Media Fellowships

With support from the Bill Lane Center, Kapelow reported on the high rates of suicide in the rural Alaskan Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, and the program developed by Indigenous researchers to address the crisis with a community-based approach. TIME published part one of this reporting project in October of 2022 with coverage of the public health crisis in Catron County, New Mexico, which had the highest suicide rate of any county in the contiguous United States from 2010 to 2020. For the second installment of Kapelow's work, NPR's Morning Edition aired "Indigenous researchers in Alaska try a new approach to prevent suicides" in August of 2024. The audio piece was followed by a longer report with evocative photography, published on September 10, World Suicide Prevention Day.  According to Kapelow, western Alaska is the only region in the country to surpass Catron County's rate of suicides. 

Julia Simon was named NPR's new climate solutions reporter in November of 2022. She has been a frequent contributor to NPR’s climate change desk where her reporting airs on "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered." She’s also a regular contributor to NPR’s "Planet Money," "The Indicator," "Life Kit," "Shortwave," and other NPR podcasts. In addition to her radio work, she spent time in print as a staff reporter at Reuters covering the energy economy. Her reporting for "Planet Money" about the history of antitrust was a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award in business journalism. Simon spent much of her career reporting from the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia and is now based in California. The Bill Lane Center fellowship enabled Simon to report on mining ventures across the West in the context of climate change. Morning Edition aired her piece "Demand for minerals sparks fear of mining abuses on Indigenous peoples' lands" in January of 2024.

Janet Wilson is a veteran environment reporter covering the California desert for The Desert Sun and USA Today network, including climate change, water, energy and public lands. Her favorite reporting melds document-driven findings with real people and their stories. She has won multiple awards, including from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for investigations of shoddy oil regulators, a team Pulitzer Prize for wildfire coverage and a Nieman fellowship for reporting on juvenile violence in Detroit. She lives at the doorstep of the Cleveland National Forest, and she and her husband are section backpacking the Appalachian and Pacific Crest trails. With support from the Bill Lane Center, Wilson examined the uses of water in the California desert and published several stories related to this topic. Two of her groundbreaking articles were published with ProPublica in November of 2023:  "The Historic Claims That Put a Few California Farming Families First in Line for Colorado River Water" and "The Future of the Colorado River Hinges on One Young Negotiator."

Keith Schneider is the recipient of our 2021-2022 fellowship, which he used to produce a three-part investigative series on extreme heat, drought, and "water supply peril" in Arizona. He has spent more than three decades covering energy, environmental, water, and land-use issues for numerous national and international publications. He was on the New York Times staff for a decade and remains a special correspondent; he is also chief correspondent for the water-centric publication Circle of Blue and spent six months recently doing environmental reporting for The Los Angeles Times.

Support for two stories, one on a famous redwood tree, El Palo Alto, after which the city is named. This piece was published in the New York Times in June of 2021. A second story about the threat ozone pollution poses to biodiversity was published in Yale Environment360 in October of 2021, and in High Country News in November of 2021. It earned Robbins the Colorado Society of Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies award.Ongoing research and informed speculation by scientists and land managers shows that ground-level ozone may have potentially harmful and long-term effects on ecosystem structure and function. Robbins' piece calls attention to this under-reported phenomenon, and examines the impacts of ozone on the West’s great trees and forests, particularly the Bristlecone Pines, Sequoias and Redwoods.

Support for a series of stories in Arctic Today on the Bering Sea, covering a range of topics such as Bering Sea ice, Bering Sea mining, citizen science, the Aleutian Islands and Bering Sea teleconnections. 

Support for commissioning and editing a special issue of the literary journal Guernica entitled “Rewriting the West,” about the nexus of race, Latinos, and the creation and culture of the U.S. West.

Support for travel and reporting to kick off Climate Central’s series “Breathing Fire” on the health effects of wildfire smoke. Stories appeared on PBS NewsHour, Kaiser California Healthline, Pacific Standard, and others.

Support for a six-part series in the Christian Science Monitor’s “Inhabit” section and An Oroville Message: As Climate Shifts, So Will Water Strategies on solving water challenges in the American West.  His other work includes Why Solar Panels Bloom in Southwest's Land of Hydropower

Support for the “Femme Farmer Project,” a series of profiles of women farmers and ranchers across the American West, a few decades into what USDA statistics show is a significant increase of women owned or operated businesses. Portions appeared in the Washington Post, High Country News, In These Times, Catholic Rural Life, and the Rural Community Assistance Corporation's website.

Reporting and archival document research exploring changing patterns in ranching on public lands, in the context of antigovernment protests like the Bundy Ranch standoff of 2013. Published in High Country News.

Support for the development of a prototype Twitter filter for tracking western issues like water and public lands.

Support for reporting and writing for the book Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction, published by Workman Publishing.

Support for an environmental data analysis and resource website, and the development of a series of interactive dashboards tracking western environmental issues like wildfire, drought, precipitation, and snowpack.

Reporting on climate change’s potential effect on Bay Area conservation lands, and collaboration with the Center on a simulator of possible land cover changes and an interactive history of open space conservation.

Reporting on a historical ecology project to recreate what the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta might have looked like before the advent of gold mining, land reclamation, and large-scale agriculture. A collaboration with the Center and the San Francisco Estuary Institute on a radio story and interactive multimedia map.

Support for the development of an online guide to reporting in Canada’s First Nations communities.

A series of photo portraits of black cowboys of the American West.

Reporting on public water supplies in Texas and collaboration on an interactive graphic exploring drought, water use, and pricing trends in Texas and nationwide.

Reporting on negotiations among western states on Colorado River water supplies.

A project documenting life in rural California, published as an interactive multimedia website and series of public posters in Oakland, San Jose, and Los Angeles

Reporting, research, and field work tracing a historical mystery: was the work of a 19th century explorer and cartographer unfairly maligned because of a geographical misconception? Collaboration with the Center produced an interactive multimedia map to accompany the article in Harper’s Magazine.