Pulitzer Center Update April 13, 2021
Environment (Re)Defined: Annual Conference Explores the Many Dimensions of a Planet In Crisis
Country:
Image by Lucy Crelli.
"From Gender and Race to Class, Geopolitics, and the Media—How Environmental Issues Touch Them All"
Over the past four years, Pulitzer Center annual conferences have focused on gender, religion, conflict, and justice, each time drawing on the work of grantees from across the globe. This year’s conference, next week on Zoom, tackles all those issues and more. Environment (Re)Defined, featuring Pulitzer Center grantees and experts from across the globe, is a deep-dive exploration into the global crisis that truly affects us all.
On April 20-23, join us for one, two, or all of the fascinating panels on topics that range from the disproportionate effect of climate change on women, Indigenous communities, and people of color to the state of environmental journalism today; the innovative use of data and investigative techniques that our grantees are exploring through initiatives such as our Rainforest Journalism Fund and the Rainforest Investigations Network; and the complex, too often caricatured, role of China in global environmental politics.
Special sessions will feature thought leaders in conversation, from Frances Seymour of the World Resources Institute and social justice activist Lennox Yearwood Jr., to filmmakers Fiona Lloyd-Davies and Robert Flummerfelt on the health consequences for Congolese amid the boom in demand for cobalt for electric-car batteries. There’s even a workshop on using poetry to process the challenge of environmental threats, building off the success of our popular Fighting Words poetry contests.
Conference week kicks off with a special Pulitzer Champions event, on April 19 at 5:00pm EDT. Pulitzer Center board member David Rohde, executive editor of newyorker.com, will be discussing the intersections of migration, climate change, and global health with two grantees who have been leading the way in reporting this topic: Abrahm Lustgarten, author of Refugees From the Earth, the Pulitzer Center-supported project with ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine that just won an Overseas Press Club prize, and Sonia Shah, the award-winning author whose latest book is The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move. Donate any amount to become a Pulitzer Center Champion and join our team for more exclusive events like this throughout the year.
Thanks to my colleagues at the Pulitzer Center, our grantees, and experts from the broader Pulitzer community for all the work they’ve done in bringing the conference to life. And to everyone else: I hope to see you there!
Impact
Four Pulitzer Center-supported projects received Overseas Press Club Awards for excellence in international reporting.
The BuzzFeed News project Built to Last received the Kim Wall Award recognizing dynamic digital storytelling techniques and “innovative use of satellite images and 3D visualization.” Latino USA earned the Lowell Thomas Award for radio, audio, and podcasts for “uncovering how Mexico has become ‘a wall itself’” through The Moving Border.
Refugees From the Earth, a climate migration collaboration between ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, won the Whitman Bassow Award for what judges described as “spellbinding” writing with “scary” results.
The feature photography award went to Cheryl Diaz Meyer for her NPR project Comfort Women, which documents a community of survivors of World War II-era sexual slavery. The judges said the “body of work is the perfect example of an impactful story amplified through the caring and intentional eye of the photographer.”
This message first appeared in the April 13, 2021 edition of the Pulitzer Center weekly newsletter. Subscribe today.