Category Archives: Uncategorized

LATINEX REPORTING 

How to report on an underserved community and their sensitive information

This is the 3rd in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

With the new Trump administration, reporting on Latinx communities has been more difficult than ever to keep undocumented people and their information safe.

SEnvironmental journalists discussed that situation at the 2025 Society of Environmental conference in Arizona.

The panel was called “When There Is No Data Available: How to Report Environmental Stories on Latinx Communities in a Hostile Administration?”

The panelists talked about the many ways reporters can collect the data needed to report while protecting marginalized communities.

Monica Samayoa, a climate reporter at Oregon Public Broadcasting, talked about walking in neighborhoods and knocking on doors with someone the community knows and trusts, like a lawmaker or a community leader. Talking to people face-to-face can make them feel comfortable sharing their sensitive information.

MSU SEJ LATINEX PANEL

Door-to-door knocking can be effective in some places, but not in Puerto Rico, according to Luis J. Méndez González, a climate change investigative reporter at Centro de Periodismo Investigativo.

People will kick you out of their homes if you knock on their door and try to get information out of them, he said.

“I call them. I’ll talk to them about the issue and, if they feel comfortable, then I will go to their homes or maybe I will meet them in a church or in a business,” said Méndez González. Continue reading

SCIENCE CONTROVERSIES

How to report on science controversies

This is the 1st in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

By RUTH THORNTON

Ruth Thornton

How can science journalists cover scientific controversies and scientists’ misconduct without decreasing the public’s trust in science itself?

A panel at this year’s Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual conference at Arizona State University discussed this gnarly problem.

The panel was moderated by Jackie Mogensen, a reporter with Mother Jones, and included panel members Stepanie Lee, a senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, a staff writer with Science magazine and Amy Westervelt, an investigative climate journalist and executive editor of Drilled.

Science controversies panel

Lee described her reporting about Brian Wansink, the now-discredited professor and researcher at Cornell University’s food lab who studied eating behaviors and food marketing.

“This was a lab at an Ivy League university with a lot of media attention and a lot of eye-catching and influential findings published in a lot of different journals,” Lee said.

Then, in 2016 or 2017, non-Cornell data scientists took a closer look at the numbers the studies reported, she said.

They “found a lot of very concerning red flags that somehow had not been noticed before, including straight-out impossible numbers,” Lee said.

She uncovered that the lab had been exaggerating and manipulating their calculations for years, she said.

“They were maniacally focused on getting media attention and buzz for their findings,” she said.

Lee said the faulty results impressed funders and pleased Cornell University.

And they were not detected by the journals. Continue reading

Knight Center crew, alumni attend Society of Environmental Journalists conference

MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism delegation

Michigan State’s delegation to the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Tempe, Arizona, consisted of undergraduate and grad students, faculty members and alumni, including Knight Center founder Jim Detjen and current director Eric Freedman.

The conference – SEJ’s 35th – was hosted by Arizona State University and focused on the theme “Heat, Water and Growth: Confronting the Past, Surviving the Future.” Despite the proliferation of cacti and daytime temperatures in the low 90s, the workshops, panels and presentations were highly relevant to issues in the Great Lakes, including mining, public lands, Indigenous lands, biodiversity, extreme weather, climate change and pollution.

Our student team members were Anna Barnes, Julia Belden, Isabella Figueroa, Clara Lincolnhol, Mia Litzenberg, Shea Paulis and Ruth Thornton.

Great Lakes Echo editor Jeff Brooks-Gillies and Knight Center master’s alumni Kelly House of Bridge Michigan and Kurt Williams of Oregon State University’s Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory rounded out the team.

Detjen was SEJ’s first president.

Environmental communication symposium and workshop hosting Latin American scholars ends in collaboration

BY ANNA BARNES, SHEALYN PAULIS

Symposium participants

From Mon. March 31, to Wed. April 2, 2025, Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) hosted the Counter-Hegemonic Environmental Discourses in Latin American Contexts Symposium and Workshop. The event featured a full day of panels where visiting Latin American scholars representing eight countries presented their research on environmental communication.

Latin American perspectives are often marginalized from international academic spaces. Systematic barriers prevent researchers from being included in global conversations, such as language, translation difficulties and emphasis on work produced in the Global North. Additionally, the availability of funding is a stark contrast for academics in the Global South compared to their northern counterparts. These barriers have made scientific inclusion and cooperation between the Global North and South challenging.

The event highlighted research and scholarship from Latin America, with discussions centered on the communication of environmental health issues, sustainability, environmental journalism, and hegemonic perspectives. It also explored the audiences and sources of environmental communication, with particular attention to Indigenous and marginalized communities. Continue reading