Board of Directors 2008 - 2009

President
Christy George produces documentaries at Oregon Public Broadcasting. She started at OPB in 1997, creating a bureau covering the intersection of business and the environment for the Los-Angeles based national business show, "Marketplace". Before that, George edited foreign and national news for The Boston Herald and covered politics for WGBH-TV, where she won a New England Emmy for an investigative documentary about Massachusetts political corruption. She started out in 1976, covering noise and air pollution and neighborhood encroachment by Logan Airport for The East Boston Community News — a dream beat that led to jobs in print, radio and television. George shared in "Marketplace's" Peabody Award in 2001 and her special "Liquid Gold," on how water is being bought, sold and marketed like any other commodity, was part of "Marketplace's" 1998 winning submission for a Columbia-DuPont Silver Baton award. A high school graduate, she was a 1990-91 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. Contact Christy, 503-293-4001.

First Vice President and Programs Chair
Carolyn Whetzel is an environmental reporter for BNA, a private publisher headquartered in Washington, D.C. that covers legislative developments, federal and state laws and regulations, court decisions, and economic trends. Whetzel is based in California and covers a variety of state environmental issues including air and water quality, hazardous wastes, chemicals, and energy since 1992. Her work appears primarily in BNA's Daily Environment Report, Environment Reporter, Toxics Law Reporter, Chemical Regulation Reporter, Occupational Safety & Health Reporter, and Daily Report for Executives. Whetzel joined BNA in 1970 while attending George Washington University, but left four years later to travel and move to California. Before rejoining BNA, she wrote for in-house publications for several companies and institutions and was a freelance writer in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Dallas. Contact Carolyn, 909-793-1430.

Second Vice President and Membership Chair
Cheryl Hogue has covered national environmental policy developments from Washington, D.C., since 1987. For the last five years, she has reported on pollution-related issues for Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of a major scientific organization, the American Chemical Society. Her first environmental reporting was a series on the health of the Chesapeake Bay for The Daily Banner in Cambridge, Md., on the Delmarva Peninsula. After daily newspaper stints there and at the Montgomery Journal in Rockville, Md., she moved to the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (BNA). While at BNA, she gained a dozen years of experience covering Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and court cases affecting federal pollution controls. She also covered international environmental issues for BNA and reported daily from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and the negotiations on 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change. She co-authored Toxic Substances Control Guide: Second Edition, a 1992 BNA book detailing the major U.S. laws regulating chemicals. In 1999, she won a science writing fellowship at the Woods Hole, Mass., Marine Biological Laboratory, and spent two weeks at a research station on the North Slope of Alaska. She holds an M.S. in environmental sciences and policy from Johns Hopkins University and a B.S. in biology from the College of William & Mary. She's an avid birdwatcher. Contact Cheryl, 202-872-4551.

Treasurer and Finance Chair
Peter Thomson is the environment editor at the BBC/Public Radio International program "The World" and the author of Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal. He was the founding producer and editor of NPR's groundbreaking environmental news program "Living on Earth" in 1991, and in a decade with the program also served as senior editor, western region bureau chief, senior correspondent and special projects editor. Thomson's work has been honored with numerous awards, for reports and documentaries on subjects ranging from oil, natives and wildlife on Alaska's North Slope to threats facing America's drinking water supply to the environmental legacy of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Thomson has received fellowships from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Rockefeller Foundation and the MacDowell Colony. He is a member of the advisory board of the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting, and has served on the advisory board of the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources. Contact Peter, 617-983-2327.

Secretary
Mark Schleifstein, environment reporter, has worked for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans since 1984. He is the co-author with John McQuaid of Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms, published by Little, Brown & Co. His reporting during and after Hurricane Katrina was among the newspaper's stories honored with 2006 Pulitzer Prizes for Public Service and Breaking News Reporting and the George Polk Award for Metropolitan Reporting. Stories prior to Katrina on coastal science issues were honored in 2006 with a special award from the American Geophysical Union. He has been a member of reporting teams that produced six major series during the past two decades. "Washing Away: How south Louisiana is growing more vulnerable to a catastrophic hurricane" won the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2003 Excellence in Media award and the 2003 National Hurricane Conference media award. It also was a finalist for the 2003 Edward J. Meeman Award for Environmental Reporting for newspapers with over 100,000 circulation. He also received the Governor's Award from the Louisiana Wildlife Federation, presented annually to the person or organization deemed to have made the most outstanding contribution toward the protection and wise use of the state's natural resources. The 2001 series, "Unequal Opportunity: How local programs to help disadvantaged businesses are enriching wealthy entrepreneurs," won the 2002 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, and was a finalist for the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers. The 1998 series, "Home Wreckers: How the Formosan termite is devastating New Orleans," was a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and won awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Biological Sciences. A 1996 series, "Oceans of Trouble: Are the World's Fisheries Doomed?" won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service from the Society of Professional Journalists. The 1994 series, "Stacking the Deck: The Birth of Louisiana Gambling," won the 1995 Associated Press Managing Editors award for public service journalism, the 1995 Selden Ring Award for investigative reporting, and the 1995 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. The 1991 series, "Louisiana in Peril," was a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism. While at The Times-Picayune, Schleifstein has covered the mayor and city hall, the 1988 Presidential campaign, the 1987 Louisiana Governor's campaign, and the environment. Before joining The Times-Picayune, he worked for the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger, the Norfolk, Va., Virginian-Pilot, and the Suffolk, Va., News-Herald. He is married and has two children. Contact Mark, (504) 826-3327.

Future Conference Sites Chair
Don Hopey has covered the environment for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette since 1992. He has written series about an 80-mile canoe trip through the Wild & Scenic sections of the Allegheny River, the "Wise Use" movement in Pennsylvania and problems with the nation's hazardous waste incinerators. He participated in an end-to-end hike of the Appalachian Trail by five eastern newspapers in 1995, hiking more than 500 miles from Virginia through Pennsylvania. Reports on the hike were reprinted in a book, An Appalachian Adventure. He is co-author of Exploring the Appalachian Trail: Mid-Atlantic States, one of five guide books in a series that highlights the trail's social and natural history. He teaches an environmental issues and policy class at the University of Pittsburgh. Contact Don, 412-263-1983.

Representative for the SEJ Associate Membership
Rebecca Daugherty is a former director of the FOI Service Center, a special project of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, where she worked with journalists who encountered problems gaining access to public records, and on issues that threaten openness in state and federal governments. In 2001 she was inducted into the Freedom Forum's FOI Hall of Fame. She edited Tapping Officials' Secrets, a guide to open government laws, How to Use the Federal FOI Act, and various projects on access issues. She is a past president of the American Society of Access Professionals, and currently serves on its board. She holds two journalism degrees from the University of Missouri and a law degree from the University of Missouri - Kansas City. Contact Rebecca, 202-291-6229.

Representative for the SEJ Academic Membership
Bill Kovarik is a professor of Media Studies at Radford University in southwestern Virginia where he teaches science and environment writing, media history, media law and web design. He has also served on the faculty at Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland. Kovarik's professional experience includes reporting and editing for Jack Anderson, the Associated Press, The Charleston (S.C.) Courier, The Baltimore Sun, Time-Life Books, Latin American Energy Report and Appropriate Technology Times. His books include The Forbidden Fuel (1982), Mass Media and Environmental Conflict (with Mark Neuzil, 1996), and Web Design for the Mass Media (2001). He is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University (1974), the University of South Carolina (M.A., 1983) and the University of Maryland (Ph.D., 1993). Contact Bill, 540-831-6033.

Chris Bowman, former environment and energy reporter at The Sacramento Bee in California, tries to compensate for his two-finger typing with stories that punch hard and deep: Developers unearthing naturally occurring asbestos; flavoring factories destroying workers' lungs; the world's largest cheese plant polluting with impunity; and the abuse of Mexican reforestation workers. His career began as a courthouse reporter for The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.) Later, at The Hartford Courant, he uncovered fraud in bridge inspections after a deadly collapse on the Connecticut Turnpike. A Nieman Fellowship at Harvard ('95) inspired Chris to take up crew rowing at home and journalism mentoring abroad, including a three-month stint in Zimbabwe. Contact Chris, 530-219-9188.

James Bruggers covers environmental topics for The (Louisville) Courier-Journal in Kentucky and served as SEJ president from October 2000 through October 2002. He's been a professional journalist since 1982, working in Montana, Alaska, Washington, California and Kentucky, and an SEJ board member since 1997. In 1998-99, he was awarded a year on the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus as Michigan Journalism Fellow. Bruggers has won numerous reporting awards. His report on railroad workers and brain damage was a top-ten finalist in the public service category of the 2001 Associated Press Managing Editors national contest. And in 2004, he won the Thomas Stokes Award, the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation's Excellence in Journalism Award, and two Best-of-Gannett awards for the series, "Toxic Air: Lingering Health Menace." Bruggers is a graduate of the forestry and journalism programs at the University of Montana, where he also earned an M.S. in environmental studies. He also writes a blog, Watchdog Earth. Contact Jim, 502-582-4645.

Jeff Burnside has been in the news business for more than 20 years working as a reporter, anchor, news manager and producer in cities such as Seattle, Boston and now Miami where he is part of the highly regarded WTVJ Special Projects Unit. In addition to environmental reporting, Jeff reports investigative, long-format stories, and periodically covers daily news. He's won more than 20 journalism awards — for television and newspaper reporting and photography — including several regional Emmys. Among his environmental stories, Jeff broke the story regarding harm to marine mammals from low frequency active Navy sonar, documented concerns over rock mining threats to Miami-Dade wellheads where one million people get their drinking water, has traveled extensively to cover the decline of the world's coral reefs, and ventured to the bottom of the ocean aboard a scientific submersible during bioprospecting and chronicling the damage from bottom trawling. His general assignments have ranged from interviewing presidents, going inside to investigate violent white extremists, exposing dangerous religious cults, documenting serious lapses in Florida's drivers' licensing, videotaping bribes, to going undercover to chronicle the secret pipeline from puppy mills to pet stores. His assignments have taken him to Indonesia, Central America, throughout the Caribbean and every part of America. Jeff is also a frequent invited speaker and panelist on environmental journalism and journalism ethics. In addition, he earned a fellowship at the Metcalf Institute for Environmental Reporting (University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography) and a fellowship at the Western Knight Center for Specialized Reporting in political coverage (University of Southern California Annenberg School). He is a long-time member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Society of Environmental Journalists. Jeff was born and raised in Seattle, Washington where he grew a fondness for the outdoors, including boating, water and snow skiing, scuba diving and alpine hiking — reaching the summit of Mount Rainier. He's married and lives in Miami Shores, Florida. Jeff is also active in volunteering for community non-profit organizations. He graduated from Washington State University's Edward R. Murrow School of Communications. Contact Jeff, 954-622-6192.

Dina Cappiello covers EPA, Interior, energy and environment out of Washington, DC for The Associated Press. Previously, she reported for ClimateWire and covered energy policy and climate change for Congressional Quarterly in DC. Prior to joining CQ, Cappiello was the environment writer for the Houston Chronicle, where her 2005 investigative series "In Harm's Way," which documented the risk industrial pollution poses to fence-line communities, won SEJ's Kevin Carmody Award for Investigative Reporting, Print, was a finalist for the Edward J. Meeman award, and was featured on PBS' Expose: America's Investigative Reports. In 2006, Ms. Cappiello was named the best specialty reporter in Texas. Before Houston, Cappiello reported on environmental issues for the Albany Times Union in upstate New York. Her work on acid rain and dredging PCBs from the Hudson River there resulted in her being named a finalist for the John B. Oakes Award twice, and a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. In 2001, Cappiello was named the Young Journalist of the Year by the New York State Associated Press Association. Cappiello holds masters' degrees in environmental science and journalism from Columbia University, and a bachelor's degree in biology from Georgetown University. Contact Dina, 202-641-9446.

Peter Fairley is a ground-breaking energy and technology journalist based in Victoria, British Columbia. He is a contributing writer with Technology Review magazine, contributing editor with Spectrum, and author of the webjournal Carbon-Nation, covering developments in renewable energy, nuclear power, the sustainable use of fossil fuels and clean transportation technologies. An experienced foreign correspondent, Fairley has worked on assignment on four continents, from Bolivia to China and throughout Europe. Other publications where Peter's byline can be found include The Sunday Times of London, Canadian Business, Architectural Record and Popular Mechanics. Prior to freelancing Fairley served as Washington bureau chief and senior managing editor for Chemical Week, chronicling the global chemical industry's collision with the environment and its struggle to change. Fairley holds a master's degree from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and a B.Sc. in molecular biology from McGill University. Contact Peter, 250-514-6248.

Robert McClure's midlife crisis was all about environmental reporting. A Florida native, he spent a decade on the beat at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, where he wrote numerous articles pointing out the need for Everglades restoration in the years leading up to launching of the planet's largest ecosystem restoration there. He also was awarded a prestigious Knight Wallace journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he studied environment and economics and concluded that he must move West to tackle the really big environmental stories. That's what he did, taking a job with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He spent his 40th birthday — his second weekend living in the Pacific Northwest — camping at Mount Adams. In a decade at the P-I, he produced five multi-part projects on mining, endangered species, and the need for environmental restoration of Puget Sound and the Duwamish River. He covers climate change and other environmental news topics regularly in his blog, Dateline Earth. When the P-I ceased publishing in March 2009, McClure was instrumental in helping launch a start-up non-profit news venture called InvestigationsWest to carry on investigative and narrative reporting on the West. His professional career began at United Press International's Miami and Tallahassee bureaus. McClure is the recipient of numerous state, regional and national journalism awards including the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism. Contact Robert, 206-718-0340.

Tim Wheeler covers the environment for The Baltimore Sun. He has written about the environment frequently in his 30-year journalistic career, which included a decade as the beat reporter for The Evening Sun and then The Sun after the two papers merged. He spent two years as an editor helping to coordinate The Sun's medical, science, religion and environmental coverage, during which reporters for the paper won an SEJ award for spot-news coverage of a chemical-laden train fire in downtown Baltimore. His reporting on the Chesapeake Bay, childhood lead poisoning and other environmental topics also has won multiple awards. Before coming to Baltimore, he worked for newspapers in Richmond and Norfolk, VA., and for Media General News Service in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia, with a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. Contact Tim, 410-409-3469.

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Ex Officio Board Members

Founding President
Jim Detjen is the Director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. He joined the MSU faculty in January 1995 as the Knight Chair in Journalism. Detjen spent 21 years as a professional newspaper reporter and editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal and other publications. His reporting has won more than 50 state, national and international awards including Polk, National Headliner, Stokes and Meeman awards. He is a three-time finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Detjen is a contributor to or author of four books on environmental and science journalism topics. He has lectured widely and has taught journalism workshops in the British Isles, Australia, Russia, Ukraine, China, Japan, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Mexico and throughout the U.S. Detjen helped found the International Federation of Environmental Journalists in 1993 and served as IFEJ president from 1994 to 2000. He earned a bachelor's degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. Detjen was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to teach at Nanakai University in Tianjin, China during the spring semester of 2002. Contact Jim, 517-353-9479.

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SEJ Headquarters

Executive Director
Beth Parke became SEJ's first executive director in 1993. She provides entrepreneurial leadership to clarify, protect and advance SEJ's mission. Parke's responsibilities include implementation of board policies, budget and finance, development, strategic planning, university relations with regard to annual conferences, and collaboration with partners in the journalism community. From 1984 - 1992 Parke was senior producer and host for Consider the Alternatives, an award-winning radio series on public policy issues. Prior to that she was employed as a producer for National Public Radio affiliates WGBH-FM, Boston and WHYY-FM, Philadelphia. Parke earned a B.A. in Communications from Boston College, and an M.A. from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Contact Beth, 215-884-8174.

Director of Programs and Operations
Christine Rigel, director of programs and operations, has been with SEJ since 1993. She designed and built SEJ's database system and served for many years as design editor of SEJournal. Current responsibilities include planning and implemention of SEJ programs, supervising administrative and program staff, managing SEJ's computer systems and working with SEJ's board on awards, membership and elections committees. Rigel feels that her unique contribution to SEJ is in finding ways to enable a small staff to perform heroically through streamlining procedures and other methods of maximizing team performance. Rigel earned a B.A. in professional writing from Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. She is also an accomplished photographer. Contact Chris, 215-884-8177.

Senior Programs Associate
Carol Nolen, senior programs associate, joined the SEJ staff in February 2003. She brings exposition management, marketing, seminar planning and database skills to SEJ. Her responsibilities include speaker management for the annual conference, marketing communication, staff support to the board's endowment committee and for the awards program. Nolen attended Clarion State University where she majored in business administration. Contact Carol, 732-776-7046.

Records Manager and SEJournal Design Editor
Linda Knouse, records manager and SEJournal design editor, began working for SEJ in the fall of 2002. Knouse maintains member records and accounting files and lends support to many programs and projects. Before joining SEJ's staff, Knouse was employed by Montgomery Newspapers where she handled billing data and page layout for display advertising. Knouse's freelance writing on environmental subjects has been published by Montgomery Newspapers, Montgomery Town and Country Magazine and Pennsylvania Magazine. Contact Linda, 215-884-8174.

SEJ Project Staff

Annual Conference Manager
Jay Letto, a founding member of SEJ, has been the group's annual conference manager since 1993. He also works as a freelance writer and editor. From 1986 to 1992, Letto served as director of the environment program at the Scientists' Institute for Public Information in New York City, where he was also co-editor of SIPIscope. Letto has organized scores of programs for journalists on the full spectrum of environmental issues. As annual conference manager for SEJ, he works with the board conference chair and dozens of member-volunteers to organize a balanced, diverse and news-making program dealing with the myriad aspects of news reporting on environmental issues. Letto is on the editorial board of the Stanford University publication Ecofables/Ecoscience and on the advisory board of the Science & Technology News Network. Letto earned his B.S. in biology and environmental studies from the University of Michigan. He also holds an M.A. in journalism, with a certificate in science and environmental reporting, from New York University. Contact Jay, 509-493-4428.

Web Content Manager
Cindy MacDonald, SEJ's Web content manager, develops and maintains fresh, accurate and timely content for www.sej.org on a daily basis. She has applied her technical expertise and extensive experience as a detail-oriented writer and administrator to this creative and critically important service to the SEJ community since December 2000. Based near Bobcaygeon, Ontario, Canada, MacDonald is an avid proponent of accurate information in general and on environmental issues in particular. She is a French/Spanish undergraduate of the University of Windsor, Canada. Contact Cindy.

TipSheet and WatchDog TipSheet Editor; member, SEJ FOI Taskforce
Joseph A. Davis, free-lance writer/editor in Washington, D.C., directs the WatchDog Project, an activity of SEJ's First Amendment Task Force that reports on secrecy trends and supports reporters' efforts to make better use of FOIA. He also edits TipSheet, a biweekly electronic newsletter of story ideas and sources co-published by SEJ and the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation (RTNDF). Davis was senior writer with the Environmental Health Center until 2002, where he was acting editor of EHC's Environment Writer as well as principal author of EHC's reporter's guide on the science of global climate change. Between 1982 and 1989, he covered energy, environment and natural resources for Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C. Davis earned his B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has experience in database reporting and has taught Web publishing. Contact Joe, 301-656-2261.

SEJournal Editor
Mike Mansur has covered environmental issues for The Kansas City Star since 1991. He worked on The Star's investigative project about the U.S. Department of Agriculture — work that won numerous national awards including the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Mansur was a Michigan Journalism Fellow in 1993-1994 and a longtime board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. He served as SEJ board president in 1999-2001. Currently, he edits the SEJournal. In 2002, Mansur moved to a new assignment of covering government affairs in Kansas City, although those stories may still include an environment story or two. Contact Mike, 816-234-4433.

Diversity Program Associate
Talli Nauman is co-founder and co-director of the Aguascalientes, Mexico-based bilingual independent media project Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, initiated with a fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1994. She was the Americas Program associate and editor at large for the International Relations Center, a people-based policy think-tank and non-profit, trilingual web publisher based in Silver City, New Mexico, from 2003 to 2006. She writes a weekly column on environmental issues in the Mexico edition of the Miami Herald and takes part in hemispheric efforts to promote environmental community right-to-know and access to public information on industrial toxics. Nauman recently returned to reside in the United States after living and working in photojournalism in Mexico for 16 years. Her background includes more than 30 years in major media outlets in the Americas, including the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, UPI, and The Associated Press in Los Angeles and Mexico City; a master's degree in International Journalism from the University of Southern California and a bachelor's degree in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard-Radcliffe. Contact Talli, 215-884-8174.

Advisory Board

Marla Cone
Walter Cronkite
Steve Curwood
Peter Desbarats
Gregg Easterbrook
Charles Eisendrath
Judy Muller
Rich Oppel
Gene Roberts
Rick Rodriguez
Sandy Rowe
Teya Ryan
Robert Semple
Judy Woodruff

Katherine Fanning (1927-2000)
Thomas Winship (1920-2002)

SEJournal Editorial Board

Robert McClure (chair)
Mike Mansur (editor)
Elizabeth Bluemink
Adam Glenn
Bill Kovarik
David Sachsman
JoAnn Valenti
Denny Wilkins

Endowment Committee

Peter Thomson (co-chair)
Carolyn Whetzel (co-chair)
Emilia Askari
Brenda Box
James Bruggers
Peter Dykstra
Dan Fagin
Christy George
Kathrin Lassila
David Ropeik
Robert Thomas
Beth Parke (ex officio)