Win, Place and Show: Former Ted Scripps Fellows Capture Top Environmental Reporting Awards

By Wendy Worrall Redal

Former Ted Scripps Fellow Vicki Monks took first-place honors in the
largest environmental journalism contest in North America. Monks won the
top prize for Outstanding Radio Reporting, Large Market from the Society of Environmental Journalists for her National Public Radio story on industrial contamination of Indian lands in Oklahoma.

The story aired earlier this year on the NPR program "Living On Earth."

SEJ announced the award winners Sept. 28 during the organization's annual conference
held this year in Austin, Texas. The contest attracted 240 entries nationwide. The first- place award included a trophy and $1,000 prize.

Two other former Fellows were also honored at the ceremony at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel: Daniel Glick was part of a National Geographic magazine reporting team that took second place in the Outstanding Explanatory Reporting, Print category for its package of stories on global climate change, while Daniel Grossman garnered third place with reporter John Rudolph for their American RadioWorks story, "Climate of Uncertainty," in the same category that Monks won.

Contamination from the Continental Carbon plant near Ponca City, Okla., is so severe that pure white sheep have turned black (Photo/Vicki Monks)

Monks' prize-winning story examined contamination from a carbon black production facility near Ponca City, Okla. and the failure of Oklahoma's Department of Environmental Quality to control the pollution. Judges called the story "a riveting account of how industrial pollution has affected Native Americans in Oklahoma."

At the SEJ awards ceremony, Vicki Monks encouraged reporters and editors to pursue environmental stories in Indian Country

In her acceptance speech at the awards ceremony, Monks encouraged other journalists to pursue environmental stories in Indian country. "You can find a wealth of stories that are largely unreported," she told the assembled reporters and editors.

Monks left Santa Fe, NM this past summer to work on a book about Indian Country in Oklahoma one hundred years after statehood. The Fund for Investigative Journalism is backing her continuing project on environmental threats to Indian lands with a $6,000 research grant. She is also teaching broadcasting this semester as an adjunct instructor at the University of Oklahoma's Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communications.

Both Glick and Grossman continue to cover climate change. Glick traveled to Kaktovik, Alaska in October to track the effects of a warming climate on polar bears for a chapter he is writing in an upcoming book for The Mountaineers press.

Daniel Glick and friend stand atop a melting Arctic ice pack