The Uproot Project hosts events throughout the year dedicated to member education, building community, and amplifying journalists of color. Our events range from members-only virtual webinars to in-person exhibits that are open to the public. You can explore a list of our past events below, and also stay informed about our upcoming events.
Upcoming events
Friday September 27, 1pm ET | The Uproot Project at Climate Week NYC
Sustainable Stories: Climate, Food, and Culture through Diverse Voices
at The Climate Imaginarium on Governor’s Island
Join us at Climate Week NYC for “Sustainable Stories: Climate, Food, and Culture through Diverse Voices.” This event features a keynote on the intersection of diversity, culture, and food as climate solutions. A panel and workshop will follow, offering storytelling techniques for environmental journalism and insights into highlighting these crucial intersections. Ideal for journalists, storytellers, and climate advocates, this event provides valuable tools to amplify diverse voices in sustainability. Don’t miss out! More details & get your tickets here!
Past events
May 15, 2024 | Mental Health for Environmental Journalists – Workshop hosted by The Uproot Project & Climate Psychology Alliance
4pm CT on Zoom
This workshop will start with a presentation from Yessenia and Rebecca, followed by breakout sessions where active participation is expected. Please note that registration is capped at 25 participants, to enable meaningful discussions during this workshop. ***Space is limited. Please do not register for this workshop if you are able to attend the entire 90 min session.*** Register here!
April 11, 2024 | 2023 Environmental Justice Fellowship: One Year Later
1pm CT on Zoom
Join The Uproot Project to hear from our 2023 class of fellows as they wrap up their one-year projects.
April 4, 2024 | Grist x Uproot Happy Hour at SEJ
Renata’s Kitchen, Philadelphia, PA
Join Grist and The Uproot Project for a happy hour to meet fellow environmental journalists attending the SEJ conference!
April 5, 2024 | Care and Community As a Climate Solution
Concurrent Sessions 2, 10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Location: Benjamin Franklin Ballroom 5, Sheraton Philadelphia University City Hotel
Climate coverage tends to focus on storylines of gloom and doom. Join us for a conversation on how we can center care, solidarity, joy and resilience in climate reporting. This panel will explore mental health challenges journalists face and the trauma that comes with climate beats. We will address online abuse that journalists are facing from climate deniers and others. We will share resources to help journalists navigate climate anxiety and stress. Questions addressed include: How can we center community care and allyship when facing online abuse? What are ways to make space for hope, resilience and realistic solutions for different communities?
Moderator: Sofia Prado Huggins, Project and Social Media Manager, The Uproot Project
Speakers: Yessenia Funes, Editor-at-Large, Atmos; Founding Member, The Uproot Project; and Columnist, Society of Environmental Journalists Jeje Mohamed, Senior Manager, Digital Safety & Free Expression, PEN America Lucia Priselac, Director, The Uproot Project Matt Scott, Director of Storytelling and Engagement, Project Drawdown
April 5, 2024 | Uproot National Convening
Location: Benjamin Franklin Ballroom 5, Sheraton Philadelphia University City Hotel
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Join The Uproot Project for our second annual National Convening. Enjoy drinks and light bites in the company of fellow members.
December 6, 2023 | Uproot x National Geographic Society Workshop
2pm ET
Mapping the World’s Water Shortages – Using Visual Tools to Tell Water Stories The water crisis and climate crisis are inextricably linked. But the water crisis and its impacts look different in communities throughout the world.
Join us on Wednesday, December 6, from 2:00-4:00 p.m. ET for a webinar on the World Water Map which is part of the National Geographic Society’s World Freshwater Initiative. Built on 40 years of data, the World Water Map is a tool for journalists, hydrologists, educators, and policymakers to account for every drop of water around the world and contextualize what’s driving water demand.
During this interactive session, Uproot Project members and attendees will:
Get direct experience using the Map
Learn how to identify water gap “hotspots”
Understand the drivers of water demand by household use, agriculture, and industry, and how trends in demand have changed over time
Hear from fellow journalists and storytellers who are using the Map to document the water crisis – and sustainable solutions – in their own communities.
Panelists:
Paul Nwulu, Senior Director of Storytelling Programs, National Geographic Society
Niko Wanders, Associate Professor Hydrological Extremes, Utrecht University
Aika Kirei, Filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer
Caitlin Ochs, Freelance Visual Journalist and National Geographic Explorer
October 16, 2023 | How to Cover Indigenous Stories as a Non-Indigenous Journalist
Join The Uproot Project and the Indigenous Journalists Association for a virtual panel discussion on how reporters can best cover Indigenous communities and why having Indigenous reporters in newsrooms is essential. This event is part of The Uproot Project’s 2023 Journey of a Story: Indigenous Storytelling Series.
October 17, 2023 | A Conversation With Jim Terry: Live Reading and Q&A
Join The Uproot Project and Madison Street Books for a live reading with Jim Terry from his graphic memoir Come Home, Indio, followed by a a discussion and Q&A moderated by Uproot’s Director, Lucia Priselac. This event is part of The Uproot Project’s 2023 Journey of a Story: Indigenous Storytelling Series.
October 18, 2023 | One Earth, Many Stories: Indigenous Storytelling, Knowledgeways, & Ecologies
In this panel, Indigenous storytellers from a wide range of backgrounds and traditions will discuss the preservation of Indigenous cultural and ecological knowledge in Indigenous storytelling. The panel will feature Indigenous journalist, Sunnie Clahchischilig; Associate Professor on Indigenous studies at Oakland University, Dr. Megan Peiser; Assistant Professor of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell, Dr. Steven Mana’oakamai Johnson; and will be moderated by Sofia Prado Huggins of The Uproot Project. This event is part of The Uproot Project’s 2023 Journey of a Story: Indigenous Storytelling Series.
October 19, 2023 | The Journey of a Story: Indigenous Storytelling
The exhibit will feature the work of five Indigenous journalists: B. ‘Toastie’ Oaster, Pauly Denetclaw, Anita Hofschneider, Ariene dos Santos Lima, and Erin Blondeau. Through audio recordings, we will explore the importance of diverse voices in journalism. The gallery is open to the public from 6-8. Light appetizers and drinks will be served.
Thank you so much to The MacArthur Foundation for their support of this event. https://www.macfound.org/
September 12, 2023 | Covering My Community
Join The Uproot Project for a roundtable with panelists Amal Ahmed, Abdullah Tijani, and Debra Krol discussing what they want to see in coverage of their communities and how they report on stories involving their own communities. You can watch the recorded roundtable HERE.
August 24, 2023 | Uproot Summer Book Club
Join The Uproot Project to discuss Something New Under the Sun by Alexandra Kleeman.
July 13, 2023 | Fostering Source Relationships
Join The Uproot Project for a discussion exploring the importance of human connection, community, and relationship building in journalism. You can watch the recorded webinar HERE.
May 25, 2023 | 2022 Environmental Justice Fellowship: One Year Later
Join The Uproot Project to hear from our 2022 class of fellows as they wrap up their one-year projects.
May 30, 2023 | Black Birders Week: A Feather In Our Cap
The Uproot Project is co-hosting this webinar with Black Birders Week. Join us for a discussion exploring the inequities of exposure to the outdoors and encouraging Black people to get outdoors. You can watch the recorded webinar HERE.
April 21, 2023 | Uproot National Convening
In our first in-person national gathering, Uproot members gathered together in Boise to share drinks, bites, and to celebrate everything that Uproot has accomplished in just two years. Attendees heard from Uproot Director Lucia Priselac and Steering Committee Co-Chair Monica Samayoa.
This event was sponsored by MacArthur Foundation and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, with support from Solutions Journalism Network and the Solutions Project
April 19-23, 2023 | #SEJ2023 Annual Conference
The Uproot Project is pleased to continue partnering with SEJ to offer diversity fellowships at their 2023 conference in Boise, Idaho. See Uproot’s full schedule of conference programming here.
January 26, 2023 | A Journalist’s Guide: How to Navigate Social Media
Amidst the ever-changing landscape of social media, how can journalists can use their platforms to promote themselves and their work? Our panelists will touch on the tools and strategies they use on various platforms to promote their work, network with journalists, seek sources, and more. This event will be virtual, where attendees are welcome to join us on video or audio to engage in Q&A. The panel will run for one hour, including time for questions.
About the panelists:
Christina Colón is a member of The Uproot Project steering committee and the social media project lead. She has served as the associate editor of Sojourners magazine, the communications manager of the Nonprofit Association of Washington, and as an editor at Global Press Journal. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Emerging Media Studies at Boston University with a focus on social media analytics, interactive design, and the political and social implications of emerging media technology.
Myrka Moreno is an audience engagement producer at The 19th based in San Antonio, TX. She previously worked at Grist as a social media coordinator where she won an American Journalism Online Award for Best Twitter Thread in 2021.
Sarah Pineda is a community and audience engagement journalist working on building trust, deepening relationships and uplifting the stories from online communities through social media and emerging platforms. Her work also focuses on amplifying engagement-driven content from collaborations with fellow journalists, newsrooms, and nonprofit organizations. Sarah’s engagement work contributions with Los Angeles’ NPR-member station KPCC-LAist, was awarded the first Gather Award for Engaged Journalism Portfolio at the Online Journalism Awards.
November 9, 2022 | The Art of Long-Form Storytelling
“The Art of Long-form Storytelling” is meant to equip our Uproot members with all they need to go long with their stories. We want to dig into some key questions like: How do you find a narrative structure that works for your story? What are editors looking for in long-form features? And essentially — how do you take a mountain of reporting and turn it into an engaging piece of journalism?
This event is especially designed to support our Uproot Environmental Justice Fellows, who are working to create long-form reporting projects over the course of a year. We’d love for our panelists to give a behind-the-scenes look into a long-form piece that they’ve worked on, and share their tools and advice for our members who are interested in honing their long-form skills.
About the featured panelists:
Katherine Bagley is the executive editor of Grist, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. She was previously the managing editor of Yale Environment 360, an online magazine covering global environmental issues, and a reporter for InsideClimate News.
Tom Huang is Assistant Managing Editor for Journalism Initiatives at The Dallas Morning News, where he edits the Sunday front page, coordinates story planning, directs newsroom talent development and leads The News’ community-funded journalism initiative, which seeks philanthropic funding to support public service journalism. As an adjunct faculty member of The Poynter Institute, he organizes and teaches seminars for professional journalists on writing, reporting and editing.
Sandi Villarreal is Deputy Editor, Digital at Texas Monthly. A San Antonio native, Sandi previously served as Editor-in-Chief at Sojourners, a national social justice magazine.
October 26, 2022 in NYC | Exhibit: The Journey of a Story
The exhibit will feature the work of five Uproot journalists: Yessenia Funes, Rachel Ramirez, Adam Mahoney, Lylla Younes, and Shantal Riley. The gallery is open to the public from 6-8, with a panel discussion starting at 6:30, moderated by Grist’s CEO Nikhil Swaminathan. There will be a special gathering from 8-8:30 for Uproot members.
Thank you so much to The Compton Foundation for their support of this event. https://comptonfoundation.org/
About the featured journalists:
Yessenia Funes is an environmental journalist currently serving as climate director for Atmos, an independent nonprofit magazine covering climate and culture. She focuses her reporting on environmental and climate justice.
Rachel Ramirez is a general assignment writer and reporter on CNN’s Climate Team, covering climate change and environmental justice. She focuses on breaking news, trending stories, and deeply-reported narratives that help CNN readers understand how the climate crisis affects all aspects of their lives.
Shantal Riley is an award-winning, freelance environmental journalist Her work has been featured by Washington Post Magazine, Frontline PBS, NOVA PBS, Gothamist / WNYC, Vice, Everyday Health and Chemical and Engineering News.
Adam Mahoney is the environment reporter at Capital B News, a new nonprofit newsroom focused on the Black experience. His work focuses on the intersections of anti-Black racism and the ways people are excluded from receiving access to a healthy environment.
Lylla Younes is a staff writer for environmental investigations at Grist. Previously, she was a data journalist at ProPublica and WNYC/Gothamist.
July 12, 2022 | Book Curious: Pivoting from Articles to Books
Are you book curious? Join us for an hour-long Zoom panel about pivoting from articles to books, including time for audience questions.
About this event:
The Uproot Project is a network for journalists of color covering environmental issues, as well as students and others aspiring to cover this beat. On July 12th, we’ll be hosting writers Megan Kimble, Emma Marris, and Michelle Nijhuis, along with Island Press VP/Executive Editor Heather Boyer, for a Zoom panel on transitioning from writing articles to writing books. This event will run from 5-6pm Eastern, including time for your questions.
If you’re Uprooting in the Pacific Northwest this summer, then we hope you can attend our first in-person event in over two years!
Join us in Seattle, Washington, at The Uproot Project Regional Meet-up on June 25 for some drinks, snacks, and the opportunity to mingle with your fellow Uprooters! The entire steering committee will be present (only some of the most talented and successful people in environmental journalism of our time!) to hang out, chat, play games, and make some exciting new announcements!
March 9, 2022 | Investigative Environmental Journalism
Panelists Tony Barboza, Zahra Hirji, and Lisa Song will walk us through recent investigative stories and how they pursued them.
The Uproot Project is hosting a one-hour panel where we will learn about investigative approaches to environmental stories. Panelists Tony Barboza, Zahra Hirji, and Lisa Song will each walk us through a recent investigative project, followed by a Q&A session.
More about the panelists:
Tony Barboza is an editorial writer covering climate and environmental issues for the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board. Before joining the editorial board in November 2021, he worked for 15 years as a news reporter for the Times’ California section, covering air quality, climate change, environmental health and other topics. Tony will talk about his recent story on how California has failed to address the growing threat of heat waves and their deadly impact on the poor and vulnerable. This analysis found that far more Californians are dying from extreme heat than the state acknowledges.
Based in Washington, D.C., Zahra Hirji is a Senior Science Reporter at BuzzFeed News covering all things climate change. She previously was a reporter at InsideClimate News and has a masters in science writing from MIT. Zahra will talk about her recent story on internal memos obtained by BuzzFeed News showing that activists of color within the Sunrise Movement have privately alleged mistreatment for years — as the US climate group publicly fought for racial justice.
Lisa Song is a reporter at ProPublica who covers climate change and the environment. She will talk about her recent story showing that federal and state regulators have little data on the air toxic emissions coming from industrial polluters. When communities complain about air pollution, officials aren’t required to find the root of the problem and fix it.
November 19, 2021 | How Non-Native Journalists Can Cover Native Communities
Join Uproot in a panel discussion on how non-Native journalists cover Native communities leadership in environmentalism with tact and care.
In the past few years, news coverage of Native communities has increased, especially due to the activism of Indigenous leaders to reclaim ancestral lands and protect them from environmental harm. However, it wasn’t always this way. For many decades, Indigenous communities were undercovered or misrepresented in journalism. How, then, can non-Native journalists cover Native communities leadership in environmentalism with tact and care?
This panel will round up journalists and editors who specifically work on Indigenous news coverage and ask how they approach stories about Native communities and the environment/climate change.
Uproot has rounded up 4 editors from different publications with climate and environmental desks to share how to craft a successful pitch!
To tell powerful climate stories, you first need to sell your idea. What makes a pitch stand out? Uproot has rounded up four editors from different publications with climate and environmental desks to share their insights on how to craft a successful pitch, common pitch errors, how to tell stories in times of intersecting crises and what kind of stories they’re looking for.
Panelists include: Hannah Fairfield, climate editor at The New York Times; Emily Benson, associate editor at High Country News; Rob Kunzig, editor at National Geographic; and Neela Banerjee, editor at NPR.
April 22, 2021 | Starting in Environmental Journalism
This Earth Day, we’re hosting a panel moderated by Andrew Simon where 3 journalists talk about how they wound up on the environmental beat!
It’s been a month since we launched the Uproot Project, an initiative created to make environmental journalism more accessible to journalists of color from all backgrounds. For many of us, the road to this beat has been a surprising one — after all, it’s not always the case that we found it intentionally.
Issues that might initially seem outside the beat, from tribal sovereignty to urban planning, are deeply tied to our environment. Finding those connections is necessary if you’re pursuing stories that demand justice for communities of color.
So, how do we navigate these complex paths to environmental journalism? This Earth Day, April 22, 2021, we’re hosting a lunchtime panel where Grist’s Andrew Simon will lead a discussion with three prominent journalists about how they wound up on the environmental beat. The journalists — Darryl Fears, Paola Rosa-Aquino, and Alejandra Borunda — have each contributed monumental stories to coverage of climate change, environmental activism, and the ways that communities of color have led the movement. They’ll share their own story of getting into the beat and tips on how best to navigate it.
This event is open to all, whether you’re a veteran reporter or still finding your voice in environment and science storytelling.
