Saturday, February 1, 2025

Cannabis coverage lights up newsrooms in Colorado and Oregon

In 2013, two years before Oregon legalized the recreational use of marijuana, Portland’s Pulitzer Prize-winning alternative weekly newspaper, The Willamette Week, hired its first...

Drone Pilots in the Hot Seat as Politicians Squelch Hobby Flights

Consumer drones have become a nuisance to many authorities, including wildland firefighters. In July of 2014, a hobbyist piloted his drone over a fire...

Forest Service Burns Through Fire Budget, Reallocates Funding

To fight fires, the Forest Service receives a certain amount of money from Congress each year. Once it’s exceeded that budget, the agency pulls...

A Meteorologist Speaks to Misconceptions of Fire, Weather and Climate

There's a common misconception that the severity of a fire season depends on the snowpack of the previous winter and spring. This is only...

An Expert Weighs in on How Home Movies Fuel Fire Science

Editor Intro: When the Reynolds Creek Fire burned through tourist-heavy Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road last summer, a Missouri teen's footage shot from the...

Department of Defense Laws of War Manual Leaves Journalists in the Line of Fire

Matt Robbins and Bryan Denton met in Marjah, Afghanistan, in 2010. It was mid-February, and the U.S.-led offensive to drive the Taliban from a...
New vegetation fills an old burn area from the Trapper Fire in 2003. (Jake Green)

How Journalists Fan the Flames of Wildfire in the West

Firefighters often talk about the incomparable beauty of a forest burning at night. Fire fascinates. Its flicker in a campsite has always been mesmerizing....

Standing Rock: Native journalists torn between passion and neutrality

Story by Jason Begay, photos by Olivia Vanni See more of MJR's Standing Rock Coverage with this interactive web documentary. Even if it weren’t for that...

Sidney 2.0: A Stranger’s Take on Sherry Arnold

It’s been 43 days since two men from Colorado allegedly drove through Sidney while smoking crack cocaine. They had one mission in mind—kill a...