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.

Environmental journalism goes hi-tech

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This is the 2nd in a series of articles about reporting skills by Knight Center students who attended the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists conference.

By Julia Belden

Julia Benden

Global trade databases. Air quality sensors. Artificial intelligence.

Harnessing new technologies is easier than ever, and some can help environmental journalists hold power to account, according to a panel of experts at the 2025 Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) Conference in Tempe, Arizona.

Many of the resources shared by the experts are free or low-cost, making them ideal for freelancers or under resourced newsrooms.

“Follow the money”

Jelter Meers, the research editor at the Pulitzer Center, presented a roadmap for investigating institutions and their environmental impacts. First, he said, “follow the money.”

Journalists can find information on company ownership, financiers and funders through company registries, stock markets, international databases and more.

Often, this information can be found on free-to-access online databases, Meers said. SEC.gov, OCCRP Aleph and OpenCorporates are good places to start.

Journalists affiliated with well-resourced newsrooms and universities can take advantage of paid databases like LexisNexis and Sayari.

The flow of money isn’t the only thing worth tracking, Meers said. Following a company’s supply chains might also yield critical information for investigations.

In addition to these websites, Meers recommended additional free databases such as the United Nations’s COMTRADE for tracking down supply chain data.

Finally, journalists can get creative with satellite and geospatial data, layering datasets on top of one another to “create a dialogue between them,” Meers said.

By combining satellite imagery from sources like NASA Worldview with geospatial data from websites like Protected Planet, journalists can get a dynamic bird’s-eye view of environmental impacts and create compelling visuals for their audience. Continue reading →

SCIENCE CONTROVERSIES

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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 →

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

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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 →

Counter-Hegemonic Environmental Discourses in Latin American Contexts Symposium and Workshop

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From Monday, March 31, to Wednesday, April 2, Michigan State University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism will host the Counter-Hegemonic Environmental Discourses in Latin American Contexts Symposium and Workshop. The event invites researchers, staff and students to join as 14 scholars representing eight Latin American countries discuss their research in environmental communication.

The symposium and workshop will allow scholars to share their perspectives from a critical and decolonial perspective, one rarely highlighted in western publications. The symposium aims to explore the obstacles researchers face in their fields, such as language barriers, hegemonic perspectives and paywalls.

Faculty, staff and students are invited to attend the full-day symposium where they will gain valuable insights from diverse, multicultural perspectives and have the opportunity to engage with international scholars. By fostering these connections, the MSU community can broaden its academic sourcing and open students to new, underrepresented ideas.

Among the featured presenters is Ana Claudia Nepote, a researcher and full-time professor based out of the city of Morelia in México. Nepote focuses on issues related to science-society interactions, environmental communication and communication for environmental sustainability. Her panel will be discussing cultural diversity in sustainability communication . Continue reading →