The Knight-Risser Prize
for Western Environmental Journalism
The Knight-Risser Prize and Symposium are being reimagined to better encourage coverage of important environmental issues affecting the West. Please follow @JSKstanford on Twitter for more information and announcements.

2010 Knight-Risser Prize Symposium
The Crisis in Environmental Watchdog Journalism

Two months after publishing the 2010 Knight-Risser Prize winning story "Chain-Saw Scouting," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed its presses and laid off most of its newsroom. Thus it joined a list of U.S. newspapers––166 since 2008––that have shut down, including the 2005 prize-winning Rocky Mountain News. As the decline of newspapers intensifies, who will move to fill the gap in hard-hitting investigative reporting on environmental and resource issues in the West? Former P-I reporter Lewis Kamb and a panel of journalists discuss the evolving landscape of non-profit startups, independents, crowd-funding, blogs, educational partnerships and surviving news organizations.

Panel Discussion, Award Presentation and Q&A Session

Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010
4:15-6:00pm
Paul Brest Hall East, Munger Graduate Residences
Stanford University

Panelists

Evelyn Larrubia, Moderator
John S. Knight Journalism Fellow, Stanford University

Lewis Kamb
Reporter, The News-Tribune (Tacoma, Wash).
Winner, 2010 Knight-Risser Prize

Mark Katches
Editorial Director, CaliforniaWatch.org

Ann Grimes
Director, Graduate Journalism Program, Stanford University

Elizabeth Titus
Editor in Chief, The Stanford Daily


Location
Paul Brest Hall East, Stanford University
Munger Graduate Residence, Building 4
555 Salvatierra Walk
Stanford, CA
(View map: Stanford | Google)

The discussion will be followed by a public reception. Please RSVP using the form below.

Logistics
Parking on campus is free after 4pm.

 

Panelist Biographies

Evelyn Larrubia, Moderator
Evelyn LarrubiaAs a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, Larrubia is studying the growing number of non-profit journalism ventures and evaluating the sustainability of new funding models for investigative journalism. She is also the associate editor at the Los Angeles Daily Journal, and a former reporter at The Los Angeles Times, the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel and El Nuevo Herald in Miami. Her work has garnered a number of awards, including the 2006 Associated Press Managing Editors' Public Service Award and Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for Investigative Reporting, and in 2009, the Overseas Press Club award.

Lewis Kamb
Lewis KambKamb has written about police corruption, prostitution scandals, tribal whale hunts and Boy Scouts' clear-cuts. His deft writing and tireless research have marked a distinctive career that has included reporting for Knight-Ridder's Washington D.C. bureau, the Birmingham Post-Herald, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Seattle Times. The winner of more than a dozen regional and national awards, Kamb's most gratifying work comes from journalism that has direct social impact. Among other results, Kamb's work on the 2003 Seattle P-I series about botched missing persons investigations, "Without a Trace," helped lead to state and national reforms and aided in the identification of at least six sets of human remains. Kamb was a founding member of the Seattle-based non-profit investigative journalism studio, InvestigateWest. He now works for The (Tacoma)News Tribune covering politics and lives in Issaquah, Wash., with his wife, reporter-turned-law student Angela Galloway, and their 2-year-old son, Finn.

Mark Katches
Mark KatchesMark is the editorial director for California Watch. Previously, Mark built and ran investigative teams at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Orange County Register. He was the primary editor of Pulitzer Prize winning projects in both 2008 and 2010 and has edited or managed three other stories that have been Pulitzer finalists since 2004. Projects he has edited or helped direct have also won two George Polk Awards, and the Scripps-Howard National Journalism Award as well the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Worth Bingham Prize, the Sigma Delta Chi Award and the National Headliner Award. In 2001, he was part of a reporting team that won the Gerald Loeb and IRE awards for a series of stories detailing the rising profits from the human tissue trade. Mark served on the board of directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors and was recognized with a special IRE award in 2010 for leading the organization’s mentorship program. He also serves on the advisory board of the Texas Tribune.

Ann Grimes
Ann GrimesGrimes is a former staff writer and editor for The Wall Street Journal where she covered technology and business. As Deputy Bureau Chief in San Francisco, she oversaw the newspaper's coverage of Silicon Valley during the 1990's dot-com boom and bust. While at Dow Jones & Co., she also worked on developing new-media strategy. Earlier, Grimes was on the editorial staff of The Washington Post. As the Deputy National Editor responsible for coverage of the federal government, she ran a national news section that covered the political spectrum. Starting out, she wrote about social issues in Chicago and contributed regularly to The New York Times. Grimes is the author of Running Mates, a book about the 1988 presidential campaign published by William Morrow & Co. and a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. She is the recipient of several journalism awards including the Society of Professional Journalist's Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism, the Education Writers Association National Award, and two Chicago Newspaper Guild Awards. She was a 1997-1998 John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford. A former teaching fellow at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Grimes teaches classes in public issues reporting, business, technology and new media. She has a B.A. in English Literature from Georgetown University and an M.A. in Humanities from the University of Chicago.

Elizabeth Titus
Elizabeth TitusTitus, a senior majoring in urban studies, is the editor in chief of the 118-year-old Stanford Daily. She interned this summer at The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public media organization covering Texas politics and policy. There she reported on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, wildlife and the BP oil spill, and higher education. The previous summer, she interned at The Sacramento Valley Mirror, a small Central Valley newspaper renowned for its investigative journalism, where she reported on agricultural worker safety, schools and crime. She got her start in journalism at The Ferndale Enterprise, a weekly paper her parents run in Ferndale, Calif. Ferndale, population 1,400, claims to be the westernmost city -- and home to the westernmost saloon -- in the continental United States. Titus plans to pursue journalism after graduation.

 

 

 

Previous symposiums:

Risser Prize Symposium
January 27, 2010:
“Visualizing the Environment”

2008 Risser Prize Symposium
March 13, 2008:
“Environmental Fallout of the Cold War”

2005 Risser Prize Symposium
November 1, 2005:
“Water in the West: 21st Century Challenges in a 19th Century Legal Framework”

 

Share |

WINNERS OF THE KNIGHT-RISSER PRIZE
2017
Hell and High Water
Texas Tribune, ProPublica
2016
Pumped Dry
The Desert Sun and USA Today
2015
Big Oil, Bad Air
CPI, InsideClimate News, The Weather Channel
2014
Sea Change
The Seattle Times
2013
The Killing Agency
The Sacramento Bee
2012
Perilous Passages
High Country News
2011
Dry Times
5280 Magazine
2010
Chain Saw Scouting
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
2009
Logging and Landslides:
What Went Wrong?
The Seattle Times
2008
Climate Change Hits Home
San Antonio Express-News
2007
Blighted Homeland
The Los Angeles Times
2006
Squeezing Water from a Stone
High Country News