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.

Environmental Journalism Association to meet Sept. 5

MSU's student Environmental Journalism Association goes on field trips, meets with newsmakers, produces journalism.

Members of MSU’s student Environmental Journalism Association go on field trips, meet with newsmakers, produce journalism.

Free pizza and pop?
Can’t beat that deal. It’s the one you get at the organizational meeting of the student Environmental Journalism Association at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 5.
The group meets at the Knight Center offices at 382 Communication Arts and Sciences. Just email Barb Miller, mille384@msu.edu, if you’re coming so that she can make sure to have enough food.
This group can plan field trips, meet with environmental newsmakers visiting campus, hold peer editing sessions and movie nights or learn how to report for Great Lakes Echo.
Membership is open to all MSU students – you do not need to be a journalism major.
Interested but can’t make it? Email Barb at mille384@msu.edu.

Knight Center alum boosts the Great Lakes on national television

http://www.hulu.com/watch/519902
Andy McGlashen, an alum of the graduate program at Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, showed his Great Lakes roots recently on the Jimmy Fallon Show.
McGlashen was called up from the audience to participate in the program’s Wheel of Game Shows segment. Fallon immediately asked, “What is your name and what is on your shirt.”
McGlashen said he was sporting the outlines of each of the Great Lakes of Michigan. Fallon’s response: “Hey, very cool. I love that.”
Then he compared the design to a Rorschach test
Andy makes his appearance at about 2:40 in the clip above.

Take this course and create your own dam cam

Here’s a screen grab from the “dam cam” on Ohio’s Cuyahoga River

A dam removal story now on the Knight Center’s Great Lakes Echo news site is a great example of the kind of remote sensing reporting MSU journalism students will do this fall in JRN 472, News eye in the blue sky.
The story is an audio report about the removal of two dams on Ohio’s Cuyahoga River. It’s accompanied by live video of the dam removal process.
It’s a creative report for a number of reasons.
Continue reading →

Knight Center class at MSU examines drone journalism and other high technology ways to extend your nose for news

Could a drone bring Bigfoot into focus?

By David Poulson
Could drones help break what could be the biggest environmental news story in memory?
An Idaho State University anthropology professor plans to use a drone-mounted video camera to hunt for evidence of Sasquatch.
Why should he have all the fun? Journalists, too, should be looking for ways to use unmanned aircraft as reporting tools as the rules of their peacetime use evolve. That’s the kind of thing we will be exploring this fall in Michigan State University’s JRN 472, Clear eye in the blue sky.
Continue reading →