Category Archives: Workshops

The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism organizes workshops to help journalists better report on the environment in the U.S. and abroad. Information about recent and upcoming conferences is posted here.

Knight Center Researchers Share Work at International Conference

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Three Knight Center for Environmental Journalism researchers presented their work at the Conference on Communication and the Environment, held June 23–27, 2025, at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia.

Research Director Bruno Takahashi presented the ongoing project, “The Discursive (De)construction of Oil Spills: A Case Study of Mediaciones in the Peruvian Amazon.” The project, in collaboration with doctoral student Iasmim Amiden dos Santos, combines in-depth interviews with journalists, Indigenous communicators and community members, with participant observation and media content analysis, to unpack how oil spills are framed and contested.

Bruno Takahashi during the discussion of his study

Takahashi also joined the panel “Publishing Environmental Communication: From Aggravations to Aspirations,” sharing insights from his experience as an editor and highlighting ways to make academic publishing more accessible to researchers in the Global South.

Amiden dos Santos also showcased her study, “Ecofeminist and Ecocentric Discourses in Brazilian Independent Media Coverage of the Pantanal and Cerrado.” Her discourse analysis revealed how two independent news outlets in Brazil broke from conventional journalism norms to center marginalized voices, reflecting ecofeminist, anti-capitalist and decolonial perspectives.

Iasmim Amiden dos Santos presenting virtually her study

First-year MA student Julia Belden presented “A Killer Whale Tale: An Analysis of The Miami Herald’s Coverage of the Orca Tokitae from 1970 to 2023.” Her work traced how the newspaper’s coverage shifted over five decades—from entertainment and spectacle to animal welfare, business, and conflict—capturing evolving public attitudes toward a single, iconic animal.

Julia Belden presenting her study

Belden also participated in the conference’s pre- and post-events. The pre-conference brought together graduate students from around the world to share experiences and learn about academic scholarship from senior researchers. The post-conference was a Deep Ecology workshop that invited participants to deepen their connection with nature through guided reflection and immersive activities.

These presentations and activities highlight the Knight Center’s expanding role in global conversations on environmental journalism and its commitment to fostering research with international reach and impact.

Decreasing numbers of Gunnison’s prairie dogs in Arizona due to the plague

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This is the 6th in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

By Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

Emily Renn is showing her plush prairie dogs to journalists at the SEJ conference in Arizona. Credit: Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

Standing at around 16 inches tall, the native North American rodent has been subject to significant population declines since the early 1900s.

At the Society of Environmental Journalists recent annual conference in Arizona, journalists were taught about the fluctuating numbers of prairie dogs, especially Gunnison’s prairie dogs.

Emily Renn is showing her plush prairie dogs to journalists at the SEJ conference in Arizona. Credit: Isabella Figueroa Nogueira

There are many reasons for the decline in the number of prairie dogs, like hunting, but one factor stands out from the rest: the bubonic plague, said Emily Renn, a PhD student at Northern Arizona University’s School of Earth and Sustainability

“Throughout Arizona, Gunnison’s prairie dogs declined over 96% across their range,” Renn said.

However, even though they were petitioned for protection under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency determined that listing the prairie dog under the Endangered Species Act was not justified.

Historically, their range was much broader than today, but there still is hope, said Jim Devos, the Mexican wolf coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

“We believe that with some of the conservation measures others are implementing, we anticipate if we can get on top of the plague issue, which is the single greatest challenge today, that we can get back to more robust prairie dogs,” said Devos. Continue reading →

Wildfires are changing and the way we report on them should change too, says experts

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By Clara Lincolnhol

Clara Lincolnhol

This is the 5^h in a series of feature stories on environmental topics by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

Urban wildfires differ from those that burn through remote forests, and forest management won’t stop them from happening, fire ecologists at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference said.

Fire historian and author Stephen Pyne says we’re dealing with a fire crisis. There’s too much bad fire, too much combustion and not enough good fire, he says.

“We have broken the serial ice ages of the Pleistocene and transformed a minor interglacial into a fire epoch — what I call the Pyrocene,” Pyne said.

The major culprit for increased “bad fires” is human fossil fuel combustion which contributes to climate change and makes wildfires more intense, he said.

Thinning forests is a way to prevent out-of-control fires, but those treatments are rarely done near communities and structures, rendering them unhelpful to deal with the problem of urban wildfires, said Dominick DellaSala, the chief scientist at Wild Heritage, a forestry organization.

These methods are called “fuel treatments” because they attempt to eliminate natural overgrowth and an abundance of kindling materials that fires use to grow and spread.

Thinning and logging can also create problems and contribute to the problem of “bad fires” since deforestation releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

Brian Kittler, the chief program officer of American Forests, says building fire-resilient communities requires preparing the communities and not just the forests nearby.

Updating zoning laws, infrastructure, using ignition-resistant materials while building and having defensible space around one’s property are more effective than “fuel treatments,” he said. Continue reading →

New age of safety measures for environmental journalists reporting from the Amazon

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By Shealyn Paulis

Shealyn Paulis

This is the 4th in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

Reporters working in or focusing on the Amazon rainforest are forced to take extreme safety measures while doing so. That’s because their coverage threatens industries seeking to exploit the region’s resources and populations.

At the 2025 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Tempe, Arizona, this topic was presented by representatives from the nonprofit organization Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji); security manager Valeria Oliveira and project coordinator Reinaldo Chaves.

The panel was hosted in two languages, Portuguese and English, and was part of an effort to answer why journalists in certain regions, like the Amazon, are put into such dangerous positions and how those threats are combated in the field.

Attendees were guided through a presentation on how Abraji funds, trains and mentors reporters investigating environmental crimes in the Amazon, leading to eight successful investigations thus far. Their organization advocates transparency and prioritizes journalists’ ability to have creative freedom to deliver the stories they want, but reinforces that physical security is the most important aspect of their work.

Latin America is the most dangerous place in the world to be an environmental journalist, according to a 2022 study by the international organization Committee to Protect Journalists.. The Amazon region is under particular stress, according to Reuters. In the past decade, over 200 incidents against journalists, such as threats, kidnappings and murders, have been documented. Continue reading →