The Denverite team is getting a little bigger for a little while.
Lindsay Fendt is joining the team temporarily as a city reporter, helping us keep an eye on the city while staff are diverted on a special project.
Lindsay is an award-winning freelance journalist and photographer who has covered health and the environment as a former staff writer and photographer for The Tico Times in San José, Costa Rica. She came to Colorado in 2017 for the Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism and is working on a book -- due out in 2021 -- about the global rise of murders of environmentalists. Her work has also been published in The Guardian, bioGraphic, U.S. News and World Report, Univision, Al Jazeera and Vice News, among others.
We're eager for her to get out there -- and she starts today. So, Denver, meet Lindsay.
Ashley Dean: So you're a Scripps Fellow. Tell us what that means.
Lindsay Fendt: I was a 2017/2018 Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, which is what brought me to the state. This fellowship program brings five journalists that have an interest in the environment to the campus each year to audit classes and work on a big reporting project. It was an amazing learning opportunity and it gave me time to put together a book proposal. After a year in Colorado a lot of the fellows don't want to leave, me included, so there are quite a few of us still floating around the state.
AD: And what about the book you're working on?
LF: I'm writing a book about the global rise in environmental murders. These killings involve everyone from environmental activists and conservation workers to regular people who have been caught up in a land dispute. I've spent six years investigating some of these cases and the book will include stories from Costa Rica, Brazil, the Philippines and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
AD: What are you looking forward to most about reporting in Denver?
LF: While I love traveling and reporting from abroad, I think it is both important and deeply satisfying to do work in my own community. I've wanted to break into more local news since I first moved to Denver and I'm really excited to start digging into the issues that affect my own city.
AD: I know you've done some reporting on Denver water issues. Got any crazy or surprising Denver water facts you can share with us?
LF: This isn't Denver specific, but I find myself often thinking about the Alva B. Adams tunnel near Rocky Mountain National Park. It's about 10 feet in diameter and runs underneath the Continental Divide, pumping water to the Front Range from the Colorado River system. The crazy amount of dams, pipes and reservoirs we have to get water to the Front Range is something I like to keep in mind whenever I turn on a tap.
Got a Denver neighborhood story you've been wishing someone would tell? Got a question about an intersection, a plot of land or something else? Email Lindsay at [email protected].
