An environmental reporting prize dropped, money goes to training

For the past seven years, the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting has doled out the $75,000 Grantham Prize for Excellence in environmental reporting.

Now, the prize is no more.

The Grantham Foundation, which funded the prize - developed and administered by the Metcalf Institute - has elected to divert the funding to training for journalists.

The training will help reporters cover climate change and other environmental issues. The Metcalf Institute will offer details on its web site next month.

This seems like a sharp move. With shrinking newsroom budgets, media outlets can offer scant training of their own. This sort of third-party training is becoming increasingly important. I've been to a couple of good trainings myself, in recent years: one offered by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (with a grant from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation) on stimulus spending and another by the New England First Amendment Center on investigative reporting.

That training helped inform this week's cover story.