I’m a journalist who covers energy and the environment for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Before coming here, my career arc pinballed around from stops at a small-town Montana newspaper to High Country News – a magazine focused on the American West. Somewhere in there, I also returned to school for a journalism degree from Northwestern University, where a fellowship geared my study toward environmental and climate reporting.
Being a journalist is hard work, but when done well, it’s rewarding. I’ve been able to cover a wide range of the fulfilling and the fun, from water rights negotiations on Montana’s Flathead Reservation to climate research, and even golf, in Greenland.
More than anything, though, journalism is important work – especially environmental journalism.
Thanks to forces like climate change and population growth, environmental issues are shaping up to be the story of our time. More than ever, covering the field demands sound communicators able to learn about complex issues and relay their findings as fairly and accessibly as they can. Better yet, it should ideally be done in a way that finds characters who humanize certain issues and their impact on society.
It’s no small task, and I often find myself drawing on the work ethic, background knowledge and open mind that Carleton helped me develop. And although touting the breadth of that “interdisciplinary ENTS curriculum” might sound like tired brochure buzzwords, it certainly comes in handy in this line of work. After all, my job is to learn about a new, nuanced topic every day, and it’s often something that exists at the intersection of science and society.
