duPont Winners Covering Climate Change and the Environment
Verify Road Trip: Climate Truth won a 2021 duPont-Columbia Award.
The duPont-Columbia Awards have long honored exemplary reporting on the devastating impact of climate change. Over fifty years ago, in 1970, WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids won a Silver Baton for the series “Our Poisoned World” which brought citizen concerns about environmental issues in the Grand Rapids area to the attention of legislators.
In recent years reporting on the environment, climate science, and the effects of climate change continues to be honored by the duPont jury. From news reports about invasive species in the Great Lakes, and the acidification of the Pacific Ocean, to a feature length documentary about the struggle to preserve the world’s last refuge for mountain gorillas, these stories gave viewers a greater understanding of how people and the environment are interconnected.
2021 - Verify Road Trip: Climate Change - WFAA TV Dallas
At the 2021 duPont Awards, “Verify Road Trip: Climate Change” was honored for an innovative take on the issue. Reporter David Schecter and Director Chance Horner brought a climate skeptic along on a reporting trip that included conversations with leading scientists and even a visit to a glacier.
2019 - The Everglades: Where Politics, Money and Race Collide - WFOR
This hour-long documentary seamlessly explored the intertwined environmental, political and social roots of Florida’s now-contaminated Everglades.
2017 - Mystery Beneath the Ice - NOVA and WGBH-TV
This visually stunning film followed scientific researchers under the Southern Ocean’s ice to discover the answer to why the Antarctic’s krill population was shrinking dramatically: climate change.
2016 - A Watershed Moment: Great Lakes at a Crossroads - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Since the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, international shipping traffic in the Great Lakes has brought with it increasing numbers of invasive species. This online series from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel describes how these species enter the Great Lakes and what impact they are having on the ecosystem.
2015 - Virunga - Netflix
This cinematic feature-length documentary, streaming on Netflix, captures a fight against corrupt governments and human greed, while following a group of dedicated park wardens caring for Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the world’s last mountain gorillas live.
2015 - Sea Change: The Pacific's Perilous Turn - The Seattle Times
As the Pacific Ocean acidifies, not only are there dangers posed to wildlife, but there is also a human cost. Oyster farmers on the Pacific coast who rely on the ocean have been forced to find new ways to breed and harvest shellfish as the water that once fed their crops now threatens to destroy them.