Fellowship lets journalists go green

Author: Jaime Fuller

The birthplace of the Environmental Studies major and the home of the idyllic Bread Loaf School of English seems the perfect place to host an Environmental Journalism Fellowship. Under the stewardship of Scholar-in-Residence Bill McKibben and Visiting Lecturer Christopher Shaw, the fellowship program has given budding journalists from all over the world the opportunity to report on environmental issues they feel passionate or curious about.

The program was established in September 2007 with the help of an anonymous donation of $1.5 million, and allows eight graduate and two Middlebury students to pursue a project of their choosing for a full year. The graduate students - who have reported from such diverse regions of the globe as South Africa, Zimbabwe and Bolivia - are given $10,000 to help cover living and reporting expenses, and they are also asked to participate in weeklong residencies at Bread Loaf in the fall and the Monterey Institute of International Affairs in the spring. Throughout the year, Director of the Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism McKibben and Associate Director Shaw offer guidance to students and help prepare their stories for print, Internet and radio.

The fellows who took part in the maiden voyage of the program have been quite successful in getting their articles in print, with the young journalists' work getting published in such well-known publications as Mother Jones, Outside, Gourmet and the Virginia Quarterly. At an informational meeting on Nov. 12, Shaw highlighted McKibben's well-placed connections as a reason for their first-year success.

"Bill has a lot of influence … if Bill says 'you should read this' to an editor, they usually do," he said.

Kevin Redmon '09 and Tim Reynolds '09 were the Middlebury students chosen as undergraduate fellows this year. Redmon is working on a project highlighting the sometimes conflicting aims of ardent conservationists and local entrepreneurs in the Adirondack Park. He examines this in the context of the recent land deal negotiations undertaken by the Nature Conservancy, which has the opportunity to pioneer "a sea change of environmental thinking in the Adirondacks."

"Everyone in the Adirondacks … has a powerful attachment to the place and the land," wrote Redmon in an e-mail. "It is for this reason that land conservation can be a volatile prospect."

Reynolds' project focuses on the construction of new national parks in southern China. The idea for his project originated from his work this summer with the Nature Conservancy in the Yunnan Province.

The most enjoyable part of his trip, he said, "was traveling around to these proposed national park sites and staying in a few villages that lie within the park boundaries, getting to talk to people about how living in a 'national park' has changed their lives."

The lessons and skills the fellows have picked up during their reporting will be invaluable as they continue trying to build careers in journalism. Redmon has learned that the secret to a good story is to ignore the pull of modern technology, and that human connection is key.

"The most profound thing I've learned from the fellowship thus far is how to pick up a telephone and call complete strangers," wrote Redmon in an e-mail. "It sounds trivial, but it's often the biggest barrier to getting an interesting story. Several times in the Adirondacks, I simply showed up on someone's doorstep with my steno pad and microphone. It's hard to say no to a guy who's standing on your stoop, obviously underdressed and freezing in the blowing snow outside."

Another fellow, Heather Smith, is writing on colony collapse disorder after discussing possible topics with her professors at the University of California at Berkley. She found the fellowship a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do in-depth reporting on an interesting and pertinent issue.

"Most of us, upon graduating, would be going into jobs where we would be expected to generate an incredible amount of content, and not do much in-depth reporting," she wrote in an e-mail. "It was like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The fellowship was the golden ticket to spend months bumming around with entomologists, or hanging out with Uiger politicians in Northwest China, or pretending to be an illegal gold miner, without worrying about whether or not we could afford to eat while doing it."

Adam Welz, a graduate of the first run of the fellowship, said the program has opened up many opportunities and given him experience that translates into work he can be proud of.

"I have a story in the queue at a great American magazine and have worked with a fantastic editor there," Welz wrote in an e-mail. "I've also become more confident in my ideas for environmental media and have started making big plans for 2009. I'm seeing more opportunity than ever before, despite the 'economic meltdown', in fact, because of it."

This economic meltdown, combined with the changes in journalism since the advent of the Internet, leaves Shaw apprehensive of how much longer print journalism like that being pursued by the fellows will remain relevant.

"This whole business is going to change drastically," he said. "Of course, I've been saying this for fifteen years."