Felicity Barringer @ MSU

Aspirations for young journalists might be to one day be a columnist for Cosmopolitan, an anchor woman for ESPN, or a reporter for the New York Times. Felicity Barringer was able to achieve the NYT part, but with a degree from Stanford she could probably do anything! Barringer is an accomplished environmental journalist who has worked with the Washington Post as well and covered the Chernobyl explosion in Moscow in 1986. Today Barringer talked to a few aspiring journalists and ones already working in the field about her success, how journalism today is covered, and what we might one day like to write about ourselves. After flying in from Palo Alto, Ca. last night, Barringer munched on a piece of pizza with the rest of us in the small room inside the communication building at Michigan State. One fun fact about the meeting was that out of the 11 people in the room, 5 people were wearing what I see as the stereotypical dark rimmed and square glasses you see reporters wearing. Though Barringer writes for the green-blog, today she remains on staff at the NYT with seven other reporters as a national correspondent for environmental journalism, but she says that does not necessarily limit her to look worldwide or cause her to become "native" and only see what is going on around New York. Barringer is happily married to a former NYT reporter and editor, Philip Taubman, who is working on a book about nuclear threats right now. As of right now he is in Georgia on a trip for business. The meeting was about a half an hour in which Barringer talked mostly about how some environmental journalists end up giving two sides to every story in one story and it really keeps the conflict. The "balance" reporters try and bring to their article ends up doing just the opposite when one side of the story does not have factual evidence to support their claims or does not compare to the impact the other side of the story may have. Barringer also talked about what can cause problems in enviromental writing which usually can relate back to the reporter not continuing to describe the science part involved in the article or maybe not going into enough detail. However, it is an article and a big part of journalism is crunching down information. The meeting was very fun and informational with a few laughs thrown in.