Knight Center for Environmental Journalism
The School of Journalism's Knight Center offers classes and professional workshops for the study and practice of environmental journalism. Faculty conduct research and attract environmental experts and journalists from around the world as guest lecturers. Environmental journalism students can gain practical experience by writing for EJ Magazine, the center's award-winning student publication. The Center also publishes Great Lakes Echo, an online news service that provides original environmental news stories of the Great Lakes region, and maintains the Meeman Archives, a collection of more than 7,000 outstanding environmental journalism articles from the past 20 years. For more information see j-school.jrn.msu.edu/kc/.
Recent Knight Center Projects
- Detroit High School Workshop Since 2006 the center has organized an annual workshop on environmental, health, and science journalism for students from 14 Detroit high schools. Students learn about interviewing, reporting, and writing on vital scientific issues. Top journalists, scientists, and health experts participate in topical presentations; students then write articles for their high school newspapers and enter the articles in a journalism contest that is judged by MSU. In four years more than 850 students have participated in the day-long workshop.
- Alaska Climate Change Study In August 2008 the Knight Center took a dozen journalists to Alaska to study climate change. The goals were to educate them about how to report accurate, scientific information to the public and improve the science content of climate change news reports. Video of the Alaskan presentations is now being incorporated into MSU coursework.
