These are dizzying times. The Trump administration is clear-cutting the agencies that oversee our beloved national parks and forests and rangelands and refuges — the public lands that make up half of the Western U.S. At the same time, it has frozen funds for conservation and restoration work on private and tribal lands, as well as for clean energy and climate adaptation projects.
Some of these moves were blocked, but plenty of serious damage has been done, and Westerners continue to be whipsawed by the shifting orders and confusing directives from the White House and the courts. Adding insult to injury, the administration has ordered public agencies to cancel their subscriptions to news organizations like HCN, depriving staffers of information that is often valuable — and sometimes essential — to the work they do.
Say what you will about the federal government, now and in the past, all this runs counter to what Westerners hold dear. As a recent poll out of Colorado College noted, a resounding majority of Westerners of all political persuasions support conservation and climate action. Many Westerners may have voted for Trump, but, as a friend recently remarked, “This is not what they were sold.”
As we kick off our spring fund drive, if you’re in a position to double down on your support for HCN’s journalism, we ask you to consider doing so. Not everyone will be able to write a check this season.
And for those of you who work in the federal agencies, or who have recently lost jobs, we’re happy to offer you access to all of HCN’s reporting at no charge online, and we’ll give you a print subscription at cost. Folks interested in taking advantage of a free sub should email support@hcn.org with the subject line “Government Employee Access.” We’re here for you, our community, just as you’ve been here for us for a remarkable 55 years.
New faces
We’ve been lucky to have Shaun Griswold here for the past few months to lead our news coverage while News and Investigations Editor Kate Schimel is on family leave. Shaun brings a decade of print and broadcast news experience, most recently as editor of the nonprofit Source New Mexico, where he reported on issues concerning Native Americans in both urban and tribal communities, including education and child welfare. Shaun, who is based in Albuquerque, is a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna whose ancestry also includes Jemez and Zuni.
He has been working closely with HCN’s three new editorial fellows, who joined us in January. Fellows spend most of a year with us, gaining skills and experience and building a body of work that will propel them along their career paths.
Annie Rosenthal, HCN’s new Virginia Davis Spencer Fellow, chose to make a bold move, geographically and professionally, right out of high school, leaving her home in the nation’s capital and moving to Homer, Alaska, population 6,000, to work at the local paper. She fell in love with rural reporting and, after college, returned to that beat, this time at Marfa Public Radio, where she spent three years covering border issues in West Texas. In her reporting, Annie seeks to dismantle simplistic tropes about rural communities, she said, and shine a light on the complexity of small-town life and “the ways that people show up for each other, even under immense challenges.”
Chad Bradley got their journalism start by writing arts stories for their hometown newspaper in Gallup, New Mexico. Building thoughtful relationships has always been central to their reporting, Chad said, and they get a special thrill from sharing stories with sources: “Like, hey, this is it, thank you so much for talking with me.” Chad comes to HCN from Arizona State University’s investigative journalism master’s program, where they spent a year looking into ASU and the Arizona State Museum’s compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Chad, who is Diné, said they plan to keep both connection and impact front of mind in their work with HCN’s Indigenous Affairs desk.
Shi En Kim hit the ground running as HCN’s new climate and science fellow, interviewing staffers outside the national headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., where she had been working as a freelance journalist. After earning her Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Chicago, Kim turned to writing about science and climate, joining three friends to found a digital science magazine called Sequencer, where she gets to dive down intriguing rabbit holes and entertain her random curiosity. “As a journalist, I love being versatile,” Kim said. Now living in California, she looks forward to covering community-level initiatives that remind us that, despite the chaos in D.C., progress is still possible on the ground.
— Chad Bradley, Shi En Kim, Annie Rosenthal
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