Category Archives: Uncategorized

Knight Center senior associate director named to advisory board of national climate reporting effort

Dave Poulson, Senior Associate Director Knight Center

Knight Center Senior Associate Director David Poulson was recently named to the advisory board of a new climate reporting initiative of the National Catholic Reporter.

The independent religious news service describes EarthBeat as a place to tell stories at the intersection of “where ecological concern and moral conviction meet.”

The initiative, which just launched, features a column by Poulson that weighs the relevance of personal decisions to limit individual contributions to climate change: On the train to Omaha: Why individual action on climate change matters.

Knight Center director speaks on corruption

Eric Freedman interview on student TV station at East Kazakhstan State University

Knight Center director Eric Freedman spoke recently at an anti-corruption forum held at East Kazakhstan State University. The forum coincided with his two-week stint as a guest lecturer to journalism and language students at the university in Oskemen, Kazakhstan. 

 

Freedman and MSU Journalism School alum Jim Mitzelfeld won a 1994 Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of a corruption scandal in the Michigan Legislature as reporters in the Detroit News Lansing Bureau.

Here are Freedman’s remarks at the forum:

 

No society is free of corruption, and that is unfortunately true of the United States as well. Speaking as a journalist, a professor and a citizen, I worry about 3 major types of corruption in our society.

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Effort, obsession pay off for student journalism award winner

Chris McCrory won the Ray Reece “Excellence in Environmental Journalism” Student Award at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Fort Collins, Colorado, for reporting on abandoned mines in Arizona. Photo Credit: Andrew Blok

By Andrew Blok

Sometimes the path to award-winning journalism strays near abandoned mine shafts and expulsion from school.

That’s the route Chris McCrory took. McCrory won this year’s Ray Reece “Excellence in Environmental Journalism” student award at the recent Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Fort Collins, Colorado. His reporting took him too close to unstable, abandoned mines for his school’s comfort.

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Knight Center director speaks in Germany

Environmental journalists around the world face physical, legal, emotional and economic perils for doing their work. Meanwhile, more than 25 years after the USSR collapsed, the Soviet legacy of environmental degradation still plagues the 15 countries that emerged from its dismantled empire.

Eric Freedman with agroforestry workshop team members at the “me Convention” in Frankfurt

Those were the broad stories that Knight Center director Eric Freedman told during two presentations at the recent “me Convention” in Frankfurt, Germany. The convention featured a wide variety of international speakers on technology, education, futuristic visions, exploration, diversity, entrepreneurship, story-telling, science fiction and societal changes.

In “At Distant Ends of the Soviet Empire: Environmental Challenges Today,” Freedman focused on major ecological problems in three parts of the former Soviet Union – overfishing in the Baltic Sea, poaching and illegal logging in the Republic of Georgia and the near-death of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. The presentation drew on his teaching, professional trainings and research as a Fulbright Scholar in Uzbekistan, Lithuania and the Republic of Georgia. Continue reading