Transcription
Rebekah Warren: This is 89.1 WEMU. Welcome to Issues of the Environment! I'm your host, Rebekah Warren. Today, I'm talking to a new generation of environmental journalists. Anna Birchok and Zia Walker are Michigan directors for the Youth Environmental Press Team, a national organization that supports young people in reporting on climate and environmental issues and helps get their work in front of a wider audience, including elected officials and other decision makers. Both Anna and Zia developed their reporting skills at Ann Arbor Community High School's student newspaper, The Communicator. Their recent stories have taken them from Ann Arbor's mobile renewable energy nanogrid to a planned net-zero equestrian facility in Detroit and has them participating in statewide climate conversations. They're not simply writing about climate change as an abstract global challenge. They're reporting on projects, people and policy decisions that are happening in Michigan communities right now. Anna and Zia, welcome to Issues of the Environment!
Anna Birchok: Hi! Thanks so much!
Zia Walker: Thanks so much for having us!
Rebekah Warren: Anna, you've reported on Ann Arbor's Sesame Solar mobile nanogrid and the sustainable design planned for Detroit Horsepower's net-zero facility. Take us behind the scenes. When you're a high school journalist investigating a technical environmental story, how do you go from identifying the idea to interviewing sources to turning what you learn into a story?
Anna Birchok: Yeah, so I normally just start with someone who comes to me with the idea. I'm involved in a lot of different programs. And so I often get it through other students or mentors in those programs. For example, for the Sesame Solar, my climate group was working with A2ZERO at the time, and they were talking to us about the trailer, and I became interested in it. And so I just reached out. I sent a quick email. I'm like, "Hey, I'm a high school journalist at Community High School. I'm writing for Youth Environmental Press Team right now." I explained the program. And the, I just ask them for an interview. These often happen over Zoom just for convenience and I just normally have a conversation with people for 20 to 30 minutes. And I record it and get transcripts and interviews from it. And then I use it to kind of base off of my story.
Rebekah Warren: Zia, you along with Anna have taken on leadership of the Michigan chapter of the Youth Environmental Press team this year, and you also serve as feature editor of the Community High School Communicator. What does that leadership look like day to day? How do you find and support students in Ann Arbor and across Michigan who want to report on local environmental issues?
Zia Walker: Yeah, I've had the great opportunity to work with a really great team at the Youth Environmental Press Team. So we went to the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association Conference, and we did some outreach there, like handing out flyers, talking to students, and really just trying to get the word out about the Youth Environmental Press Team. So, day to day, we're emailing teachers, trying to send out forms, talk to potentially interested students and coordinating logistics and like article scheduling with high schoolers and hopefully eventually middle schoolers.
Rebekah Warren: As feature editor, in your opinion, what makes a strong pitch for a youth environmental journalism story?
Zia Walker: Yeah. One of the things that YEPT is really trying to emphasize this year is humanizing stories. So I think when like scientific stories have a lot of statistics, it can be hard to realize the impact they're having in the community. So this year YEPT is really focusing on getting a human angle, getting quotes and interviews from people local to the community. So that is something we're really looking for this year.
Rebekah Warren: Anna, one distinctive part of the Youth Environmental Press Team's work is that the reporting doesn't stop with an online article. Printed stories can be delivered directly to lawmakers and local representatives and other community decision makers. How do you decide which stories to put in front of those audiences? And how do you hope readers will accept that information and what will they do with it?
Anna Birchok: So I think it's so important to share with everybody the climate crisis is affecting everyone, no matter what your age is. At the end of my interviews, I always like to ask people who else should I interview to get a good idea of my story and what do you want to tell people who are listening or watching our website and keeping up with it. And I think it's just important to hear from the people in the work and share their information.
Rebekah Warren: You're listening to 89.1 WEMU. I'm Rebekah Warren, and this is Issues of the Environment. My guests today are Anna Birchok and Zia Walker, Michigan directors for the Youth Environmental Press Team, talking about youth-led climate journalism and the local environmental stories young reporters are bringing to public attention. Anna, I want to pick back up. Have you heard directly from an elected official or other decision maker who read one of your stories? Did you get a response that tells you that your reporting is making a difference?
Anna Birchok: I haven't heard directly from an elected official, but I have heard from organizations and nonprofits and anyone who's reading our articles.
Rebekah Warren: Zia, both you and Anna are incredibly involved in community work beyond journalism. Anna, you co-lead the Youth Now Climate Action. And Zia, you serve on the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation's Youth Council, where young people are helping to direct grant funding. Zia, how did those experiences shape the environmental questions that you choose to investigate?
Zia Walker: Yeah, so serving on the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation's Youth Council has really helped me thinking about getting grants for our Michigan chapter. So, our chapter, we got a grant a couple months ago, which is really exciting to help us pay student writers. So getting to see the other side of the people who are making the decisions about the grants and the different factors that go into funding nonprofits has been really an important thing that I've been happy to bring into YEPT as a director. Shaping environmental questions, I think, like being involved in the community and Ann Arbor has so many opportunities for active youth participation. So that has really been a really great part of working with YEPT.
Rebekah Warren: Anna, when you're organizing a project or evaluating community needs, what stories do you see emerging that you think traditional news outlets might overlook?
Anna Birchok: Yeah. I think a benefit to being young people and students in our community is that people are always very excited to do interviews with us. If a local news outlet or a statewide news outlet reaches out, it's kind of like, "Oh, this is cool!" But when you're hearing from students, it shows a different level of excitement from the next generation. And so people are always so excited to share their ideas with me in a way that I feel like they might not with an adult coming from a news source.
Rebekah Warren: Is there one local climate or environmental story or solution that you wish more people knew about?
Anna Birchok: I think Zia recently, or I guess like a year ago now, wrote a story on Ann Arbor's renewable energy revolution. And she can definitely talk a little bit more to that, but it's just really fascinating what local officials and people are doing to try to make a difference.
Rebekah Warren: Zia, you've also been involved in University of Michigan research related to AI and teen well-being. Young people often hear a great deal about the scale of the climate challenge. How can environmental journalism acknowledge the seriousness of climate change while also helping readers understand solutions and opportunities to act?
Zia Walker: Yeah. I think getting a youth perspective is so important to put things into perspective about how much this is going to impact the next generation going forward. So talking to youth about why climate issues matter to them and the scale at which it matters is really important. Again, humanizing stories and getting that human angle is always really something that we're striving for with YEPT.
Rebekah Warren: Anna, as you work to expand the YEPT work across Michigan, what kinds of stories or communities do you most want to bring into the conversation? And if a student listening wants to contribute, what's the best way for them to get involved?
Anna Birchok: Yeah, so we talked about this a lot this summer in our leadership planning, and our goal is to reach out to students who might not otherwise have the opportunity to do journalism work. Because we are all online, it's much easier for students to get involved. If they might not have something at their school or not have a program that gives them the same resources, we're able to like give to people. If students want to get involved, you can go to our Instagram page or onto our website and contact either our director, Jihyun Ko, or you can fill out our interest form on our Instagram.
Rebekah Warren: Zia, what do you hope adults, whether they're parents, educators, community leaders or elected officials, take away from hearing young people report on environmental and climate issues?
Zia Walker: Yeah, I hope that adults are able to realize just how much climate issues really do matter to young people. I think especially having young people out there reporting and investigating stories really helps demonstrate how much youth are concerned about the climate going forward and how much we're dedicated to finding solutions for it.
Rebekah Warren: Anna Birchok and Zia Walker are Michigan directors for the Youth Environmental Press Team, helping young people report on climate and environmental issues and bringing those stories to a broader audience. Anna, Zia, thank you for being with us today!
Anna Birchok: Thank you so much!
Zia Walker: Thank you!
Rebekah Warren: Their work is a reminder that environmental journalism isn't only about describing the problems we face. It's about asking careful questions, examining real-world solutions and making sure the people affected by decisions have a voice in the conversation. And when young reporters investigate what's happening in their own communities, they can help connect a local project to the bigger questions of how Michigan prepares for a changing climate. For more information on our conversation today, visit our website at wemu.org. Issues of the Environment is produced in partnership with the Office of the Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner, and you hear it here every Wednesday. I'm Rebekah Warren, and this is your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU Ypsilanti.
About Guests
Zia Walker
I'm a sophomore at Community High School. I began journalism with The Communicator my first day of high school, and I've loved it ever since. This year, I'm feature editor for our publication, along with being a director for the Michigan chapter of the Youth Environmental Press Team and an editor for Polyphony Lit. I'm also a member of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation's youth council and an AI and teen well-being researcher for the University of Michigan.
Anna Birchok
I am a junior at Community High School (split enrolled to Pioneer for music). I began journalism during my second semester of my freshman year with The Communicator and participated in a Concentrate Media Voices of Youth session that spring. Both of these experiences helped me become interested in journalism and want to explore it further. I also co-lead an environmental group, Youth Now Climate Action (a program between Neutral Zone, Leslie Science and Nature Center and A2ZERO) which I helped to start and lead my freshman year.
When my friend Tova, the previous Michigan YEPT director, was talking to me about Youth Environmental Press Team, I was super excited to hear about the program and started attending meetings about this time last year. When she graduated in the spring, I took over her role of Michigan director and started having conversations with my advisor for YEPT about building a chapter. Over the summer, Jihyun Ko and Zia Walker officially came on as directors, and we have been hosting bi-weekly meetings and producing content as a chapter this fall! We are hoping to continue to grow but are already off to a strong start.
Resources
Youth Environmental Press Team (YEPT)
The Communicator articles written by Zia Walker
The Communicator articles written by Anna Birchok
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