SEJ Members Relocate, Win Fellowships, Teach

Media on the Move

By JUDY FAHYS

Two prominent figures on the Salt Lake City environmental journalism scene are relocating in the West.

John Daley, an SEJ member and reporter at KSL News in Salt Lake City, is headed for Denver. Third-place winner of SEJ’s Outstanding In-Depth TV Reporting award in 2010, he also won the Ritzke Fellowship in 2001. And although Daley often rocked Utah’s political world with his incisive reports, he also focused on environmental stories — even during a Knight Fellowship at Stanford ('07- '08) with his "Leadership in the Age of Global Warming" project.

Brandon Loomis of The Salt Lake Tribune also picked up stakes. The 2012 Grantham Prize winner, a self-described AlaskanAmerican, migrated to Phoenix, where he will take on environmental enterprise stories in the Grand Canyon State for the Arizona Republic. Before his departure in November, Loomis followed up on his award-winning series about the bark-beetle invasion killing North America’s forests with a special section examining the devastation’s spread eastward.

Freelance journalist and independent radio producer Karen Schaefer won a fellowship with the Institutes of Journalism and Natural Resources in June, 2012, to attend the Maumee Valley Institute, where she and fellow journalists learned about the agricultural sources of and solutions to Lake Erie's new algae blooms, as well as efforts to combat invasive Asian carp. The Ohio-based journalist also attended the SEJ/NOAA one-day workshop on climate change in Cleveland and produced from it audio reports for NPR member stations in Ohio and Michigan. Also, In The Fray, an online magazine, published her first print story in more than 15 years — on an ex-offender viticulturist in Cleveland.

Brian Bienkowski has signed on with Environmental Health News and The Daily Climate as senior editor/staff reporter, joining Brett Israel in that role. Brian was a writer/editor for the Great Lakes Echo and a product of SEJ founding President Jim Detjen's environmental journalism program at Michigan State University. From his base in Lansing, Brian edits EHN's daily aggregation and files original stories for both EHN and TDC.

Wendee Nicole (formerly Holtcamp) participated in a three-day National Institutes of Health (NIH) Medicine in the Media program, where she dug into statistics and interpreting medical studies and heard renowned speakers like psychiatrist Allen Frances and health reporter T.R. Reid.

Gary Wilson served as on-air commentator providing analysis for Detroit Public Television's coverage of Great Lakes Week in Cleveland. Wilson had provided similar commentary for the station in Detroit in 2011. More here.

Since finishing her MFA in creative nonfiction at Goucher College this past summer, Cara Ellen Modisetthas been an adjunct instructor in English at Ferrum College in southwest Virginia. Essays from her MFA project, "Reliquary: Essays and Elegies," have appeared in Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel: The Mountains Have Come Closer and the upcoming issue of Flycatcher.

John Messeder writes a twice-weekly column (Tuesdays and Fridays) for Rock the Capital. Although other subjects occasionally creep in, the primary focus is on enviro-politics, Marcellus Shale gas and water issues.

Judy Fahys is environment reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune. Send an email about your latest accomplishment or career shift to fahys@sltrib.com

* From the quarterly newsletter SEJournal, Winter 2012-13. Each new issue of SEJournal is available to members and subscribers only; find subscription information here or learn how to join SEJ. Past issues are archived for the public here.