Sam Schramski named 2026 Knight-Risser Prize winner
Sam Schramski, a freelance journalist and special projects editor at the Earth Journalism Network, has been named the 2026 winner of the Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism. The prize, sponsored by the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships and the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University, provides up to $10,000 to support the reporting of an enterprise or investigative environmental story in the western United States.
This year marks a new chapter for the prize. After a decade of honoring stories already in print, the Knight-Risser prize now funds the reporting before it happens — helping journalists dig into stories that might otherwise go untold.
With the support of the prize, Schramski will investigate how an aging federal mining law, paired with a renewed corporate and federal political push to fast-track critical mineral development, is exposing public lands across the West to a new wave of mining claims. Under a May 2025 Trump executive order framing minerals as a national security issue, agencies have been directed to streamline permitting further, expand the definition of critical minerals to include copper, and identify federal lands for mineral development.
Schramski intends to trace how companies are staking claims on treasured backcountry, what it means for the communities nearby, and what — if anything — local residents can do about it. His investigation will examine the central paradox of the AI semiconductor race and the green transition: that the metals needed for renewable energy are being extracted in ways that threaten the wild landscapes the West depends on economically, culturally and ecologically.
“Spurring and supporting environmental journalism in the West has never been more important,” said Felicity Barringer Taubman, writer-in-residence at the Lane Center and one of the Knight-Risser judges. “Efforts to undermine the legal underpinning of environmental protections are putting western land, air, water, and communities at risk. The Knight-Risser award will help journalists make the dangers visible and offer viable solutions.”
Based in southwestern New Mexico, Schramski brings a rare combination of scientific training and on-the-ground reporting experience to the project. He holds a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary ecology from the University of Florida, and his fieldwork has taken him from rural South Africa to the Brazilian Amazon, where he spent two years reporting on land rights and forest loss as a postdoctoral fellow. His work has aired on NPR's Morning Edition, Deutsche Welle's World in Progress, and Radio France Internationale, and appeared in Nautilus, among other outlets. His 2024 book, “Move on the Mud,” examines unintended consequences of efforts to adapt to impacts of climate change, with a focus on rural southwestern New Mexico.
The Knight-Risser Prize was created to honor James V. Risser, the longtime director of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner known for investigative and environmental reporting. As the recipient, Schramski will visit Stanford in 2027 to share insights he gained from pursuing the story during a public conversation with students and the broader Stanford community.
