Category Archives: Writing

Public radio environmental reporting intern reflects on the experience

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By Clara Lincolnhol

Clara Lincolnhol

My Knight Center summer internship with PBS/NPR-affiliate WKAR in East Lansing recently came to an end. It’s safe to say the expectations I had going into the job were exceeded. I walked away feeling like I had grown significantly, both as a person and a reporter.

Throughout this internship, I worked as an environmental news and radio reporting intern. I had the opportunity to localize my favorite beat to the community I live in. It was incredibly fulfilling covering my own and other nearby communities in Mid-Michigan and being a part of both local journalism and public media.

Having the opportunity to go on-site and interview people who were directly involved in or affected by issues was an immensely valuable experience.

A challenge I faced was adjusting to writing for radio and then voicing it. As someone used to print, it was difficult at times to effectively cut back what I was trying to say into verbiage better suited for a spoken, minute time slot. Thankfully my mentors at WKAR gave me great guidance. I felt that towards the end of my internship, I better understood how to write engaging copy + record a voiceover–and found it fun too! Continue reading →

Knight Center researchers present studies on environmental journalism in Latin America

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Knight Center director Eric Freedman and Knight Center doctoral student and research assistant Iasmim Amiden dos Santos presented two papers on environmental journalism in Latin America at the 2025 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference, held August 7-10 in San Francisco, California.

Eric Freedman presenting at AEJMC

Freedman presented a case study of three Knight Center training programs for professional journalists and students in Bolivia, Chile and Peru. The programs were designed to strengthen skills, expand networks and build knowledge of environmental science and policy, while adapting to each country’s social, political and environmental context.

Freedman also addressed the challenges of conducting training during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Peru program shifted to a virtual format. Despite those hurdles, Freedman stressed the benefits of these initiatives in improving accuracy, ethics and fairness in reporting – especially in contexts with limited funding for investigative work, restrictions on press freedom and physical or legal threats that undermine journalists’ ability to cover environmental degradation and related social conflicts. Continue reading →

Knight Center director explores the fiery passion of scientists searching for new species

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A new article by Knight Center director Eric Freedman profiles four scientists – Finders, he calls them – who have discovered or, in one case, rediscovered, plant and animal species.

Last year, Grant Fessler discovered a population of pink lady’s slippers in Illinois. The flower hadn’t been reported in the state since 1999. Photo by Grant Fessler.

His article in the summer issue of the environmental magazine Earth Island Journal explores the experiences of Lohit Garikipati of the American Museum of Natural History’s Richard Gilder Graduate School who discovered the Sonoran tiger mantis in Arizona, Natalia Garcia of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who identified two new bird species in Brazil, Rob Gandola of the Herpetological Society of Ireland who discovered the Mahamavo skink in Madagascar and Grant Fessler of the Chicago Botanic Garden who rediscovered the pink lady’s slipper in Illinois.

Rob Gandola (with a helmeted iguana) helped discover a new species of skink in Madagascar in 2011. Last year, he found a species of newt in Ireland that hadn’t yet been recorded there. Photo courtesy of Rob Gandola.

Freedman’s interest in Finders was spurred by his late great-uncle, Aaron Nadler, who was a citizen-scientist decades before that term was coined. He drew a comfortable income in the financial world but his true love was collecting insects, whether overseas or on his in Brooklyn, New York, where he lived most of his life.

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 →