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 students snowshoe to journalism workshop

Knight Center students and faculty snowshoe to the University of Notre Dame’s Linked Experimental Ecosystem Facility. Attending the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources are from right students Jenna Chapman, Kevin Duffy and Amanda Proscia and Knight Center Senior Associate Director David Poulson. Image: Jim Bloch

By Amanda Proscia
With noses running, bodies shivering and faces smiling, three Knight Center student journalists recently snowshoed to a session of an environmental journalism workshop.
The Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources (IJNR) hosted the two-day “Talking Science, Telling Stories” workshop in South Bend, Indiana, for reporters mostly from the Midwest.
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Associate director discusses eagles, beer and covering the environment at San Diego State University

Eagles and beer were among the diverse elements of a presentation given by Knight Center Associate Director David Poulson at San Diego State University’s Center for Science and Media.

Knight Center Associate Director David Poulson explains Great Lakes Echo to students in a media entrepreneurship class at San Diego State University. Poulson was invited to speak at the university’s Center for Science and Media colloquium.

Poulson spoke April 17 and 18 as part of the California center’s 2014 Colloquium Speaker Series.
He examined the opportunities and challenges of reporting on the environment with emerging new media tools and discussed how these tools are redefining news communities, news stories and who gets to be a journalist.
That included using drones for an eagle-eye view of the environment and reaching readers by examining the environmental consequences of brewing beer and using the beverage to help define a news community.
He explained how such tools are used in the Knight Center’s environmental reporting efforts at Great Lakes Echo. He also met with students and faculty studying media entrepreneurship.

Workshop helps scientists and journalists improve climate change communication

Journalists and scientists learn about climate change research on a trout stream near MSU’s Kellogg Biological Station.

Susan White peered through her Skype hookup in Brooklyn at the journalists and scientists gathered on the other end of the connection in West Michigan.
“Can I first say hello to Steve?” the executive editor of InsideClimate News asked. “Steve, we’ve never met, but I feel like I know you.”
Stephen Hamilton, a scientist at Michigan State University’s Kellogg Biological Station in Hickory Corners, Mich., had just finished explaining the environmental fallout from a pipeline that had ruptured in 2010, polluting the nearby Kalamazoo River and its wetlands with Canadian tar sands oil.
His acknowledgement of the greeting was brief. But the exchange spoke volumes. Hamilton, an ecosystems ecologist and biogeochemist, had the expertise, local knowledge and independence to be a valuable source on the story that InsideClimate News had dubbed “the biggest oil spill you’ve never heard of.”
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Chicago youth tackle Asian carp science

Notre Dame scientist Chris Jerde explains how to sample water for eDNA to a group of Chicago youth journalists. Photo: Kari Lydersen

A group of Chicago youth journalism students recently traveled to the University of Notre Dame to learn how to find Asian carp without actually catching them.
The workshop was a collaboration of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and We the People Media’s Eco Youth Reporters program. The students met with David Poulson, the center’s associate director, and traveled to Notre Dame with their instructor, award-winning journalist Kari Lydersen.
The effort is funded by the McCormick Foundation.
The students learned about checking the water for the DNA of the invasive fish whose huge appetite can change entire ecosystems. At Notre Dame’s Linked Experimental Environmental Facility the youth met with scientist Chris Jerde. He explained the difference between DNA taken from fish and eDNA taken from the environment.
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