Annual Workshop for Journalists
2009 Fellows

Simone Aponte is an Emmy Award-winning news producer at KFMB-TV/CBS 8 in San Diego, where she helped create and now produces Earth 8, an environmental segment created in partnership with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography an the University of California. Last year she was awarded an Emmy for spot/breaking news/continuing coverage of the 2007 San Diego wild fires. She has also worked as a news producer at KUSI-TV in San Diego. She has won awards for speech, travel and feature writing. Aponte graduated from Boston University in 2004 with a Bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism.

Eliza Barclay is a freelance journalist who has written for a variety of newspapers, magazines and websites. Her work has recently appeared in The Atlantic, National Geographic News, The New York Times, Slate.com, and The Christian Science Monitor. Barclay was awarded an International Reporting Project fellowship in 2007, which sent her to Tanzania and Kenya, and a World Federation of Science Journalists EcoHealth prize last year. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a Bachelor's degree with honors in conservation and resource studies in 2001.

Justin Fritscher is a reporter at the Clarion-Ledger and Rankin Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, where he is responsible for four stories, a column and Web site updates. Some of his stories have included oxygen depletion in waters off the Louisiana coast and 30 million year-old shark teeth. Before coming to the Clarion-Ledger and Rankin Ledger, he interned at the Modesto Bee in California. Prior to his professional experience, Fritscher was the editor in chief at the Daily Reveille, the student newspaper of Louisiana State University, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in mass communications with a minor in Spanish in 2008. Fritscher is fluent in Spanish and received several scholarships while in school, including the Tiger Athletic Fund Scholarship.

Eva Gilliam is a freelance video and radio journalist working frequently with Associated Press Television News, Radio France International (English Service), Reuters Television, UNICEF Television and others. Gilliam has reported from Central, Southern and West Africa, as well as the United States and Cuba. She has also been a carpenter at the South Pole, a volunteer in India and building a radio station in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Gilliam received a Master's degree in film and television production from the University of Cape Town in 2006 and a Bachelor's in anthropology from Barnard College in 1996.

Colleen Kimmett writes about science and the environment for TheTyee.ca, a Vancouver-based news and culture Web site. Her stories for TheTyee.ca cover a spectrum of environmental topics, including BC’s watershed problems, salmon farms and waste disposal. Kimmet is also the associate editor of Briarpatch magazine and has written for Peterborough This Week, cramscience.ca, and the National Research Council, Canada. She has contributed to numerous publications since graduating from Carleton University with a Bachelor's degree in journalism in 2006.

Ted Nesi is an award-winning reporter at the Providence Business News where he covers energy, environment and technology. Prior to his business writing, Nesi worked for The Sun Chronicle in Massachusetts where he received two awards for breaking news coverage from the New England Newspaper Association–one for coverage of local reactions to the Virginia Tech shootings, the other for coverage of a local murder. Nesi has also contributed to The Providence Journal, PBS, and was a reporter at Wheaton College publications. Nesi graduated from Wheaton in 2007 with a bachelor's degree in political science.

Sarah Parsons is a freelance writer who focuses on environmental journalism. Her previous work experience includes Associate Editor of Plenty magazine, a bimonthly national environmental magazine, where she also regularly contributed to plentymag.com, the online edition of the magazine. At Plenty, Parsons covered topics such as climate change, technology, alternative energy and wildlife. Parsons has also contributed to Audubon, OnEarth, Gourmet, and Boston Magazine. Parsons graduated from Syracuse University in 2006 with a B.S. in magazine journalism.

Niki Price is the editor and co-owner of Oregon Coast Today, a weekly newspaper covering arts, entertainment and the environment on the central Oregon coast. Before founding the Today in 2005, Price was a journalist at the News Guard, Corvallis Gazette-Times and Albany Democrat-Herald in Oregon, the Payson Roundup in Arizona and the Ruidoso News in New Mexico. She received an Inland Press Association award for a six-part series about fire risk and prevention, as well as honors from the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. She was a Flinn Scholar at the University of Arizona, where she earned a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies, with honors in 1993.

Javier Serna is an award-winning sports writer for The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. Prior to joining The News & Observer, Serna worked as a neighborhoods/growth reporter for the North Raleigh News covering topics such as stormwater and pollution. His professional journalism experience began at The Elkhart Truth where he covered environmental stories and sports. He was awarded 2nd place by the Outdoor Writers Association of America for his story on striped bass conservation in the Roanoke River. Serna graduated with a Bachelor's degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, in 2001.

Robert Silk has been a general assignment reporter for the Key West Citizen and Islamorada Free Press since 2004. He writes regularly about water quality and other environmental issues relating to Florida Bay, Everglades National Park and coral reefs. He is also a freelance writer and has won various awards for his stories and editorials. Silk’s previous work experience includes the Upper Keys Times, Key West Magazine, and the Miami News Service, a University of Miami news service that funnels stories to local newspapers. Silk earned a Master's degree in 2002 in communication from the University of Miami and a Bachelors degree in 1994 in political science from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Sarah Welsh is an assistant news editor at the Rio Grande Sun in Espanola, New Mexico, where she covers local issues, takes photos and also edits and designs sections of the paper. She has won first place and honorable mention from the New Mexico Press Association for her reporting on local issues. Welsh served as a Peace Corps agriculture volunteer in Mali, and has worked for UPI and KaBOOM! in Washington, D.C. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 2000 with a Bachelor's degree in comparative literature and general biology.