Last year, instead of heading home after a full day
of classes, senior Tiffany Campbell went to the Bellingham offices
of The Planet, Western Washington University’s
nationally recognized environmental magazine. As The
Planet’s editor, Campbell rounded out 15-hour days
editing copy, meeting with writers and laying out nearly 40 pages
of stories. For Campbell, who is now interning at a local paper,
the long hours were all worthwhile: The Planet,
which comes out of the university’s Huxley College of the
Environment, was the “one place we had a lot of freedom to take on
really tough stories, stories we really cared
about.”
Almost entirely student-run, The
Planet uses local and regional stories to address
national environmental topics. For each of the three yearly issues,
students fan out to report on multiple stories that relate to a
central theme. Last fall, student writers tackled the topic of
activism by profiling community-based grassroots groups as well as
offering first-hand accounts of Seattle’s World Trade Organization
riots. Last spring, Planet reporters talked to
loggers, hikers, backcountry horse riders and residents of an old
mill town to get the lowdown on a local land-use
issue.
Though The Planet has
won national and regional awards from the Associated College Press
and the Society of Professional Journalists, faculty advisor Scott
Brennan says the greatest achievement of the magazine has been to
create “good, solid, brave, investigative
journalists.”
Read back issues of The
Planet at www.planet.wwu.edu, or get on the mailing list
for upcoming issues by calling 360/650-3543.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Keeping an eye on The Planet.
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