'Chronicle' welcomes new reporter covering environment, climate change in Augusta area
Growing up in St. Louis, Erica Van Buren loved words, though she wasn’t sure exactly where that love would take her.
“When I was growing up, I knew I wanted to be a writer. But I didn’t know what that really meant or what that looked like, because growing up I didn’t see a lot of reporters within reach that looked like me,” she said. “Anything that dealt with writing essays or doing presentations, I always excelled in those classes.”
Today, she’s sharing that fondness for words and information with a new audience, as the climate change and environment reporter for The Augusta Chronicle. Her position is made possible by a two-year grant from 1Earth and individual donors through Journalism Funding Partners. It is part of a broader effort to improve coverage of climate-related issues in the Southeast.
1Earth is a private, nonprofit. It fund’s community partnerships and climate reporting positions within newsrooms in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The Augusta-based reporting position will cover regional and local news. As with all community partnerships, the USA TODAY Network will retain control over all editorial content.
Working at other jobs immediately out of high school, Van Buren later enrolled at the Forest Park campus of St. Louis Community College, eager to take as many writing classes as she could. Her adviser had other ideas.
“I remember the academic adviser telling me, ‘Oh, that’s a starving art. You’ll never make any money off of that,’” she said. “So she signed me up for all these business courses.”
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After just one lackluster semester, she convinced her adviser to pivot her schedule toward more writing classes.
Transferring her academic credits to Fontbonne University in St. Louis, Van Buren graduated in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in English. An internship with the weekly St. Louis American newspaper turned into a busy job as a freelancer for the American and other area publications.
But she also worked a full-time job as a Transportation Security Administration officer at St. Louis’ Lambert International Airport, thinking she might still be short on writing experience to apply for more writing jobs.
“I didn’t think I had enough because I didn’t go the traditional route," Van Buren said. “My path was a little unorthodox.”
After sending out a fresh round of résumés in late 2015, a TV station affiliated with the St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press hired Van Buren to cover family, food and home-and-garden beats. Both the newspaper and the TV station were owned by the same company, giving her the opportunity not only to write for print and online but to shoot and edit photo and video packages for the station and the website.
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“I not only had to go out and find stories, I had to find stories that were visually compelling enough to be able to be viewed on the nighttime news,” she said. “I was terrified. But the first day, I hit the ground running and I loved every minute of it.”
Other opportunities followed. Van Buren moved to Boca Raton, Fla., to take a job at Airport Revenue News, a niche trade publication that didn’t fully spark her desire to write. She later applied to be the Boynton Beach beat reporter for Gannett’s Palm Beach Post. She didn’t get that job, but an editor who spotted her talent offered her a freelancing position, which she eagerly accepted.
Jobs at two other Florida Gannett newspapers followed – at the Daytona Beach News-Journal and the Fort Myers News-Press – before starting her job in Augusta in June.
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Van Buren’s Augusta-area environmental beat includes nearby Plant Vogtle, a nuclear power plant whose new reactor unit in July became the first U.S.-built nuclear reactor since 1977 to go commercially active. Augusta also sits on the Savannah River, a body of water that attracts interest from both eager developers and staunch conservationists.
More recently, environmental activists since last year have protested the announcement of a proposed copper smelting plant in south Augusta. The plant will create needed jobs, but – according to nonprofit Savannah Riverkeeper – also could spew more than 30 toxic chemicals into the atmosphere.
Van Buren is new to the environmental beat but is learning the ins and outs quickly. “Nothing's really surprised me at this point,” she said. “But I'm open to being surprised. It comes with the territory being a journalist, I think.”
Van Buren can be reached at EVanBuren@gannett.com.
A portion of this content was contributed by the Savannah Morning News.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: New 'Augusta Chronicle' reporter embracing environmental news beat
