Echo

Echo coal pollution report receives national recognition

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When Echo launched a little more than a year ago, our intent was to upend the Great Lakes basin with a journalism that looked at the environment in an innovative manner. At the same time we vowed to remain faithful to fundamental values of fairness, accuracy, credibility. So we’re happy to report that the Society of Professional Journalists has named an Echo report on water pollution from coal plants as a national finalist for an online in-depth journalism award. The four-day Cleaning Coal series by Sarah Coefield, Elisabeth Pernicone, Yang Zhang and Rachael Gleason examined how clean air has come at the cost of dirty water and why coal-fired power plant waste water is poorly regulated. It previously won an SPJ regional award.

Echo

Professional group recognizes reporters at Knight Center for Environmental Journalism

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A couple weeks ago Echo marked its first anniversary. The evolution has been fast, the learning curve steep. It’s hard to find the time to stop and take stock of what’s been accomplished. But here’s a good excuse:

Environmental news stories written for Great Lakes Echo and other publications of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism are among those recently recognized at the 2009 Region 4 Mark of Excellence Society of Professional Journalists contest. Among the Echo winners:
Online In-Depth Reporting

First Place: Cleaning Coal – by Sarah Coefield, Elisabeth Pernicone, Yang Zhang and Rachael Gleason

Third Place: Public Pools, Public Health – by Haley Walker, Alice Rossignol and Emma Ogutu

Best Independent Online Student Publication

Second Place: Great Lakes Echo

Online Feature Reporting

Third Place: Lake Huron sinkholes – by Sarah Coefield

Recognition of the Knight Center’s print publication, EJ Magazine:

Non-Fiction Magazine Article

First Place: Food Not Waste: Three Decades at the Center of a Movement – by Haley Walker

Second Place: When Grass Isn’t Green: Marijuana farms on public lands aren’t kind to the environment – by Andrew Norman

Best Student Magazine

Second Place: EJ Magazine

Recognition of the Knight Center’s television production efforts:

Television In-Depth Reporting

First Place: The Night Shift – by Sarah Coefield, Mary Hansen, Marla Kalmbach, Lou D’Aria

Here at the Knight Center we’re proud not only of these quality reporting efforts, but of the diversity of media they represent.

Echo

Upending the basin: Talk to us

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Just a heads up that the Echo crew has implemented a few features you can use to help us make the site even better. Notice that at the bottom of “Catch of the Day” we’ve created a link for you to suggest something for that feature. It can simply be something relevant to the Great Lakes environment that you’ve stumbled across and thought that perhaps we’d want to highlight or comment upon. We’ve established a similar link under “Great Links” where you can flag news stories and URLs that we can consider for inclusion. Each day we strive for 10 Great Links that are diverse in subject and in geographic location.

Echo

The Pelican solution

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Jeff Kart has an item over at treehugger about pelicans scarfing down Asian carp. Apparently there are a lot more pelicans hanging around Illinois rivers since the carp invaded those streams.

These pictures on the Illinois birder’s forum certainly indicate pelican power is fueled by crunching carp. Can pelicans be the saviors of the Great Lakes ecosystem if the carp breach the electric barrier at Chicago? Kart, who also writes the popular mudpuppy blog, muses: “Are lots of pelicans worse or better than lots of Asian carp? Will the pelicans eat the carp, and the native fish that make up a $7 billion fishery in the lakes?”

Echo

Daily carp bomb: Is it carp season?

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Perhaps direct confrontation is the best way to repel an invasion. “He’s doing his part to control the invasion of Asian Carp at Leelanau State Park,” writes casglass on the Echo carp bomb flickr group. Want in on the carp bomb photoshop fun? Learn how to create your own.

Echo

Reporting with bias

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Washington Post columnist David Broder made an odd confession recently:

“If you want to be a stickler for journalistic ethics, I shouldn’t even be writing about the Great Lakes, because I have a huge bias – especially when it comes to Lake Michigan.”

Broder recalled youthful summer visits to a cabin on Lake Michigan and explained that for the past 50 years he has enjoyed another cabin on the lake’s Beaver Island. “Like everyone who comes under its spell, I love Lake Michigan,” he wrote. Broder felt a need to reveal that background before explaining his support of a new federal plan to clean up the Great Lakes. But is it an embarrassing impingement of journalistic purity to favor a clean environment? Environmental journalists are rightly cautious about getting painted green.

Echo

Toxic language

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I had to cringe a bit at this Echo headline on a link to a Toledo Blade story Monday: Homeowners are urged to have plan for toxins’ escape

The headline is taken directly from what the Blade copy editors wrote. It’s also wrong. The first sentence of the story:
“Countless shipments of toxic chemicals travel the highways and railways of metropolitan Toledo every day, but these chemicals often are ingredients in products that support Americans’ standard of living and conveniences, …” That’s fine, but the headline refers to toxins, not toxic chemicals. And toxins are poisonous substances produced by living cells or organisms. It’s a mix-up so common that here at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism we even cite it in a list of words often used incorrectly on the environment beat.

Echo

Let’s call the first two Britney and Brad

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As executive director of the Ohio River Sanitation Commission, Alan Vicory knows well the relentless march of the Asian carp up the Mississippi River and their invasion into his own domain. At a meeting of journalists in Louisville Friday he noted a similar but personal battle with moles, an aggressive invader of his own yard. The advice he was given about that problem?  “Name them and make them part of the family.” Vicory mused aloud about what he views as the inevitable result of the carp now knocking on the door of the Great Lakes:  “Maybe we should name these carp and make them part of the family,” he said. “They’re coming.”

Echo

Catching carp quotes

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Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus continues to pull the best quotes out of the carp debate. Last week it was a retired steelworker pondering if bin Laden was behind the invasion. This week it’s Michigan  Congressman Vern Ehlers who apparently isn’t easing quietly into retirement:
“As soon as I can manage to drop a 150 pound carp on the rostrum of the Supreme Court then maybe we can get some action.”

Echo

Displaced chaos: The silence of the newsroom

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The windowless room where our reporters work is nicknamed the Echo Chamber. It’s a catchy phrase that is wrong on a couple counts. Reporters here better not be mere echoes. They should bring context and fairness and accuracy and diversity and complexity and their own innate brains and knowledge to what they produce. There is a difference between stenography and journalism.