About
The National Security Reporting Project is an annual in-depth investigation of a critical national security issue. It is part of the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative, which is funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. For this year’s project, nine graduate students from the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University dived into the topic of energy security, with a specific focus on oil. They explored the definition of energy security, the shifting relations between nations as the global oil trade changes, U.S. military and diplomatic role in securing oil resources, vulnerabilities in America’s domestic infrastructure, emerging fossil fuel technologies and much more.
In their reporting, the students traveled far and wide. Members of the team were embedded in military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil choke point in the Persian Gulf; traveled by boat in the Subic Bay, Philippines, to report on tensions in the South China Sea; walked the storied hallways of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to look into cutting-edge fossil fuel research; climbed the hilly slopes of Quito, Ecuador, to investigate U.S. energy ties to Latin America; and documented local sentiments about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve near Baton Rouge, La. They interviewed government officials, industry experts, think tank scholars, military officers, oil company officials and scientists.
Partnering with award-winning interactive designers from The Washington Post, they’ve created this website to showcase their findings and conclusions.