Students in a Block 7 journalism class met with Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in his office at the State Capitol in Denver on April 2.
“It’s interesting that it’s that specific,” Polis said about the class, which is called Reporting on Wildfires.
For roughly half an hour, the governor took questions from students ranging from his views on more people moving into the wildland urban interface — “live where you want to live, it’s your choice ... there's different risks living in different areas” — to the way Colorado fights fires with new aircraft, including some he said that can reach “anywhere in the state within 45 minutes.”
This is the second year of Reporting on Wildfires, which offers journalism students an opportunity to better understand wildfire ecology, particularly if they plan to practice journalism in the West.
“We’ve had multiple students graduate from CC who have gone into journalism and almost immediately had to cover a wildfire,” Corey Hutchins, who is teaching the class, . “Our course will not only prepare them for that unfortunate reality, but also offer a better understanding for why it’s happening.”
Since then, at least one student who finished last year’s class has experienced just that.
Charley Sutherland, who took Reporting on Wildfires in Block 1 last year and graduated with a journalism minor, is for the Jackson Hole News & Guide in Wyoming.
In his first couple of weeks on the job, he helped cover the Fish Creek Fire, which ultimately merged with the Pack Trail Fire and burned a large swath of forest near Jackson Hole.
“I visited the blaze on Togwotee Pass one day and, even though I was still unfamiliar with the area, I felt comfortable asking questions of the public information officer and safety officials who showed a photographer and I around,” he said. “Fires are complicated and great reporters are able to parse through the jargon and deliver clear information to readers. Those are skills I’m still working on but Reporting on Wildfires certainly gave me a head start.”
Teton County, where Sutherland reports, is 97% public, mostly forested land, and much of the private land is at risk for wildfire.
“That is to say, wildfire and reporting on it never really stops,” Sutherland said. “I value the time I spent engaging with wildfire as a topic in a way that I wouldn’t have under other circumstances. I learned about evacuation protocols, fire trucks, fireproofing techniques, forest health, and all sorts of other things through both my own and my classmates’ reporting.”
»ªÌå»á alum Jesse Paul, who is now a reporter, editor, and cofounder of The Colorado Sun, has estimated writing more than 150 wildfire and climate stories over his journalism career since graduating in 2014.
“There’s a lot of science behind wildfire, and having that knowledge before they show up at the fire line will be invaluable for these students,” said Paul, who helped with last year’s class and organized this week’s tour of the State Capitol and meeting with the governor.
“We need a generation of journalists trained to cover and understand wildland blazes — people who know the difference between a back burn and a running crown fire,” he added. “With climate change driving more and larger wildfires in Colorado, this course couldn’t be more timely.”
Nineteen students are in the current Reporting on Wildfires class where they will write for the newsletter on Substack.
In week one, students met with Michael Kodas, the author of the book “Megafire,” who is a senior editor of Inside Climate News, and met with photojournalists Helen Richardson of The Denver Post and Kent Porter of The Press Democrat in California.
In week two, students traveled to Fort Collins to meet with Colorado State University wildfire science researchers Mike Wilkins, Julie Fowler, and Jacob VanderRoest about some of their work, which students will write about for Burning Questions.
In week three, the students will go through training at near Salida to become certified as wildland firefighters. The instructors said they plan to tailor some of the course toward public communication.
The »ªÌå»á Journalism Institute's Reporting on Wildfire class originated from a National Science Foundation grant that former environmental science professor Rebecca Barnes and collaborators won in 2021 for a project called “Role of Soil Microbiome Resilience in Ecosystem Recovery Following Severe Wildfire.”
The »ªÌå»á Journalism Institute is a collaborator on the grant.
“It was a no-brainer,” Hutchins The Catalyst student newspaper that year about the inter-department partnership. “This is the kind of collaboration across disciplines at »ªÌå»á that I think is really important and will have serious impacts for students in the sciences and journalism classes.”