Janet Wilson Named IJJ Senior Fellow,
Specializing in Environmental Justice

LOS ANGELES (April 9, 2009) – Environmental writer Janet Wilson has been named a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Justice and Journalism (IJJ) at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Wilson, who specializes in covering environment and energy issues, has been designated as IJJ’s Senior Fellow for Environmental Justice and is taking a leading role in planning a fellowship program for ethnic media journalists. With support from the Institute’s Justice and Journalism Fund, she also is completing a package of stories on life in the shadow of industrial zones.

As an environment reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times, she covered everything from inner city neighborhoods grappling with deadly soot and hexavalent chromium to White House officials quashing scientists’ findings on ozone, climate change and endangered species.

Wilson was part of teams honored in 2008 awards by the Associated Press and Los Angeles Press Club for the Times’ wildfire coverage. She was a frontline reporter on the Times team that covered the 2003 wildfires and won the paper’s 2004 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news.

Wilson worked at the Los Angeles Times from 1996 to 2008. Previously, she worked with the Detroit Free Press, Boston Globe, New York Daily News, CNN, ABC News “Nightline” and other outlets.

As a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, she made a documentary about juvenile violence in Detroit. Wilson received an M.S. from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and a B.A. from Yale University.

“Janet Wilson brings expertise and news instincts that will be invaluable to our Justice and Journalism Fellows,” said Steve Montiel, director of the Institute for Justice and Journalism. The upcoming fellowship program will include sessions in both Los Angeles and Chicago. In a 2007 study of major urban areas, Los Angeles was ranked first with the most people of color living near hazardous waste facilities. Chicago was ranked fourth.

Wilson joins several other prominent journalists as IJJ Senior Fellows.

USC Annenberg’s Institute for Justice and Journalism was created with Ford Foundation funding in 2000. The current fellowship program for ethnic media is supported by a grant from the McCormick Foundation. Past fellowship programs and conferences have focused on criminal justice, racial justice and immigration. Additional information is at www.justnews.org.