Although I get to be the editor here at Great Lakes Echo, my day job is the associate director at Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.
Echo is among many of the duties I juggle. Another is figuring out ways to help professional journalists/reporters/writers/broadcasters/bloggers/freelancers/communicators better report on the environment. To that end, the Knight Center is involved in a National Science Foundation effort to improve literacy about climate change. We’re part of a regional effort to build and support a network of formal and informal climate change educators.
It’s a bit of a nifty shift to define journalists as informal educators of the public. But it’s by no means a stretch.
As part of our involvement, we’re asking journalists in the Great Lakes region to complete a brief survey that will help inform our outreach efforts. So if you’re a U.S. or Canadian journalist – a term we define broadly – who at least occasionally reports on environmental issues within the Great Lakes region, we are asking for your participation in this survey.
And just what is the Great Lakes region? We are interested in your response particularly if you’re reporting within a boundary of roughly 100 miles outside of the Great Lakes watershed – not the lakes, the watershed. But don’t sweat the distance, if you believe you’re within the region – especially if you write about the Great Lakes themselves – we want to hear from you.
The information we glean will help improve our programs and perhaps your reporting.
Great Lakes Echo Editor David Poulson is the associate director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.