|
|
Bay Journal marks milestone; circulation tops 40,000
Trip to observe ariakensis in Orient raises new questions about oyster
Volunteers collect 15,000 pounds of seeds for Growing Native
I'd like to introduce Rona Kobell as the latest addition to our staff at Bay Journal. Her work debuted in last month's issue, when she reported about the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail and its potential economic impact on local communities, as well as ballast water regulations for oceangoing ships.
For this issue, Kobell traveled to northern Pennsylvania to report on the fast-paced, and controversial, development of the Marcellus Shale natural gas reserves. The reserve is the largest natural gas discovery in years, but its development has taken a toll on some residents, and looms as a threat to streams and forests that are critical to the health of the Susquehanna River, and ultimately the Bay.
For the report, Kobell interviewed dozens of people, from homeowners and company representatives to government officials and environmentalists.
Kobell has been reporting for more than 15 years. She began her career at The Jerusalem Post, then moved to Washington, D.C., to become a writer and editor for Public Risk, a trade journal. She spent two years covering crime and prisons for a newspaper in St. Joseph, MO, before moving to her hometown of Pittsburgh to cover police and business.
Kobell joined The (Baltimore) Sun in 2000, where she spent four years covering a regional beat that included two military Superfund sites, several toxic waste dumps, and miles of shoreline. In 2004, she became The Sun's Chesapeake Bay reporter, covering not just the environment but also the way people live around the nation's largest estuary.
Her work has won numerous awards. The Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association gave her both first place in environmental reporting and Best in Show in 2008 for an investigation into river pollution. The same group awarded her both Best Local News Reporting and Best in Show in 2005 for a series of stories on the labor crisis in crab-picking houses. She has also won several prizes in the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild's Front Page contest, including first place for feature writing and first place for local news reporting.
In 2008, Kobell was selected as a Knight-Wallace fellow at the University of Michigan, where she spent a year studying the use of economic incentives in environmental policy. She is a 1993 graduate of the University of Michigan.
She lives in Baltimore with her husband, also a journalist, and her daughter.
New reprints
We recently added two more articles to the growing collection of reprints available on our website. The site offers PDF reprints of certain articles for agencies, teachers or organizations that want to use them as handouts. The reprints are in letter-size format to make them easy to print out, and contain all of the original photos and graphics from the articles.
The new postings include:
- "Target nutrient load figures released for Bay's tributaries," from November 2009, which lays out the Bay Program's draft cleanup targets.
- "Towns hope that John Smith trail will lead to prosperity," from November 2009, which talks about economic opportunities that may lay ahead for towns along the route of the new Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, as the National Park Service reviews options for trail development.
