Elizabeth Shogren
Elizabeth Shogren is an NPR News Science Desk correspondent focused on covering environment and energy issues and news.
Since she came to NPR in 2005, Shogren's reporting has covered everything from the damage caused by the BP oil spill on the ecology of the Gulf Coast, to the persistence of industrial toxic air pollution as seen by the legacy of Tonawanda Coke near Buffalo, to the impact of climate change on American icons like grizzly bears.
Prior to NPR, Shogren spent 14 years as a reporter on a variety of beats at The Los Angeles Times, including four years reporting on environmental issues in Washington, D.C., and across the country. While working from the paper's Washington bureau, from 1993-2000, Shogren covered the White House, Congress, social policy, money and politics, and presidential campaigns. During that time, Shogren was given the opportunity to travel abroad on short-term foreign reporting assignments, including the Kosovo crisis in 1999, the Bosnian war in 1996, and Russian elections in 1993 and 1996. Before joining the Washington bureau, Shogren was based in Moscow where she covered the breakup of the Soviet Union and the rise of democracy in Russia for the newspaper.
Beginning in 1988, Shogren worked as a freelance reporter based in Moscow, publishing in a variety of newspapers and magazines, including Newsweek, The Dallas Morning News, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post. During that time, she covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution in Prague.
Shogren's career in journalism began in the wire services. She worked for the Associated Press in Chicago and at United Press International in Albany, NY.
Throughout Shogren's career she has received numerous awards and honors including as a finalist for the 2011 Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting, the National Wildlife Federation National Conservation Achievement Award, the Meade Prize for coverage of air pollution and she was an IRE finalist. She is a member of Sigma Delta Chi and the Society of Professional Journalist.
After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Russian studies at the University of Virginia, Shogren went on to receive a Master of Science in journalism from Columbia University.
-
North Carolina is fed up with air pollution from other states making people sick and blanketing its scenic vistas with haze. Now it hopes to force the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of country's biggest polluters, to change its ways by using one of the oldest types of lawsuits: the nuisance suit.
-
There's an unusual bi-partisan effort to get the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to release information about certain Superfund cleanup sites, pieces of land that have been deemed too toxic for development. The EPA says sharing some information about the sites could discourage companies from cleaning up their environmental messes.
-
Hundreds of old coal-fired power plants still haven't installed modern pollution controls. One plant, across the Potomac River from the White House, is so vital to the Washington, D.C. region's electricity supply that the federal government is bending pollution rules to keep it running. -
The National Marine Fisheries Service is proposing a speed limit for ships entering ports along the eastern seaboard. The goal is to save right whales from being struck and killed. Shipping companies say there is no proof that slowing their vessels will help the endangered mammals.
-
A vast chain of remote Hawaiian islands, teeming with endangered sea life, has become the nation's newest national monument -- and the largest patch of protected ocean on earth.
-
Ocean ports are among the last major unregulated sources of concentrated pollution in the country. The biggest are the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. But there's a new man in charge. Tough-talking David Freeman, who helped establish the Environmental Protection Agency says he's going to slash pollution at Southern California's ports by 80 percent. -
Today's expensive gasoline is making people look for alternatives. That has opened doors of opportunity for entrepreneurs like Andrew Perlman, who is betting that the newest fuel will be made from one of humanity's oldest: coal. -
The California Air Resources Board announces its plan to reduce air pollution at the state's ports. Nationwide, ports account for a large and growing proportion of a dangerous kind of air pollution: soot from diesel engines. California is leading the way in trying to reduce the problem.
-
A leaked document from the Environmental Protection Agency suggests that the agency is considering a significant change in air-pollution rules. It would give chemical factories, refineries and manufacturing plants new leeway to increase emissions of pollutants that can cause cancer and birth defects.
-
Interior Secretary Gale Norton announces that after decades of trying to stop the loss of wetlands, the country has finally succeeded. But Norton's wetlands report has been criticized as misleading; it counts manmade reservoirs and ponds created for storm runoff.
