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EJ Academy

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EJ Academy is an occasional SEJournal Online column for environmental journalism educators and students to explore current research on environmental journalism, best practices or models for teaching and insights into the state of EJ education today.

For questions and comments, or to suggest or offer to write future EJ Academy columns, contact EJ Academy Co-Editors Bob Wyss at bobwyss@gmail.com or Emilia Askari at sejournaleditor@sej.org.

Public

September 23, 2026

  • Walking the Walk Along the Pacific Crest Trail

    A summer newsroom fellowship led student scientist Bing Lin to travel a mountainous length of a storied North American footpath and turn the experience into an award-winning series for a leading environmental journalism outlet. In the new EJ Academy, he recounts what he learned — amid numerous challenges — about reporting, writing and photography, and his reasons for being on the trail.

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February 4, 2026

  • Helping Students Learn the Hard Work of Journalism

    Two flourishing nonprofit programs teach young writers the basics of journalism and environmental reporting — mentoring and paying students, who publish enterprise and public records stories, personal essays and narrative features. Read more about Florida Student News Watch with CD Davidson-Hiers and Indiana’s climate solutions-focused Youth Environmental Press Team with Jim Poyser, in the new EJ Academy.

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February 12, 2025

January 15, 2025

  • Assessing AI’s Importance in Journalism and Teaching — Part 1

    Like with any new technology, the future of artificial intelligence in the newsroom and the classroom inspired excitement and fear for one journalism educator. But after experimenting with it at the University of Michigan, EJ Academy co-editor Emilia Askari gained practical insight into its smart use for teaching young reporters. Lessons on AI journalism, in Part 1 of a two-part series.

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August 7, 2024

February 21, 2024

  • 'Gaslit' Project Spotlights Challenges of Teaching Investigative Journalism

    Research, collaboration, human-centered storytelling and the ineluctable element of time — all these were among the facets of a complex, award-winning investigative report run by a team of students at Arizona State University on excessive and harmful natural gas flaring. How the project came together, and the lessons learned, in the new EJ Academy from column co-editor and longtime educator Bob Wyss.

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September 6, 2023

  • Missouri, Florida Journalism Professors Join Classes on Multistate Fertilizer Investigation

    What brought together two teams of student reporters, half a dozen states and 1,000 miles apart? For one, the high environmental cost of chemical fertilizer. For another, a pair of dedicated journalism teachers. Cynthia Barnett and Sara Shipley Hiles share how they took the project from daydream to reality, brought students into the field and got pickup from numerous news outlets, in the latest EJ Academy.

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March 8, 2023

  • From Swine Waste, Student Journalist Extracts Prize-Winning Story

    Industrial hog farmers tout swine biogas as a clean, green energy source, but others point to its messy side. A young journalist who investigated the underreported stench of environmental racism associated with this technology learned valuable lessons along the way to producing a feature story that won her a Society of Environmental Journalists’ award for outstanding student reporting.

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October 19, 2022

  • Should Journalism Educators Mix It Up With Interdisciplinary Projects?

    When it comes to working across boundaries in an academic setting, those who teach journalism may be naturals, tapping as they often can into their experience reporting on those from very different backgrounds and disciplines. EJ Academy’s editor, Bob Wyss, shares his experience with a successful project examining self-driving vehicles and explains why fellow journalism educators may want to give interdisciplinary teaching a try.

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May 18, 2022

  • On the Mafia To-Do List? Take Out the Trash

    A student op-ed zeroing in on Rome’s trash problem, the role of organized crime and the silencing of Italy’s journalists has won the Society of Environmental Journalists’ first-ever Student Press Freedom Day contest. Our EJ Academy column shares Macy Berendsen’s opinion piece, which asks what the news media there can do to help clean up the Eternal City.

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