UC Berkeley Journalism - Program - Science and Environmental Reporting Faculty

Science and Environmental Reporting Faculty and Lecturers

Faculty

Michael Pollan (Professor)
Michael Pollan is the author, most recently, of "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto." His previous book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals", was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. It also won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the James Beard Award for best food writing, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of "The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World", "A Place of My Own", and "Second Nature". A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, Pollan is the recipient of numerous journalistic awards, including the James Beard Award for best magazine series in 2003 and the Reuters-I.U.C.N. 2000 Global Award for Environmental Journalism. His articles have been anthologized in Best American Science Writing, Best American Essays and the Norton Book of Nature Writing. Pollan served for many years as executive editor of Harper's Magazine and is now the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley.
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Lecturers

David Tuller (Lecturer)
David Tuller was a reporter and editor for ten years at the San Francisco Chronicle. He served as health editor at Salon.com and frequently writes health stories for the New York Times. He received his masters in public health at Berkeley in 2005.

Previous Instructors

Marla Cone (Lecturer)
Cone is an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Ed Dobb (Lecturer)
Edwin Dobb is a former senior editor and acting editor in chief of The Sciences, the recipient of numerous National Magazine Awards. He has written about science and environmental issues for Discover, Audubon, Mother Jones, High Country News, The New York Times Magazine, and Harper’s, where he has been a contributing editor since 1998. Dobb is the co-author, with Jack Horner, of Dinosaur Lives, which The New York Times selected as a notable book of the year and The Los Angeles Times picked as a best book of the year. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing Series. Dobb is currently writing a book for Houghton Mifflin about the social and environmental consequences of industrialized mining. He is also the co-writer and associate producer of a documentary film on the same subject, which will be broadcast nationally on public television in 2008. Dobb is a former Hewlett Teaching Fellow in Environmental Journalism and member of the Editing Workshops.

Mark Dowie (Lecturer)
Investigative reporter Mark Dowie is a former Publisher and Editor of Mother Jones. He has written over 200 investigative reports for fifty five periodicals worldwide. And he has written six books on subjects ranging from environmental history to organ transplantation to foundation philanthropy. He has received eighteen American journalism awards, including four National Magazine Awards. In 1982 he was awarded the bronze medallion by Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), his fourth award from that organization.

Katherine Griffin (Lecturer)
Katherine Griffin (MJ 88) is managing editor of Yoga Journal magazine. She‚s held senior editorial positions at Health magazine (a four-time National Magazine Award-winning monthly) and WebMD and was a staff writer at Health for eight years. She‚s written for the Los Angeles Times, Real Simple, Islands, Reader's Digest, the Sacramento Bee, the Contra Costa Times, Family Therapy Networker, and the East Bay Express, among other publications. She has taught journalism at San Francisco State University; in 2002 she was a science journalism fellow at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory.

John Harte (Professor)
John Harte is a leading climatologist and a professor in UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources as well as the Energy and Resources Group. He is currently a Carnegie Fellow at the Journalism School.

Mark Herstgaard (Lecturer)
Mark Hertsgaard is a journalist, author and broadcaster. An author of numerous books, his next, The Eagle?s Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World, will be published in the fall. He has contributed to newspapers and magazines the world over and appeared on many television and radio programs at home and abroad. He is a regular contributor of both feature stories and commentary to NPR, particularly to the weekly environmental program, "Living On Earth." He has lectured at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton and many other universities.

Marion Nestle (Not Selected)
Marion Nestle is Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, which she chaired from 1988-2003. Her degrees include a Ph.D. in molecular biology and an M.P.H. in public health nutrition, both from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the analysis of scientific, social, cultural, and economic factors that influence dietary recommendations and practices. She is the author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (2002) and Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (2003), both from University of California Press.
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David Weir (Lecturer)
David Weir is a Lokey Visiting Professor of Journalism at Stanford. He's a veteran journalist who was formerly Editor in Chief of 7x7 magazine in S.F.; Executive VP and Acting Radio News Director at KQED; an investigative reporter for Rolling Stone; a senior editor of California magazine; Managing Editor of Mother Jones; an editorial writer for the San Francisco Examiner; and co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). He's authored or co-authored three books, including the textbook Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets the Story (with Dan Noyes, 1983); and over 150 articles for various publications (including the New York Times, the Economist, New York, the LA Weekly, Rolling Stone, New West, The Nation, Mother Jones, HotWired, Salon and many others). He is currently at work on his fourth book, a biography of Rolling Stone founder, editor and publisher Jann Wenner.