Jobs and Honors-Even For Wikis-Flow To SEJers

 

 

By JACKLEEN de LA HARPE

Jon Cooksey, writer/director, is working on a documentary entitled "How to Boil a Frog," a factual comedy about the bigger picture around global warming and what real people can do to make a difference. Cooksey uses humor, interviews with experts, and experiments from his own life to piece together the story of how we managed to get all the way off the cliff before seeing it coming, and what – short of a total catastrophe (or the threat of more movies about global warming) – can get us to take action. The online activism has already begun – check it out at www.howtoboilafrog.com.

Stephanie Hainsfurther is the new associate editor, special publications, of New Mexico Business Weekly, a publication of American City Business Journals. She also assigns and edits Focus features and Small Business Strategies profiles for the Weekly.

Greg Harman left the Houston Press last year (where he received a "Lone Star Award" from the Houston Press Club for political reporting) to dance with wolf hybrids at a wildlife rescue deep in the Texas Hill Country. The pleasure of those steps quickly led him back to his journalistic stride and a staff writing position at the San Antonio Current.

Tom Henry of The (Toledo) Blade was honored with a special award by the League of Women Voters of Toledo-Lucas County for his environmental coverage, in particular, Toledo-area refineries. He was nominated by Sue Nichols, his first journalism professor at his undergraduate alma mater, Central Michigan University. Nichols is a past president of the Toledo chapter and, in the 1970s, founded the League of Women Voters chapter in Republican stronghold Mount Pleasant, Mich., where CMU is based. Henry also recently began writing a weekly environmental column for The Blade's Sunday news analysis section, one of the few of its kind in the Midwest.

Peter B. Lord, environmental writer at the Providence Journal, received a masters degree in marine affairs this spring at the University of Rhode Island. Lord spent five years working on the program, taking one course a semester. He continues to serve as journalism director at the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting and to teach journalism at the University of Rhode Island.

In September, Jason Mark, editor of the environmental quarterly Earth Island Journal, will publish his second book, "Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots" (PoliPointPress). Co-authored with Kevin Danaher and Shannon Biggs, the book tells the stories of people who are working in their communities to create a more ecologically sustainable and socially just economy. The book includes Q&As with environmental leaders such as Van Jones, Lois Gibbs, Omar Freilla, and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson.

Diane Gow McDilda's book, "The Everything Green Living Book," will be on shelves September 2007. The book walks readers through different environmental aspects of their everyday lives from throwing away trash to pouring a glass of water, even clothing their family. Some background is given on current technologies and their impacts along with environmentally friendly solutions and improvements.

Mindy Pennybacker, former editor-in-chief of The Green Guide and www.thegreenguide.com, left on the eve of the nonprofit's acquisition by National Geographic's Digital Media and has soft-launched a new website and blog, www.greenerpenny.com.

Jim Motavalli, editor of E/The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com) and co-director of SEJ's Ride and Drive program, is now posting a weekly auto blog at the Hearst startup www.thedailygreen.com. His book "Naked in the Woods: Joseph Knowles and the Legacy of Frontier Fakery in America" will be published by DaCapo in January. Knowles went into the woods of Maine in 1913 to prove he could "live off the land." His story, serialized in the Boston Post newspaper, doubled circulation and led to crowds of 100,000 or more in the streets of Boston when he emerged after two months.

Dave Poulson, project director for the Great Lakes Wiki, reports that this Michigan State University student experiment in environmental reporting is among the projects recognized in a national competition of cutting-edge journalism. Of 133 entries, only 10 were honored. Judges of the Knight-Batten Awards recognized MSU's GreatLakesWiki.org "for collecting information as broad and deep as the Great Lakes it covers." The judges said the project "has the categories, content and organization that made this wiki the best of those entered." The rest: www.greatlakeswiki. org/index.php/Great_Lakes_Wiki_Award

John Ryan took first place in Public Radio News Directors Incorporated's 2007 contest for Best News Series with "As the Sound Churns," a five-part series on the currents of Puget Sound, produced for KUOW-FM in Seattle. John is now a reporter at KTOO-FM in Juneau, Alaska. The series won regional first-place awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Radio and Television News Directors Association.

Darren Samuelsohn, senior reporter at Greenwire, won an honorable mention this summer from the National Press Club for a series on climate change. Darren's award came for outstanding analysis in a newsletter.

Jim Schwab, who doubles as co-editor of the monthly Zoning Practice and as a senior research associate for the American Planning Association in Chicago, is now manager of the new APA Hazards Planning Research Center. The Center has attracted its first contract for APA, a 30-month contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to produce a Planning Advisory Service Report (an APA series of technical monographs) on "Integrating Hazard Mitigation into Local Planning." The study will examine the best practices on how communities can make mitigation of natural hazards a routine part of their planning activities. Jim previously has managed several research projects on disaster issues for APAprior to the creation of the new center, including the well-known "Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction," released in 1999.

Bud Ward is launching an online climate change journalism resource – the Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media (www.climatemediaforum.yale.edu ) – this fall in cooperation with the Yale University Project on Climate Change. The online magazine seeks to link journalists and climate scientists and provide both disciplines resources to better inform the public on climate change/global warming issues

Snagged a new job or won an award? Contact Jackleen de La Harpe at jackdelaha@yahoo.com,

**From SEJ's quarterly newsletter SEJournal, Fall 2007 issue.