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As part of the Ted Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism, award-winning journalists have been coming to CU Boulder for 21 years. Fellows embark on a year of courses, projects, field trips, seminars and more−taking advantage of everything university life has to offer. This series is a chance to get to know this year’s cohort of talented journalists beyond what a typical bio page will tell you. 

RJ Sangosti has been a photojournalist at The Denver Post since 2004, where he’s covered events spanning from Hurricane Katrina to presidential elections. Over more than a decade, he has documented the people and landscape of eastern Colorado, where years of drought and a loss of agricultural earning power continue to hurt farmers. Most recently, he completed a story about a Denver neighborhood in one of the country’s most polluted urban zip codes, whose residents continue to be impacted by a huge interstate construction project.

His work was included in the 2012 Time Magazine top 10 photos of the year, and he was honored to be part of the 2016 jury for the centennial year of The Pulitzer Prizes. 

RJ recently sat down with CEJ graduate research assistant, Andrew Cooper-Sansone, to talk about his work and life.

1. Why did you choose to cover environmental topics, and is there any memory that stands out as formative in your decision?  
Well, I have a 12-year-old son and a nine-year-old daughter, and they have a big part in that. My kids are a big influence on me, and they’re why I want to cover environmental issues. 

As an example, my son’s fifth-grade classmates worked to get Styrofoam trays out of their lunchroom. They pitched ideas to the school board, to the administration, and finally, after working all year long, they got them removed. But by the next year, there was a new principal and administration, and the trays were back.  

It's just a good example to me of why environmental journalism is so important: Without somebody questioning and pointing out when things aren’t right, the environment is oftentimes going to be left out. 

2. What do you think is the most important environmental story happening right now? 
I'm interested in the effects that climate change has on water, especially drought situations in eastern Colorado.  

I'm particularly interested in rural issues and how the drought is slowly working to erase rural America. The work that I want to do is in areas where certain political views, which might include climate change denial, sometimes exist. It’s okay that people have different views, because that’s what makes this country great. But my job is to go into their neighborhoods, into those rural communities, and open some eyes, make them question their views and think differently about conservation. These kinds of environmental issues affect us all, including rural areas, and that's why it's so important.  

If we have less snowmelt, less water trickles down the rivers and streams into towns in eastern Colorado. A situation like this makes it hard for a farmer, who, for example, may have just paid $200,000 for a tractor and now needs to buy more land to farm to pay the bills, but the water to maintain the land is not there.  

I'm a visual person, a photojournalist, so I'm showing the visual effects of the area’s water issues. I want to show situations like reservoirs that are no longer full, so people can no longer take water for irrigation out of them. People can no longer recreate there, so people are not coming into the area to support the economy. 

Those issues exist, and they're huge issues for rural America. But I think that, a lot of times, environmental journalism is in a bubble, and we forget about rural issues. But they’re important, because once we get everybody involved in this, we’re going to start to see real change. 

From Sangosti's 2019 Project, . Annabel Rodriguez-Santos, 8, lies in bed after a long night of getting little sleep. Annabel had an asthma attack during the night. "There are some nights you don't even sleep because you are just watching over them," said Annabel's mother Nancy Santos. Both Annabel and her older sister have childhood asthma. The family lives in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, only a few blocks from the construction on the Central 70 project. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

3. What's the most surprising thing you've learned from being at CU or in the Boulder community since starting the fellowship? 
The most surprising thing is willingness of all the professors, instructors, the staff to share their ideas and slow down with me. I'm highly dyslexic and have a really hard time reading, and I just have a totally visual brain. I've been amazed at how everybody has just asked: How can I help? Or, what do you need? It's been an amazing place for somebody who was really scared to come back to school and nervous about the opportunity to audit classes. It was just frightening to me. It's been a really smooth transition, and it's amazing how welcoming the environment has been.

I've learned in my career as a visual person to talk about my dyslexia a lot. I've had some success in my career, and when I do lectures or talk to fellow photojournalists, I realize that there's a lot of people like me out there, especially in the visual world of journalism. 

I'm taking a geology class with Dr. Stephen Welters. He has spent the time to get to know who I am and the project I'm working on. And then, like two weeks later, he emailed me all these articles related to my project. He told me, don't worry about the class reading and don’t overload yourself with this, and let me know if there’s something you’re really interested in. It is things like this that have made my experience so great.  

In this weird time where I'm doing everything on Zoom, it’s a little crazy for me doing everything online. I think that’s really difficult, especially for someone that never really sat down at a computer for more than 20 minutes at a time (just to transmit a couple photos and off to the next thing). Now I have some eight-hour days in front of a computer screen, which is definitely one downside. 

4. What has been the most helpful part of the Scripps Fellowship so far? 
I think it’s the seminars because I'm a visual learner. It's always good when somebody can give me a paint-by-numbers look at something – like: “Here's a graph and here's why it’s important.” Doug Kenney’s talk was a great example. He pointed out all these things and explained it to me visually. He does a really good job breaking things down.  

It's pretty amazing to be around all these really smart people and to get these opportunities. As a working journalist, I would do four or five stories a day, and didn’t have the opportunity to slow down and think. This program has allowed me to really slow down and think more deeply about the project I’m working on.  

5. What do you like to do outside of journalism? 
I'm a big fly fisherman. I love camping and hiking, and pretty much being a silly dad. My wife, Sarah, and I have amazing kids who are teaching us how to rock climb. Both of our kids are into gym climbing, but Sarah and I have never really climbed before. My oldest is 12, and he flies up those rocks and makes it look easy. Then I give it a try, and it's intimidating and hard. We are amazed by our kids’ ability to get us out into the world and try something new.  

Sangosti's family camping at Lake Irwin in Crested Butte. Wife, Sarah Sangosti, left; daughter Belle, 9, center; and son Nick, 12, right.