Jim Detjen joined the Michigan State University (MSU) Journalism School faculty in January 1995 as the Knight Chair in Journalism, the nation's only endowed chair in environmental reporting. He is also the Director of MSU's Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and MSU's Environmental Journalism Program.

Detjen had spent 21 years as a professional newspaper reporter and editor. He covered local government, police, agriculture and the environment for The Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal from 1973 to 1977. He covered environmental issues, worked as an investigative reporter and wrote editorials at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., from 1978 to 1982. He covered scientific, environmental and medical issues and served as a part-time editor on the science, state, city, national and foreign desks of The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1982 to 1994.

Detjen has also worked as a part-time correspondent for The New York Times and his work has been published in The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Detroit Free Press, The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe and many other newspapers and magazines. He served as the host of "Earth View," a cable television program on environmental issues in 1992.

He has won more than 50 state, national and international awards for his reporting, including the George Polk Award, the National Headliner Award for investigative reporting, the Thomas Stokes Award for natural resources reporting (twice) and the Edward Meeman Award for environmental reporting (five times). His work has been nominated eight times for a Pulitzer Prize, and he has been a finalist three times.

The co-author of or contributor to four books, Detjen focuses his research interests on environmental and science reporting, journalism ethics, and journalism history.

He is the founding president of the U.S. Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) and a member of its board of directors, and a co-founder and former president of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists (IFEJ).

He has a B.S. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he was the managing editor of his college newspaper, and a M.S. degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Detjen has taught environmental journalism at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, as part of a Fulbright Scholarship, and he has given more than 30 lectures at universities and news organizations throughout China during his six-month visit.

He has participated in journalism training workshops, courses and conferences in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, Hungary, Portugal, Italy, South Africa, Ukraine, Russia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Canada and throughout the United States.