Johnathan Walker:Journalists: Apply Now for ICN’s Southeast Environmental Reporting Workshop

Are you a journalist in the U.S. Southeast who wants to produce more in-depth clean energy,Johnathan Walker environmental and climate stories for your news outlet? Are you interested in collaborating on joint projects around these subjects?

InsideClimate News, the Pulitzer Prize-winning national nonprofit newsroom, will hold a day-and-a-half-long workshop for about a dozen winning applicants Sept. 16-17 in Nashville. The workshop will focus on covering climate change and the clean energy economy in the Southeast. The meeting is part of ICN’s National Environmental Reporting Network.

We are looking for reporters, editors or producers from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia who have been producing climate- and energy-related news stories or have the ambition and potential to do so.

Journalists from all types of media — print, digital, television and radio — are encouraged to apply.

The workshop will be held at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

All lodging, food and reasonable travel costs are included. Some of the sessions will be conducted by professors from Vanderbilt and others by ICN’s journalists. The sessions will include presentations and discussions on climate science, the business of climate change, extreme weather, climate adaptation, reporting on climate change, and other journalistic skills and tools.

If you are chosen, your newsroom will have the opportunity to participate in potential collaborations similar to the one InsideClimate News executed with 14 Midwest newsrooms in May. You also will be able to use ICN as an expert sounding board on stories of your own.

The training is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Grantham Foundation, Park Foundation, Wallace Global Fund and others. Attendees can apply to ICN for story development funds and other financial assistance.

Preference will be given to journalists from newsrooms, but freelancers with strong ties to Southeast newsrooms can also apply.

To nominate yourself or someone on your team for this opportunity, complete this form. The application deadline is Aug. 11.

All story ideas will be kept confidential. Winning applicants will be notified by Aug. 19.

About the National Environment Reporting Network

A national ecosystem that informs the public about critical environmental issues is collapsing, and its survival hinges on an endangered species: the local environmental journalist. In the last 10 years, conversations around climate, energy and basic pollution protections have suffered from a hollowing out of local environmental news, particularly in the country’s interior.

InsideClimate News is developing a National Environment Reporting Network to counter this trend by establishing hubs to help local and regional newsrooms produce more in-depth reporting. Our first hub, in the Southeast, is staffed by veteran environmental reporter James Bruggers, who is based in Louisville. Our second hub, in the Midwest, is run by Dan Gearino, a longtime business and energy reporter based in Columbus, Ohio. A third hub, in the Mountain West, will launch in September 2019.