January 12, 2012 — Thanks to a major grant from the Grantham Foundation, and generous donations from individual members and friends of the Society of Environmental Journalists, SEJ was able to award $11,707 to seven journalism projects in the Winter 2011 grant cycle of the Fund for Environmental Journalism (FEJ). Congratulations to the winners:

Appalachian Voices
Project to be conducted by Brian Freeman Sewell, Managing Editor, and Molly Moore, Associate Editor
Boone, NC, USA
$1,780 for travel and document-access expenses to produce a newspaper story about the Buffalo Creek disaster and the complex history of mountaintop mining in Appalachia

Francesca Lyman
Kirkland, WA, USA
$600 for travel expenses to produce magazine and online stories about the future of suburbia and the American dream in the Great Recession and the era of shrinking cities and peak oil

High Country News
Project to be conducted by Stephanie Ogburn
Paonia, CO, USA
$917 for travel expenses to produce a story and accompanying multimedia for print and online environmental news services about evolutions in fighting invasive cheatgrass in Nevada

Lauren Rosenfeld
San Francisco, CA, USA
$1,935 for travel expenses to produce a long-form print article, a photographic essay and a short video documentary for diverse outlets about indigenous-managed conservation projects in the Amazon rainforest

Sue Smith Heavenrich
Candor, NY, USA
$750 for travel, telecommunications and document-access costs to produce three articles on the impacts of fractured oil and gas drilling on farms, farmers, and the food supply in New York

Christopher Weber
Chicago, IL, USA
$2,237 for travel and survey expenses to produce magazine and newspaper articles and a possible book about the impact of urban farms on local economies and environmental quality in Philadelphia, Seattle and Milwaukee

The Dallas Morning News
Project to be conducted by Valerie Wigglesworth
Richardson, TX, USA
$3,488 for soil-testing expenses to produce newspaper and online stories in multimedia about lingering lead contamination from secondary lead smelters affecting two North Texas cities

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