Bill Dawson
 HARC Fellow

email: bdawson@harc.edu

Bill Dawson is an independent journalist and writer who has specialized in coverage of environmental issues for most of his career. He is the founding editor of Texas Climate News, an online magazine about climate change and sustainability issues, which was launched in late 2008 and is published by HARC.

In addition to his journalistic work, Dawson is a lecturer at Rice University. Beginning in 2005, he has taught an undergraduate class that he developed for the Center for the Study of Environment and Society at Rice, which focuses on Houston and its region as a microcosm for examining important environmental issues. He has also taught in Rice's Master of Liberal Studies Program.

He is a regular contributor to the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media and writes two regular columns as assistant editor of the Society of Environmental Journalists' quarterly magazine, SEJournal. His writing as an independent journalist has also appeared in publications including the New York Times and Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine.

From 2001-03, Dawson was senior writer for environmental issues on the staff of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to investigative reporting in the public interest. His work there included reports on an abandoned regulatory initiative to enhance industrial chemical safety and on lobbying efforts to prevent regulations aimed at fighting climate change.

From 1984-2001, he was the environment writer of the Houston Chronicle, producing numerous investigative and explanatory projects. They presented in-depth examinations of subjects including Houston's air quality problems, the impact of global warming on Texas, the loss of wetlands in Texas, biodiversity and species conservation issues in Texas, threats to Galveston Bay, tropical deforestation, cancer incidence along the Texas coast, and increased pediatric asthma.

Before joining the Chronicle, he worked as a reporter and editor for newspapers in Memphis and Little Rock.

Dawson earned an MA in journalism from The University of Texas at Austin and a BA in history and behavioral science from Rice.