby, men fish while, standing and looking at the water cascade or they sit and wait for a bite.

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Knight Center faculty teach environmental journalism in Chile

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Students at the Universidad del Desarrollo in Concepcion, Chile, participate in an exercise led by Knight Center faculty. Image: David Poulson

Students at the Universidad del Desarrollo in Concepcion, Chile, participate in an exercise led by Knight Center faculty. Image: David Poulson

By David Poulson

Chile’s Chiflon del Diablo coal mine descends more than 3,000 feet below sea level before extending some five miles under the Pacific Ocean.

Miners no longer undertake the back-breaking, thigh-burning trek through low tunnels to extract coal – the mine closed in 1990. It’s now a tourist attraction operated by former miners and one that I visited as part of a 10-day swing through Chile while teaching environmental journalism with Knight Center Director Eric Freedman and Research Director Bruno Takahashi.

The three of us recently lectured at four universities in three Chilean cities as part of a $40,000 project funded by the U.S. State Department to further investigative reporting in that country. Continue reading →