Echo readers may be interested in the just-launched Michigan River News.
We are.
Like Echo, Michigan River News defines its news community by natural features rather than political boundaries.
It’s a great experiment in environmental journalism.
The two founders are former Echo writers and graduates of the masters program here at Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.
Andrew McGlashen, who graduated in 2009, wrote an Echo column that remains one of our most commented stories. Jeff Brooks Gillies, who graduated this past spring, experimented with unusual reporting techniques like animating Lake Erie runoff and how deer mice spread.
Michigan River News includes original reporting like the story featured on Echo today, a blog nicely-named Upstream and links to river news reported elsewhere and gathered with the help of a software tool Jeff developed at MSU.
Why are they doing this?
Check out the explanation on their site. It notes that “news about rivers is important because a stream is only as healthy as the land it flows through. We may be limiting our reporting to rivers, but that coverage will inherently reflect the quality of the wider environment.”
And Jeff elaborates with a blog post that includes this point: “Rivers help us feed ourselves and perform essential ecosystem services. And they look nice and make us feel good. Simple.”
These guys are pioneers in a radically changing media landscape where revenue is uncertain at best. They aren’t quitting their day jobs, although they wouldn’t mind finding a way to support some fly-fishing on the streams they cover.
“Mostly we just like doing journalism and don’t have jobs in journalism,” Andy wrote in an email. “We have the training and needed a place to use it, and if we learned anything at the Knight Center, it’s that nowadays, journalists need to create their own opportunities.”
Echo hopes to feature Michigan River News content on occasion — after all, our news community includes theirs.
But bookmark this site and visit it often. These guys are on to something.
Echo Editor David Poulson is the associate director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.