Reporting Scientific Stories – Science in the Media

Brian Winkel’s Cedar Falls High School journalism students meet with IowaWatch executive director Lyle Muller, IowaWatch co-founder and board member Stephen J. Berry, and Science in the Media’s Christopher Martin and Abbie Shew in Spring 2017. Photo: Lyle Muller

In the Spring 2017 semester, Science in the Media teamed up with IowaWatch and the Cedar Falls High School journalism class to work on a project about nitrates in drinking water, and wrote this story:

Elise Leasure, Sabine Martin and Katherine Mauss, “Cedar Falls Fights Drinking Water Nitrates Battle,” IowaWatch and Cedar Falls Tiger Hi-Line, June 2, 2017. [The story also appeared in IowaWatch.org and in the Waterloo Courier, Des Moines Register, and The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA).]

CF High School’s journalism students, under the instructor of Brian Winkel, collaborated with IowaWatch the previous year to produce award-winning reporting on how climate change is taught in Iowa high schools.

CFHS journalism class — Cedar Falls High School journalism students meet with IowaWatch executive director Lyle Muller and teacher Brian Winkel on Feb. 8, 2018 to discuss their investigative reporting project on pesticide drift exposure risk in Iowa schools. Photo: Christopher Martin

In Spring 2018, we again teamed up with IowaWatch and the Cedar Falls High School journalists to work on a project about pesticide spray drift and Iowa’s schools, using a new dataset developed by Science in the Media. The reporting resulted in two stories:

The IowaWatch high school journalism projects, including the ones at Cedar Falls High School with Science in the Media, were featured by the Columbia Journalism Review, April 3, 2018. They were also featured in the UNI STEM program’s Information Bridge newsletter.

Science in the Media again teamed up with IowaWatch and the Cedar Falls High School journalism program in Fall 2018-Spring 2019 for a reporting project on the safety of eating game fish in Iowa. The reporting resulted in this story:

Sophia Schillinger and Sabine Martin, “Knowing What’s Safe To Eat In Game Fish Varies State To State In Midwest,” IowaWatch and Cedar Falls Tiger Hi-Line, May 31, 2020. [This IowaWatch and Cedar Falls Tiger Hi-Line story was republished by The Des Moines Register, The Courier (Waterloo, IA), Iowa City Press-Citizen, Marshalltown Times-Republican, The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, IA), the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and Iowa Public Radio’s website.]