NPR hires S&P’s Copley as local weather and enterprise correspondent

Hello each one,

Andrea and I are pleased to announce that we now have employed Michael Copley because the community’s first local weather and company correspondent.

Of all of the forces and actors responding to local weather change, firms appear to be the group whose plans usually give folks probably the most hope and whose true actions appear probably the most opaque. We created this place to assist our viewers perceive the function companies are enjoying within the altering local weather: how some are serving to us keep away from the worst local weather eventualities and the way others are rushing us towards hurt.

Michael involves NPR from S&P World, the place he spent 9 years reporting on the power business and inexperienced investments. Michael was the primary reporter to reveal the photo voltaic business’s hyperlinks to China’s Xinjiang area, the place Beijing is accused of persecuting Uyghurs and different Muslim minorities. Following Michael’s reporting, photo voltaic corporations started shifting their provide chains away from the area, and President Biden signed a commerce ban concentrating on Xinjiang that singled out the photo voltaic business for particular enforcement.

Michael additionally labored with a crew of journalists documenting how a build-out of pure fuel infrastructure threatens to go away American power customers with the invoice for stranded fossil fuels. The challenge was a finalist for a 2020 Dateline Award from the Society of Skilled Journalists, Washington, DC, Professional Chapter. In 2018, Michael investigated the automotive business’s failure to reveal the danger of human rights abuses in electrical car provide chains. The work was named enterprise story of the 12 months by the American Society of Enterprise Publication Editors.

Earlier than working at S&P, Michael was a reporter at The File in New Jersey, the place he documented a bitter battle over taxes within the state’s Meadowlands. He began his journalism profession at Powhatan Right this moment, a weekly newspaper in Virginia. Michael has a grasp’s diploma in journalism from the Columbia Journalism Faculty. He grew up in Richmond, Va., and lives along with his spouse and two rambunctious daughters in Falls Church, Va.

Michael emerged from a extremely aggressive pool of candidates that included among the finest local weather and enterprise reporters within the nation. We’re grateful to the hiring panel for serving to us slender down such a powerful area. Its members have been Rafael Nam, Laura Sullivan, Jonaki Mehta and Jeff Brady, whose insights captured a lot of newsroom tales.

Michael brings a mix of deep reporting experience and dedication to the general public service facet of journalism. He’ll solely contribute to the creativity, ambition and collegiality of NPR’s local weather crew, which incorporates journalists from the Nationwide and Science desks.

Michael begins Monday August fifteenth at DC HQ. Please be part of us in welcoming him to NPR.