Contact: Jim Detjen, Knight Center, (517) 353-9479, detjen@msu.edu; or Russ White, University Relations, (517) 432-0923, whiterus@msu.edu

02/07/2006

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Could the lipstick you wear today possibly make you sick when you’re older? Is there any relationship between science and jump shots? Why should young people in Detroit care about space exploration? Are teens too young to get cancer? Will water really be the gold of the 21st century, and will Michiganians get rich from living near so many lakes?

These are some of the questions that 200 high school journalists from Detroit will explore on Thursday, Feb. 9 during a day-long conference called “Lipstick, Rockets and Jump Shots: Writing About Science and the Environment.”

“The idea is to inspire these students to write more and better articles that touch on science, health and the environment,” said Jim Detjen, director of the Michigan State University Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, one of the conference’s co-sponsors. “We are particularly interested in attracting minority students to a field in which there have historically been few journalists of color.”

The conference will take place in the New Detroit Science Center, at the intersection of Warren Avenue and John R Street in Detroit, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. When it’s over, participating students will be encouraged to write stories about the conference for their high school newspapers.

For more than two decades, the Detroit Free Press High School Journalism Program has published and distributed student newspapers for more than a dozen Detroit public high schools. Without this program, which is supported by the Ford Fund, many of these schools would not have student newspapers.

“This conference is part of a proud Free Press tradition of nurturing high school journalists from Detroit,” said Paul Anger, the newspaper’s vice president/news and editor. ”No other newspaper in the country has such a long and deep commitment to developing local talent.” Graduates of the program work at newspapers nationwide, including the Detroit Free Press.

Students attending the conference will learn how to report about science, health and environmental subjects taught by MSU School of Journalism professors and journalists from the Detroit Free Press, WDET-FM radio in Detroit, WDIV-TV Channel 4 in Detroit and other news media. Among the topics that will be covered are cancer, space, water, cosmetics and health, and the science of sports.

The students also will visit exhibits at the science center, including an interactive exhibition called “Space: A Journey to Our Future” and view an IMAX program on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Among the speakers at the conference will be Jerome Vaughn, assistant news director at WDET-FM, Detroit; Andrew Humphrey, meteorologist with WDIV-TV Channel 4, Detroit; Anthony England, a former Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut and associate dean of engineering at the University of Michigan; David Janda, founder of the Institute of Preventative Sports Medicine; Felicia Eaves, national campaigns organizer for Women’s Voices for the Earth; Michael Kamrin, professor emeritus of environmental toxicology at MSU; and Kenny Carroll, a sales representative from Nike.

The Knight Center is internationally known as a leader in the education and training of environmental journalists. This conference, as well as other Knight Center activities, is supported by grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Other conference co-sponsors include the New Detroit Science Center, the Detroit Public Schools, the Detroit Free Press and the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association, which is running the student journalism contest. The local chapters of the National Association of Black Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists also are participating in the conference.