A student op-ed zeroing in on Rome’s trash problem, the role of organized crime and the silencing of Italy’s journalists has won the Society of Environmental Journalists’ first-ever Student Press Freedom Day contest. Our EJ Academy column shares Macy Berendsen’s opinion piece, which asks what the news media there can do to help clean up the Eternal City.
An intriguing portal to the vast data resources of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — the Environmental Dataset Gateway — could lead to many hidden story ideas, suggests the latest Reporter’s Toolbox. Find out more about the EDG and consider a handful of possible angles, including PCB transformer registrations, precipitation, heat-related hospitalizations and chemicals in consumer products.
Meet SEJ member Youmna Abdallah! Youmna is a Lebanese environmental journalist and researcher based in Beirut, Lebanon. Fluent in English, Arabic and French, she specializes in environmental sustainability and climate change, with a focus on Lebanon and the Middle East.
Are you an SEJ member who's authored, co-authored or edited a non-fiction or fiction environmental book (published in 2020) you'd like included on this page? Documentaries are also welcome. Please send the following to web content manager Cindy MacDonald:
A casual query from an editor prompted an investigative reporter to pair up with a data journalism reporter at a partner news organization to dig into the risks that thousands of dry oil wells across California posed to surrounding communities, including many low-income Latino neighborhoods. How the resulting award-winning series came together, in an Inside Story Q&A with reporter Mark Olalde.
To better understand troubled bird populations and the many forces undermining them, grab some binoculars and a notebook, and catch up with your local birders, including the burgeoning number of minority birders. That’s the advice from the latest TipSheet, which offers reporting resources and numerous story ideas, including the impacts of climate change, habitat loss, water access and the “insect apocalypse.”
Meet SEJ member Justin Cook! Justin is based in Durham, North Carolina but works everywhere. His long-term photographic essays tell stories about resiliency in communities living along the edges in America, often by focusing on environmental issues and climate change. He believes storytelling that not only shines light on these issues, but also investigates solutions, is crucial to social change.
The public’s right to know about toxic and hazardous chemicals is currently limited by trade secret rules that no longer serve any true purpose, argues the new WatchDog Opinion column. And a pending federal rulemaking is an opportunity for journalists to make the case to draw back the curtain, for the sake of their reporting and so that they can better cover their communities’ risks.
A recent study of global cropland expansion highlights several trends that are ripe with environmental news stories. One finding: New farm fields have taken over an area the size of Texas and California combined since the start of the century, an expansion primarily affecting biodiversity-rich natural ecosystems, with Africa leading the cropland boom. Freelancer Gabriel Popkin explores the latest data and the reporting possibilities.
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