Jon Allan Christensen
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Jon Allan Christensen (born 1960) is an American
freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...
journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...
with a focus of writing about California, from his Venice home in coastal Los Angeles County. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, where he periodically teaches a class,
Environmental journalism Environmental journalism is the collection, verification, production, distribution and exhibition of information regarding current events, trends, and issues associated with the non-human world. To be an environmental journalist, one must have an ...
, for undergraduate Environmental Science majors at UCLA. In January 2020 he authored an
op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted a ...
opinion piece An opinion piece is an article, usually published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about a subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals. Editorials Opinion pieces may take the form of an editorial, ...
in the
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
about bulldozing the
Ballona Wetlands Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve (pronunciation: "Bah-yo-nuh" or "Buy-yo-nah" ) is a protected area that once served as the natural estuary for neighboring Ballona Creek. The site is located in Los Angeles County, California, just south o ...
, which would harm endangered native
wildlife Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animals and uncultivated plant species which can exist in their natural habitat, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introdu ...
and rare native
wildflower A wildflower (or wild flower) is a flower that grows in the wild, rather than being intentionally seeded or planted. The term implies that the plant is neither a hybrid nor a selected cultivar that is any different from the native plant, eve ...
s, as well as removing living
soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, water, and organisms that together support the life of plants and soil organisms. Some scientific definitions distinguish dirt from ''soil'' by re ...
.


Biography

Christensen was the Executive Director at the Bill Lane Center for the American West and a doctoral student at
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, then quit his PhD
History History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...
program, when he moved south to Los Angeles County in 2012, to join the staff of the
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. At UCLA he was the editor of ''Boom: A Journal of California'' from 2013 to 2016. He is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in major newspapers and in at least one major magazine, including
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
, the
San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...
, and
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
. In 2014, Christensen joined
Stamen Design Stamen is a data visualization design studio based in San Francisco, California. Its clients include National Geographic, Facebook and The Dalai Lama. History Stamen was founded in 2001 by Eric Rodenbeck. In 2003, Michal Migurski joined Stamen ...
, a data visualization and cartography studio in
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
, as a partner in
Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
.


References


External links


UCLA Institute of the Environment & Sustainability: Jon Christensen

Christensen Lab (personal site not at UCLA)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Christensen, Jon 21st-century American historians 21st-century American journalists American environmental journalists Environmental historians University of California, Los Angeles faculty Stanford University alumni 21st-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers 1960 births Living people