Journalists focus on green issues

It’s no news to a Middlebury student that something needs to be done to protect the environment. As the first college in the US to establish an Environmental Science major (in 1965), and one of only six schools to receive an A- on its Sustainability Report Card in 2008, it is clear that Middlebury is committed to being as green as it can. We have the biomass plant next to McCullough, the school’s commitment to being carbon neutral by 2016, and any number of other green initiatives. But Middlebury wants to make an even larger impact through giving students with a vision a larger audience, and the College is achieving this mission with Middlebury’s Environmental Journalism Fellowship program.

Now in its fourth year, the program allots 10 $10,000 grants to up and coming graduate journalists for use towards an intensive year-long reporting project about an environmental issue. In addition to their individual research, the recipients meet bi-annually to participate in workshops about the journalistic process and edit their articles with a visiting reporter (once in the fall at Bread Loaf and once in the spring at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California).

Past stories written during the fellowship have appeared in Mother Jones and on NPR, while writers have gone on to be featured in major publications ranging from National Geographic to The Economist.  This year two graduate fellows, Aylie Baker ’09 and Kathryn Flagg ’08, were both from Middlebury, as was the undergraduate fellow, Sarah Harris ’11.

This past week, the writer’s first conference allowedthe journalists not only to exchange stories, but to begin to learn about what environmental journalism truly is and what it aims to accomplish.  Sometimes categorized as a niche discipline, the impact of environmental reporting is often questioned due to the fact that its audience is often those already involved in environmental protection.  But these issues are not just issues that affect only a small, specific area; they involve everyone. This session’s visiting reporter, Middlebury graduate and editor of Orion magazine Jennifer Sahn ’92, highlighted the importance of the fellowship in her talk on Sept. 15. She said that environmental writing does not just address an issue in nature, but an issue of humanity.

“Change will not happen if only environmentalists are the ones willing to make that change, or even have the conversation about it,” Sahn told the audience. “Everybody has to get invested in that change,“

For Harris, who is investigating the impact of cement production in Midlothian, Texas (a city 30 miles outside of her hometown of Dallas) the importance of the fellowship is obvious.

“Environmental journalism is something that must be written, and must be talked about, because the stakes are very high.,” said Harris. “To tell these stories is to tell a tale with certain urgency.”

The stakes?  Well, the world. To encompass this, the guidelines for the fellowship state that it will support any project as long as it “[centers] in some way on the human relationship with the physical world.” Or as Harris put it, “the irreparable change we are forcing on our planet.”

Because of this, journalists have quite a task ahead of them: to get people to realize it’s not “humans against the world,” but “humans with the world.” Too often, even major disasters, like as the recent BP oil spill, become only fleeting issues in the public eye because it’s hard for people to see how it will affect them. This transitory attention to the environment is something the fellowship seeks to change.

“People always refer to the environmental crisis as something happening out there and we need to stop it. [But] it’s our problem. We need to be the ones to address it,” said Sahn.

The attendees of the talk were mostly conviced or already a believer in Sahn’s logic.

“It has been proven throughout history that writing can change the world,” said Renee Igo ’11, an attendee of Sahn’s talk.

Moreover, “good journalism can be a force for positive change,” Harris said.

With this in mind, it could very well be this new wave of writers that starts us equating change with people, and not just the climate.