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Supporting climate reporting in Americans’ backyards
Launched in spring 2021, the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s Journalism Fellowship supports freelance or staff journalists associated with U.S. local/regional newsrooms in developing a high-impact news project that connects local perspectives, values and priorities with climate change science and solutions. The Fellowship, which now resides in the MIT Office of the Vice President for Climate, is part of ESI’s program to engage Americans, states, and communities as they face climate impacts, solutions, and an emerging low-carbon economy.
These Fellowships provide scientific, design, and financial support to outstanding journalists in support of longform or serial local reporting that opens conversations about climate change solutions and impacts.
By engaging Americans who are unsure, disengaged, or doubtful about the need to act on climate change, these reporting projects advance the frontiers of public opinion on climate as both the impacts and the solutions to climate change grow more visible in Americans’ daily lives.
Read our MIT ESI Journalism Fellowship Impact Report 2021 to learn about the accomplishments of the first year of this fellowship program.
Meet our 2025 Fellows
Karina Atkins
Chicago, IL: Chicago Tribune
Karina Atkins is a Chicago-based environmental journalist. Her reporting explores how climate change is affecting the Midwest—from Chicago’s environmental justice neighborhoods to the Great Lakes and rural family farms—and what’s being done about it. She studied anthropology, journalism and policy at the University of Virginia.
Fellowship project: Karina’s fellowship project will unveil overlooked threats to Illinois’ farmland and groundwater that, if left unaddressed, could prove catastrophic for national food security in the face of climate change. It will also show how, with proper regulations and investment, Illinois still has time to become a hub for climate-smart agriculture.
Carolyn Beans
Lancaster, PA: Lancaster Farming
Carolyn Beans is a science reporter covering food, agriculture, and health from her home base in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After earning a PhD in biology from the University of Virginia, she made the leap to science journalism via an AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship at NPR. Her food writing has appeared in Undark, The Atlantic, PNAS Front Matter, Slate, The Washington Post, TED-Ed, The Food and Environment Reporting Network and other outlets.
Fellowship project description: Carolyn will report on Pennsylvania dairy farmers’ efforts to measure and minimize greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately earn a return on climate-smart milk.
Elena Bruess
Houston, TX: Houston Landing
Elena Varela Bruess covers the environment and climate for the Houston Landing. She comes to Houston after two years at the San Antonio Express-News, where she covered the environment, climate and water. Elena previously worked in the Midwest as a reporter for Circle of Blue, a nonprofit newsroom where she focused on water issues in the Great Lakes region. Before that, she covered health and inequity in Chicago as a Pulitzer Center reporting fellow. She is originally from Northeastern Iowa and holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University and a degree from University of Iowa’s undergraduate writing program.
Fellowship project: Elena will develop a series of stories on landfill pollution, methane emissions, remediation and the historic and disproportionate impact landfills and trash incinerators have had on marginalized communities in Houston.
Nina Ignaczak
Detroit, MI: Planet Detroit
Nina Misuraca Ignaczak is an award-winning journalist and editor based in Detroit. She founded Planet Detroit, a digital media startup producing public interest journalism on climate, equity, health, and the environment, centering grassroots voices and solutions. Since 2019, Planet Detroit has earned recognition from the Society for Professional Journalists Detroit, the Institute for Nonprofit News, and LION Publishers. Before journalism, Nina worked in urban planning in government and nonprofit sectors. She holds a Master of Science in Natural Resource Ecology and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Fellowship project: Nina’s project investigates how food waste and methane emissions in Metro Detroit contribute to Michigan’s climate challenges, and explores community-driven solutions to reduce emissions and build climate resilience.
Paul Ruffins
Prince George’s County, MD: Streetcar Suburbs News
Paul Ruffins was one of the first journalists to cover the complexities of environmentalism in Black communities and served as a delegate to the first People of Color Environmental Justice Summit. Since then, he has been the managing editor for several community newspapers and social justice organizations. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Washington CityPaper and many other publications. In 2020, he started a science column called “The Science of the City” for Streetcar Suburbs News, a chain of nonprofit newspapers reviving local journalism in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where he lives.
Fellowship project: Paul’s project investigates a pioneering experiment in food composting in Prince George’s County, illuminating how it works, whether it is delivering as promised, and how successes can be replicated regionally and nationally.
Past Fellows
Learn about our past journalism fellows and their reporting projects.
Fellowship Advisors
Dr. Deborah Blum, Director, Knight Science Journalism Program, MIT
Prof. Jim Paradis, Robert M. Metcalfe Professor of Writing and Comparative Media Studies, MIT
Dr. Seth Mnookin, Director of the Graduate Program in Science Writing and a Professor in Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT
Climate Research Collaborators
Dr. Adam Schlosser, Senior Research Scientist and Deputy Director for Science Research, MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Joshua Hodge, Executive Director, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
Dr. Kerry Emanuel, Professor emeritus of Atmospheric Science at MIT
Contact
Aaron Krol, Managing Editor (akrol@mit.edu)