marlowe starling
published work
Mongabay
As a former intern and part-time freelance reporter for Mongabay, I report and write stories "from nature's frontline" about conservation topics ranging from the latest scientific discoveries to the impacts of climate change on the world's most vulnerable species. I also produce short feature videos for mongabay.com and social media platforms.
WUFT News
WUFT News is the NPR affiliate of North-Central Florida for community news. All of my stories listed here are published as multimedia packages with a mix of photo, video, audio and data visualization elements.
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Fresh Take Florida
Fresh Take Florida is a student-reported news service of the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications delivering high-profile news to the readers and listeners of WUFT, the NPR affiliate in North-Central Florida. Stories are often distributed to the state's largest news outlets under contract with The Associated Press, McClatchy papers, Florida Public Radio Network, CNN, Gannett and others.
The Independent Florida Alligator
The Alligator informs a primary readership of more than 50,000 University of Florida students, staff and faculty in addition to the wider Gainesville metropolis area. As a staff reporter and Copy Desk Chief, I reported a range of on-deadline stories for the general assignment beat.
WUFT Special Reporting Projects
I have reported on a team of fellow students for two separate environmental reporting projects published via WUFT. "The Human Hazard" looks at a variety of issues at the crossroads of climate change and human health, for which I wrote about the danger of Florida's unresolved problem with malfunctioning septic tanks that pollute the state's water resources. "Forever in Florida?" is a project inspired by my initial interest in virtually indestructible PFAS chemicals with a focus on Florida, for which I wrote about PFAS in our trash and landfills as a gateway to polluting our drinking water and environment.
Special Features
Click here to browse a collection of features and other stories that have been published in a variety of outlets, including Earth Island Journal, Miami Montage, the SFS Blog, and more.
Our Town and Senior Times Magazines
As an intern, I pitched stories relevant to the theme of each issue and wrote feature stories for publication in both Our Town and Senior Times Magazines. My first assignment about the Florida Swing Dancing Club celebrated a modern twist to an antiquated form of dance enjoyed by "Lindy hoppers" around the world. Since then, I've written about an Instagram-famous toad named Toby, an essay about Ichetucknee Springs State Park's universal charm, and a feature about the end-of-life doulas taking the fear out of dying.
unpublished work
Feminizing Fisheries: A journalistic approach to exploring women's role in small-scale fisheries in coastal Tanzania and Zanzibar
During the Spring 2019 semester, I took MMC 4302: World Communication Systems, International Humanitarianism with 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner for Feature Photography John Kaplan. For my individual project, I researched the role women play -- and are forced to fill -- in small-scale fisheries in Tanzania, and how their involvement contributes to both society and conservation efforts. In a hybrid research paper, feature story and theoretical action plan, I incorporated academic sources and personal interviews I conducted, such as the founder of an NGO in Dar es Salaam that makes use of community-based and bottom-up approaches to ocean conservation.
other work
Conservation Florida
Social Media Internship
My six-month tenure with CFL allowed me to hone and strengthen skills I already possessed -- such as AP Style, copy editing and writing for clarity and brevity -- while experiencing a new environment in the social media world. I regularly searched for high-quality photos for CFL's accounts with uplifting, humorous and witty captions to accompany them. I did the same for the Conservation Conversations blog posts, which I edited down for web readability and fact-checked for accuracy. To expand the team's outreach to its wide-ranging audience, I pioneered the use of Adobe Spark Story as a means of informing readers of the organization's conservation work in an engaging package, and contributed pieces of writing for the newsletter, such as the importance of a local Bioblitz and conservation science.