I’m Bobby Magill, a water policy and public lands journalist for Bloomberg Law. I’m a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and I’ve been an SEJ member since 2004. I previously served two three-year terms on the SEJ Board of Directors until 2021 and was SEJ president for three of its most transformative years, from 2016-2019.
I’m running to serve on the board for another term for four reasons:
• SEJ is in a moment of transition between executive directors, and I want to offer my experience to help SEJ thrive during this period. As SEJ president, I worked with all four of SEJ’s previous executive directors or interim co-EDs. I led SEJ through its first major executive director transition in 2017 and again later that year when the new executive director departed and we launched another executive search. The result of the board’s success during that tumult was the thriving SEJ that exists today thanks to Meaghan Parker’s outstanding leadership and tireless work.
• SEJ has worked hard to professionalize in recent years, continuing most recently with the board’s wise decision to outsource some of its office functions. I want to see a diverse SEJ maintain its unique sense of “family” among journalists while it continues to evolve into a modern and broadly-inclusive organization. The warmth, connections, camaraderie, friendship and cohesion among SEJ’s members are some of the organization’s best qualities. Those are worth keeping as SEJ continues professionalizing.
• Fundraising, capacity-building and a visionary long-term strategy to navigate the ever-changing and uncertain media landscape are essential to SEJ’s long-term success. It’s important that the board help SEJ’s new executive director to think creatively about seeking new funding sources, coalition-building with other journalism organizations, and a long-term strategy that ensures SEJ becomes even more prominent and effective as a champion of environmental journalism.
• I want to affirm and expand SEJ’s long-standing commitment to the First Amendment, including press freedoms and freedom of speech. Journalists cannot effectively do their job under threat of censorship or denied access to sources and public information. I want to see SEJ bolster its FOIA Task Force while joining forces with other groups to raise our voice even more boldly for access and against censorship.
More about me: I live in Franklin County, Penn., with my husband, and I work for Bloomberg in Washington. I’ve covered climate change, water, wildfire and public lands in various roles for more than 20 years at both local and national news outlets. Those include Climate Central, the Fort Collins Coloradoan, the Grand Junction, Colo., Daily Sentinel and other publications. Learn more about me at bobbymagill.com. I’d be honored to have your vote for the SEJ board.
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