Fellows Updates

The Ted Scripps Fellows' family is growing! At least three former fellows have become parents in the past year. Congratulations to the families of Bill Adler, Pat Joseph and Ted Wood!

Bill Adler helped swell the ranks of Colorado-based former fellows when he and his wife Robin moved to Denver in the fall. Accompanying them were their "rogue hound, Roxie," and their son, Zeke, whom they adopted as a newborn in June. Of Zeke, Bill writes, "He sports a thicket of red hair, a smile as wide as an offensive tackle, and an appetite to match." Bill also "laureled" in a recent edition of the Columbia Journalism Review for his Austin Chronicle article uncovering the true source of some pro-nuclear editorials. Click here to read CJR's write-up.

Zeke Adler models his punk hair-do.

David Baron recently returned from a trip to India, which he calls "amazing, exhausting, exotic, depressing, uplifting... a bit of everything." His three-week "lecture tour" of the country was sponsored by the U.S. State department, which is working with Indians on how to address conflicts between humans and wildlife in both countries. David's 2003 book The Beast in the Garden, won the Colorado Book Award in November for the "Colorado and the West" category. He's now settling into his new job, working as global development director for the public radio show "The World," and his new marriage, to partner Paul. David writes, "That's one advantage of living in Massachusetts—the only state in the union where we could get hitched."

Elizabeth Bluemink pulled up stakes in Florida last June and moved to Juneau, Alaska, to cover logging, fishing and mining for the Juneau Empire. She says she loves Alaska and her new job so far, including some stories on gold mining, small-scale logging in the Tongass and state-federal conflict over proposed off-shore fish farming.

Lucia Joseph says "cheese!"

A project of Jennifer Bowles and two colleagues at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., won a second place award from the Associated Press News Executive Council for California and Nevada. The project was a result of her team's investigation into the pollution at a missile testing site and its impact on a nearby residential neighborhood, where many people have gotten thyroid illness.

Rebecca Huntington traveled to China to report on pollution, coal mining and global climate change for the Jackson Hole News & Guide. Of her paper, she writes, "The small-town newspaper has a strong interest in global issues, particularly when global climate change could impact the town's winter tourism economy."

In June, Alex Markels became a "contributing editor" at U.S. News & World Report. Since then he has covered the presidential election, the Forest Service's poor fire safety record and the growing oil shortage. In October he had a cover story, called "Angry in America," which examined the election's impact on Americans' personal relationships. Check out a list of some of his recent stories. Last month Alex went to Panama on assignment for an eco-adventure story. Later this winter he'll be taking his son Moses on his first foreign travel adventure, to Machu Picchu and the Peruvian jungle.

The Colorado contingent of former fellows continues to grow! In October, Kim McGuire left the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and started work at the Denver Post. She writes, "I am covering toxics, which includes air and water pollution, hazardous waste cleanups, the nuclear West, and EPA's environmental regulation and enforcement. They are also humoring my interest in chemical weapons." And in that vein, on Oct. 3, her two-part series on the destruction of chemical weapons, which was the subject of her fellowship program last year, ran in the Democrat-Gazette. She says she hopes to continue working on the topic, and expand it to include international demilitarization efforts, especially in the former Soviet Union.

Ted and Conor Wood show off their silly hats.

Emily Murphy reports she's still with USA Today, working as a multimedia producer. She went to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in Boston and New York; her resulting multimedia pieces are online at Behind the Scenes at the DNC and Behind the Scenes at the RNC. She also wrote a story on NASCAR's female fans. The story and multimedia piece are both also available online.

Bruce Ritchie reports he recently worked on a story about the gill net ban approved by Florida voters 10 years ago. His reporting included going out with state wildlife officers on a night mission—complete with night vision goggles—to try to catch fishers using illegal nets. In November Bruce and his wife, Sue Ellen Smith, went on vacation to Costa Rica. "We had a good time viewing rainforest birds and other wildlife, seeing the Arenal volcano, whitewater rafting on the Sarapiqui River and snorkeling in the Pacific Ocean at Tamarindo," he writes.

David Wilson is teaching radio production at the University of Colorado at Boulder's journalism school. He'll also be providing daily news coverage from the state legislature to 12 Colorado community radio stations this year.