Fellowships Impact

Scripps Fellowship Alum Tristan Baurick Wins Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting Piece on Louisiana's Cancer Alley

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 02:56:21 +0000

Scripps Fellowship Alum Tristan Baurick Wins Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting Piece on Louisiana's Cancer Alley Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/26/2021 - 20:56

By Julia Barnes

Tristan Baurick (Ted Scripps Fellowship Alumnus ‘12-’13) has been doing great things since leaving Boulder, including helping to fight back against environmental racism. Together with fellow journalists Joan Meiners, Gordon Russell and Sara Sneath from The Times-Picayune and The Advocate, and Claire Perlman, Al Shaw and Lylla Younes from ProPublica, Baurick and his team won the award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting (Large Newsroom or Circulation) at the 2020 Society Environmental Journalists’ conference for their investigative reporting on Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. The project was partially funded by a grant from ProPublica.

Cancer Alley, a term coined by journalists, refers to the land between Baton Rouge and New Orleans along the Mississippi river, where nearly 150 pollution-emitting industrial plants were built. Studies show that residents of Cancer Alley, who are predominantly people of color, have higher incidences of cancer, diabetes, and respiratory diseases than most of the United States, and higher than Louisiana overall.

“Part of the challenge with doing anything in-depth about Cancer Alley is doing something new about it. It’s always the same bad news, just getting worse,” said Baurick. It’s true — Cancer Alley has been widely covered by journalists as one of the worst modern examples of environmental racism in the United States. Despite this, the team uncovered a story that had not been reported on before.

Within Cancer Alley, the town of St. Gabriel had pushed back against the petrochemical plants through incorporation of the town. With policy and zoning laws, St. Gabriel has been able to keep the plants out of their city borders for over 25 years. Despite this being a huge win for the community, “the pollution from those industries doesn't stop at their city borders,” said Baurick.

At the SEJ awards, the story was praised for its depiction of communities of color living within Cancer Alley as empowered grassroots fighters, rather than helpless victims of pollution, which is how previous reporting on the issue framed those communities.

Baurick credits the project’s success to a slower approach to journalism, which allowed the team to step away from daily deadlines and fully immerse themselves in the community they were covering. One approach he found successful was letting his interviewees direct the conversation. “I’d just hop in the car with them and say, show me what you want to show. Tell me what you want to tell me. What do you think is important? What should we be paying attention to?”

Baurick also acknowledged the role the Ted Scripps Fellowship played in supporting his journalism career. “The biggest thing about the fellowship that helped me is that it expanded my horizons about what I can do. It allowed me to delve into topics and issues that allowed me to think beyond daily deadlines, to take on projects and investigative work, and to see myself as somebody who can do that kind of work.”

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New film by former Scripps Fellows documents catastrophic legacy of US bombing campaign in Laos

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 19:26:22 +0000

New film by former Scripps Fellows documents catastrophic legacy of US bombing campaign in Laos Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/06/2021 - 13:26

Former Scripps Fellows - and CEJ Ambassadors - Karen Coates ('11) and Jerry Redfern ('13) have spent years working on a new feature-length documentary film, Eternal Harvest. The film will be featured in three upcoming festivals; details can be found in the press release below and the movie trailer can be viewed here.

ETERNAL HARVEST:

New film documents catastrophic legacy of US bombing campaign in Laos

Albuquerque, NM, October 6, 2021 – As the world watches the aftermath of US involvement in Afghanistan, another years-long conflict offers critical insights on America’s post-war responsibilities to the people left behind. A new feature-length documentary film, ETERNAL HARVEST, uncovers the deadly legacy of unexploded bombs remaining in Laos half a century after the US dropped them. It was history’s largest bombing campaign, and many Americans today know nothing about it. The film debuts in person and online at three festivals this month: the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival in Ohio (Oct. 5-10), the Tallgrass Film Festival in Kansas (Oct. 20-24), and the Kuala Lumpur Eco Film Festival in Malaysia (Oct. 24-30).

ETERNAL HARVEST raises key questions about how US post-war foreign policy should be shaped. Between 1964 and 1973, in an offshoot of the Vietnam War, US forces dumped more than 4 billion pounds of bombs on the tiny country of Laos. When the last US planes departed, more than 80 million unexploded bombs remained in the ground. They’re still there—a danger to millions of civilians in a country where 75 percent of the population works in farming.

Old US ordnance has killed and injured more than 20,000 Laotians since the bombings ended decades ago, and accidents still happen every week. ETERNAL HARVEST underscores the critical need for more clearance funding. While the US spent more than $50 billion bombing Laos, it has spent only $300 million to clean it up.

ETERNAL HARVEST is a production of Redcoates Studios, a small and independent New Mexico media company, owned and operated by longtime journalists Jerry Redfern and Karen Coates. The film opens with archival war footage and stories of survivors, including a young girl named Zua Pa, who watched her sister die in a bomb accident in 2017. Audiences learn of the incredible efforts of clearance teams that scour the land, inch by inch, searching for bombs. Only one American, a retired school principal from Wisconsin named Jim Harris, returns to Laos year after year to remove and destroy ordinance. The film follows his team through remote regions of Laos near the Vietnam border. In 2016, when President Obama visited Laos, he announced a historic increase in funding for the country—$90 million over three years. Yet that is only a tiny fraction of what is needed to make the land safe.

ETERNAL HARVEST raises important debates for all Americans, as this country ends its 20-year presence in Afghanistan, leaving millions of civilians to face post-conflict traumas and dangers.

Redfern and Coates have spent years as investigative journalists in Southeast Asia. The film follows their book, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos (ThingsAsian Press, 2013).

***

Producer and Editor Karen Coates is a producer, editor, author, and media trainer who focuses on food, environment, health, and human rights. She is a fellow with the International Women’s Media Foundation, a former senior fellow with the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism before it closed, and a 2010-11 Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism. Her print, online, and multimedia work has appeared in publications around the world. She is a contributing editor for Archaeology magazine and a former Asia correspondent for Gourmet. She’s also a food writer, and can make a dozen different curries that will set your head ablaze.

Producer and Director Jerry Redfern is an award-winning visual journalist, covering environment, health, and human rights, primarily in the developing world. He is also a reporter covering the oil and gas industry in New Mexico for Capital & Main. He was a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University (until it closed in 2019), and a 2012-2013 Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder. When not working with cameras, he crashes bikes and grows viniferous grapes at his home in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley.

Eternal Harvest is a new film by former Scripps Fellows Karen Coates ('11) and Jerry Redfern ('13) which documents the catastrophic legacy of the US bombing campaign in Laos. The film follows their book, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos (ThingsAsian Press, 2013).

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“Threshold” wins Peabody Award

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 14:12:46 +0000

“Threshold” wins Peabody Award Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/15/2021 - 08:12

Julia Barnes

The podcast “Threshold,” the brainchild of former Ted Scripps fellow Amy Martin (cohort 2016-2017), won a Peabody Award last fall for its third season, titled “The Refuge.”

“Threshold” is a public radio show and podcast that tackles one pressing environmental issue each season. Season one covers the conservation of the American bison, and season two focuses on climate change in the Arctic. The third season covers the controversial issue of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Peabody Awards, which rely on submissions from the storytellers themselves, annually honor the most powerful stories being told in TV, radio, and online media. According to Martin, the team at “Threshold” submitted for the awards thinking they weren’t going to win, but wanting to throw their hat in the ring anyway.

Weeks later, the team learned that they were among the finalists. “I was like, ‘Awesome! We’re in this crowd of finalists, high-five, it’s done!’” recalls Martin, who was excited for the podcast to be considered along with shows like “Dolly Parton's America” and HBO's “Chernobyl.” “I told everybody, ‘We’re not going to win, but this is fantastic,’” says Martin.

One day, late at night while getting ready for bed, Martin learned that “Threshold” had actually won a Peabody. “I happened to glance at my phone and saw I had, like, fifteen texts from different members of the team. We won and I couldn’t believe it. I was literally jumping up and down and screaming,” says Martin. “It felt really good.”

According to Martin, the idea for “Threshold” stemmed from both her love of public radio and a sense of frustration that public radio seemed, in the early 2010s, to only report short-form environmental stories. “There’s no way to begin to do those stories justice in 3.5 minutes,” Martin says. She was also acutely aware that “there were hardly any podcasts that seem to be focused on environmental issues at all.

Season four of “Threshold” is currently in the works, but Martin is tight-lipped about its topic. “We’re keeping it under wraps this time,” she says with a laugh.

Martin credits the Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism for giving her the time and space to help get “Threshold” off the ground. The fellowship was “an investment in me and in my work as a journalist at a really crucial point,” she says. She was grateful for exposure to peer journalists during the fellowship, with whom she could talk out ideas for the podcast.

“The fellowship is part of the story of how ‘Threshold’ came to be, and what it is today,” says Martin. “And it always will be. I couldn't be more grateful for that experience.”

The podcast “Threshold,” brainchild of former Ted Scripps fellow Amy Martin ('16-'17), won a Peabody Award for its third season, titled “The Refuge.” Martin credits the Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism for giving her the time and space to help get “Threshold” off the ground.

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