Dimiter Kenarov, Calkins Media's Stan Ellis at the University of Chicago

"Shale Gas: From Poland to Pennsylvania," the Pulitzer Center's joint reporting initiative with Calkins Media, focuses on a commodity called "a game changer," promoted as a cleaner fossil alternative to coal and oil and cheered as the next step toward the American dream of energy independence. Poland is now Europe's center of shale gas. Like Pennsylvania, it embraces the promises and dangers of extraction. At the center of debate: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and an associated largely unexplored question of global politics.

Pulitzer Center grantee Dimiter Kenarov, the freelance journalist behind the shale gas project for the Pulitzer Center, visits the University of Chicago Thursday, January 31 to discuss his recent reporting on this topic. Stanley Ellis, vice-president of Calkins Media and grandson of the company's founder Stanley W. Calkins, joins Kenarov to discuss his family's media company, its business model, and its reporting on the shale gas industry. Calkins publishes the "Shale Reporter," which is devoted to shale gas news.

Kenarov has reported for the Pulitzer Center previously and is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul, Turkey. He is a contributing editor at the Virginia Quarterly Review, and his work also has appeared in Esquire, Outside, The Nation, the International Herald Tribune, and other outlets. His work has been included in "The Best American Travel Writing." Kenarov is currently working on a book-length project about the Black Sea. Kenarov is a graduate of Middlebury College and the University of California-Berkeley.

Ellis is vice-president of Calkins Media and serves on its Board of Directors. A third-generation member of the Calkins family, Ellis has extensive experience in operations and strategic planning for the media industry. Prior to his current role, he served on the company's Print and Digital Operating Committees and was publisher of the Burlington County Times, a daily newspaper in southern New Jersey. He has a degree in marketing from Penn State and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Please see the University of Chicago website for more details.

Thursday, January 31
5:30-7:00pm
University of Chicago
Ida Noyes Hall
1212 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

The Shale Gas: From Poland to Pennsylvania project is sponsored by Calkins Media and the Pulitzer Center.