{"id":7904,"date":"2019-07-30T08:26:53","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T12:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metcalfinstitute.org\/?p=7904"},"modified":"2019-09-23T16:52:02","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T20:52:02","slug":"sara-sneath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/sara-sneath\/","title":{"rendered":"Sara Sneath"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Sara Sneath likes to be on the front line of environmental issues, and her respect for Mother Nature runs deep. Those are two reasons why she took a break from journalism in 2018 and spent three straight months living out in the elements, including several nights hunkered down in a bed of snow in the dead of winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first came back, I was feral, I grappled with \u2018how do you live in houses, how do you sit on couches?\u2019\u201d says Sneath of her trek into the wild with the National Outdoor Leadership School<\/a>. \u201cI was told that it would be difficult to transition back to my former life, and that was true.\u201d<\/p>\n

An environment reporter for NOLA.com<\/a> and former Marine, Sneath embraces challenges head on. \u201cI think I\u2019ve lived my whole life that way,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In fact, as she prepared to rappel off an 80-foot perilous cliff during her stint in the great outdoors, she rationalized, \u201cI was about to do something that scared me. That alone seemed like a good enough reason to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sneath earned degrees in journalism and sociology from the University of Kansas. She\u2019s reported for the Willamette Week<\/a> in Portland, Oregon, and the Victoria Advocate<\/a> in Texas where she won four Associated Press awards for her coverage of oil, water and coastal issues.<\/p>\n

In an effort to gain a better understanding of the scientific findings associated with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Sneath attended Metcalf Institute\u2019s 2014 Oil Spill Science Seminar for Journalists<\/a> in Mobile, Alabama. \u201cTwo months after the workshop there was another oil spill on the Gulf coast,\u201d says Sneath. \u201cI used a lot of the information I learned in the Metcalf workshop, and that information is still relevant today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sneath joined The Times-Picayune\u2019s coastal environment team led by award-winning journalist and Metcalf Annual Science Immersion Workshop alumnus Mark Schleifstein, in 2017. \u201cIt was such an honor to work with Mark in New Orleans,\u201d says Sneath. \u201cThat was a dream of mine!\u201d A dream followed by a wake-up call two years later when The Times-Picayune merged with The New Orleans Advocate, resulting in massive layoffs. Fortunately, Sneath and the entire environment team stayed intact at the Advocate after the merger.<\/p>\n

Sneath enjoys covering stories focused on endangered species and the people who are most impacted by environmental challenges, including people living in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. \u201cThese people are often on the frontlines of environmental issues,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s important that we pay attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sneath hopes to write more in-depth, long-form environmental stories in the near future. She\u2019d also like to use her new survival skills to convince a climate scientist to take her into the field \u201cAs environmental reporters we\u2019re constantly trying to convince scientists that we\u2019re not liabilities in the field,\u201d says Sneath. \u201cI feel like I can say \u2018I\u2019m not a liability, I can build a snow fort and live in it.\u2019 I really want to be on the front line of these issues and I hope the wilderness course helps me get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more alumni profiles<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sara Sneath likes to be on the front line of environmental issues, and her respect for Mother Nature runs deep. Those are two reasons why she took a break from journalism in 2018 and spent three straight months living out in the elements, including several nights hunkered down in a bed of snow in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7904"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7925,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7904\/revisions\/7925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/metcalf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}