The 2009 GLEJTI: Re-tooling for covering
the Great Lakes environment
The 10th Great Lakes Environmental Journalism Training Institute is adding yet more skills sessions to what is the longest running environmental journalism education effort in the region.
Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism is once again offering the popular institute, this time from June 9 to June 13 of 2009. U.S. and Canadian journalists who cover the environment in the Great Lakes region meet with top experts and veteran reporters as part of this popular program.
As always, they’ll learn about some of the most critical environmental issues confronting the region. But this year's institute will also emphasize new skills for tackling new and old environmental reporting challenges. Sessions will include video for the Web, computer-assisted data analysis, leveraging social media, the use of soundslides and other journalistic techniques.
The keynote speaker is one of the nation’s leading speakers in the journalism reform movement. Jan Schaffer, former business editor and a Pulitzer Prize winner for the Philadelphia Inquirer, is now executive director of J-Lab: Institute for Interactive Journalism.
Her organization helps newsrooms use innovative computer technologies to engage people in important public issues. The center spotlights new forms of digital storytelling on its Web site. It rewards innovative practices through the $16,000 Knight Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalismand funds cutting-edge citizen media start-ups through its New Voices project.
Institute applicants must be journalists who cover the environment at least part time, and come from any of the U.S. states or the Canadian provinces that border the Great Lakes. Roughly 20 print, broadcast, online and freelance journalists are selected.
The cost to participants is just $150. Fellows must also arrange their own travel to Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich., where the institute begins the evening of June 9.
Applications, resumes and an essay of less than 200 words explaining your interest in the program April 17, 2009. You may include samples of your work in the application. Fellowship winners will be notified by early May. There is no cost to apply.
Send applications to:
Knight Center for Environmental Journalism
382 Communication Arts & Sciences Building
East Lansing, MI 48824-1212
Speakers:
Since 1996, more than 200 U.S. and Canadian journalists have attended the institute. Many prominent journalists have spoken at them, including Andrew Revkin, national environmental reporter for the New York Times, Margaret Kriz, energy and environment reporter for the Washington D.C.-based National Journal, and Dennis Dimick, executive editor of National Geographic Magazine.
This year’s program is subsidized by MSU’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the MSU Department of Journalism.
Questions? Contact Knight Center Associate Director David Poulson, poulson@msu.edu, (517) 432 5417.
