Five journalists have been selected as 2008-09 Ted Scripps Fellows in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The fellowships are hosted by the Center for Environmental Journalism and funded through a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation. The nine-month program offers mid-career journalists an opportunity to deepen their understanding of environmental issues and policy through coursework, seminars and field trips in the region.
Following are the new Ted Scripps Fellows:
o Jad (Jonathan) Davenport, freelance photojournalist based in Denver. He has written and photographed stories for a variety of magazines including Outside, Men's Journal and ISLANDS, where he is a contributing editor and photographer. He began his career through war photography in the 1980s. In the late 1990s he photographed and wrote stories for the World Health Organization about epidemics in Africa, Asia, Central and South America. Davenport won a 2007 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award for a feature on South Georgia in the sub-Antarctic.
o Deborah J. Fryer, freelance producer, writer, director and founder of Lila Films Inc., an independent production company for educational videos and documentary films, based in Boulder. She has created films for PBS, Nova, Frontline, MSNBC, Discovery, History Channel, Turner Broadcasting, HGTV, U.S. Fish & Wildlife and Audubon. Her first documentary, "SHAKEN: Journey into the Mind of a Parkinson's Patient," won multiple awards. She has also been published as a writer, and was noted as "one of the 20 up-and-coming writers in the U.S. to watch" by the literary journal New Millennium Writings.
o Joanna Kakissis, freelance journalist based in Athens, Greece. Kakissis has been published by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, World Hum and The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., where she was previously a staff writer. She has received awards from the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists and the North Carolina Press Association. She also contributed to a News & Observer series on hurricane-spawned flooding in eastern North Carolina that was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news.
o Keith Kloor, freelance journalist based in New York City. Kloor has been a senior editor at Audubon magazine until recently, and has been published as a freelancer by Audubon as well as Science, Archaeology and Smithsonian, among others. Kloor's most recent writing has focused on a wide range of topics, from the impacts of environmental constraints on prehistoric Indian cultures to modern-day coalbed methane drilling in Wyoming.
o Chris Welsch, senior reporter and photographer at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Welsch has reported and photographed in more than 40 countries on six continents, writing on a variety of travel and news topics. He also has won several Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards and a 2004 Society for News Design Award of Excellence for photography.
Since 1997, the Scripps Howard Foundation has provided annual grants for its fellowships at CU-Boulder, named for Ted Scripps, grandson of the founder of the E.W. Scripps Co. Ted Scripps distinguished himself as a journalist who cared about First Amendment rights and the environment.
The Center for Environmental Journalism in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at CU-Boulder is the first of its kind in the United States. For more information call (303) 492-4114 or visit the Web site at /.