The Great Lakes region was nicely bookended recently with recognition by the Society of Environmental Journalists of some of North America’s finest environmental reporting
The organization recognized Michael Hawthorne of the Chicago Tribune and Michelle Lalonde of the Montreal Gazette as outstanding environmental reporters. Both won second place for beat reporting in their publications’ circulation size.
Beat reporting is one tough category. You have to be a committed, aggressive reporter and a skillful writer. Perhaps the hardest part is that you need to be consistently good at covering diverse environmental issues. Here’s some of what the judges had to say about Lalonde:
“ We chose Michelle Lalonde as a winner because of her clear gift as an engaging storyteller and her skill as a thorough reporter as she walked readers through the impacts of new mining proposals on a small provincial town and its inhabitants. Her writing engages the reader at a personal level without trivializing important issues, while she explains the regional, national and even international implications of an environmental story without losing touch with the issue itself.”
And here’s some of what they said of Hawthorne:
“Tenacious coverage of local environmental impacts. His stories were surprising in their originality, relevant to his readers, aggressive in rooting out the truth in the face of denials and roadblocks from those on whom he reported. Hawthorne’s reporting was clear, concise, alarming in a helpful way, not at all alarmist. This is exactly how a tough beat reporter should work.”
You can read more and find links to their stories from the Society of Environmental Journalists’ announcement of the winners.
There is a nice symmetry here: Two reporters from two nations on opposite ends of the same region who share a desire to explain its environmental challenges – and who do it well.