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Managing Editor

Melissa Troutman is a Public Herald co-founder. She has experience as a traditional print and multimedia journalist and has a passion for photography, teaching, songwriting, and dance.

As Managing Editor for Public Herald, Melissa strives to unearth, or sometimes dust off and reorganize, stories that are valuable to all readers. You can email her at melissa@publicherald.org. Follow on twitter: @melissat22

Freedom To Disagree: “The Revolution Is Being Televised”

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by FreedomHouse, Flickr

In this remarkable video by Adam Pletts for Al Jazeera, [7:59] a former real-estate construction manager turned media activist states, “It was impossible before the revolution to make a media centre or publish any photo or video against the regime.” Sitting on the floor, snacking and smoking cigarettes in a village guarded by the Free Syrian Army, a team of media activists points to coverage by Reuters on the T.V. and have differing opinions about editing the team’s video content for distribution. One main debate surrounds how much “flesh and blood” is too much to show before it’s too shocking for people to even watch. The former construction manager, who now serves as media coordinator, states, “This discussion is normal and necessary. For 50 years the regime took only one side and never listened to the others sides. So if I behave the same way now, I will be behaving like the regime.” But later [16:05] he seems to contradict himself: “I am an activist, only an activist. I am with the revolution, so I will only tell this side.”

Just Say ‘No’ — Locals Ban Frack Waste in Pa.

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Dr. Stephen Cleghorn of Paradise Gardens and Farm, who recently formed an easement on his property to ban the development of unconventional gas wells. © J.B.Pribanic

On January 9, 2013, in otherwise quiet Highland Township in Elk County, Pennsylvania, officials signed a community rights bill into law stopping the deposit of fracking waste within the township. Seneca Resources, the drilling and fracking arm of National Fuel Gas of Williamsville, N.Y., had planned to inject its “production fluids” (oil and gas drilling and fracking waste) into an injection well about 2,200 feet from Crystal Springs — a main source of water for James City — according to the Kane Republican. Injection wells have a history, both long and recent, of failing to contain waste and increasing the risk of exposure to drinking water supplies. So, residents of Highland Township asked their municipal officials to say “No.” A Community & Environmental Rights Movement Highland Township is the latest on a list of over 140 other communities that have said ‘no’ to factory farms, waste incinerators, corporate water withdrawals, and now fracking by passing rights-based ordinances. Marsha Buhl, president of the Highland Township Recreation Association, collected signatures from more than 230 township residents in order to ban the injection well.

2013 Year of the Pigeon

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The Magician transcends duality. He has learned the fundamental elements of the universe, represented by emblems of the four suits of the tarot already broken apart and lying on the table before him. Similarly, in the Book of Thoth deck, he is crowned by snakes, another symbol of both infinity and dualism, as snakes have learned from Gilgamesh how to shed their skins and be reborn, thus achieving a type of immortality; the blind prophet Tiresias split apart coupling snakes and as a result became a woman, transcending the dualism of gender. source: Wikipedia

For us at Public Herald, 2012 was the ‘Year of the Snake.’ We’ve been intimately connected to water while shooting and editing our first documentary film Triple Divide, that began as a small project in 2011 but blossomed into a 95-minute Public Herald Studios production about fracking in the Marcellus Shale region. Like the water snake, we’ve been holed up in our Pennsylvania editing “den” for much of the year, only venturing out to devour necessary sustenance — truth and creativity — as the drama of deep shale extraction unfolds. Snakes get a bad rap, even in the oil and gas industry. Timber rattlesnakes are an issue near drill rigs in the mountain regions of northern and central PA, but are also protected as a vulnerable keystone-state species due to habitat destruction. “So what?” some may say, “what’s so bad about less poisonous snakes?” But snakes are only poisonous if you’re bitten. And the best prevention from a bite is being aware of, and intimately connected to, one’s surroundings.

Triple Divide: The Judys

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Judy standing with contaminated water drawn from her well. © J.B.Pribanic

A Look at Drill Waste Pits and Groundwater by Melissa Troutman, Laurel Dammann, and Joshua Pribanic “It was 2007, and my water well was fine. I mean, I didn’t have any problem with it. I was cooking, drinking, [...]

Dear Governor Cuomo: Sincerely, John Medeski

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John Medeski. photo: wordloaf

  Sincerely, John By Laurel Dammann, Melissa Troutman, & Joshua Pribanic for Public Herald Listen to Podcast: John Medeski Interview “Artists Against Fracking” Summer 1969, half a million people gathered on a dairy farm in upstate New York [...]

Triple Divide: Fracking Pennsylvania’s Exceptional Value Waters

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The Cherry Springs vista [pictured here] forms headwaters for Pennsylvania's largest spread of Exceptional Value streams, the state's highest recognized classification by DEP for healthy ecosystems. These virgin hydrologic landscapes also hold exceptional resources for the Marcellus Shale Play. © J.B.Pribanic

Public Herald will be publishing the script for 10 of the 11 chapters from our first feature length documentary film, Triple Divide. The following is a chapter on natural gas drilling violations in Exceptional Value watersheds where fracking has occurred — [...]

Pennsylvania Violations: With Every New Oil & Gas Well Drilled There Are No Guarantees

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well and violation chart

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Oil and Gas Reporting Website,  oil and gas operators in the state have amassed 20,942 violations in the past decade, 3,393 of them issued for Marcellus Shale oil and gas wells. From [...]

The Carolina Chocolate Drops: New Album “Leaving Eden”

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Winner of the "Traditional Folk Grammy," the Carolina Chocolate Drops performing at the annual Dam Show in Austin, PA. © Joshua B. Pribanic

Full Interview » Podcast: Carolina Chocolate Drops Carolina Chocolate Drops are sweet – but they’re not something to eat. You have to take them in with your ears, your feet, your skin, and your mouth if you’re prone [...]

Journalists Detained, Labeled Ecoterrorists by Natural Gas Workers

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Melissa Troutman approaching a guard shack in Tioga State Forest. photo: Joshua B. Pribanic

By Joshua Pribanic & Melissa Troutman Public Herald journalists photographing natural gas operations in Pennsylvania were falsely detained in the middle of the night by two water truck drivers on an unmarked road in Tioga State Forest and [...]