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 an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

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. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

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 Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, and geography (including ecology, chemistry, plant science, zoology, mineralogy, oceanography, limnology, soil science, geology and physical geograp ...

majors at UCLA. In January 2020 he authored an

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in the

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

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 of ...

, which would harm endangered native

wildlife Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animal species (biology), species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous ...

and rare native

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s, as well as removing living

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Biography

Christensen was the Executive Director at the Bill Lane Center for the American West and a doctoral student at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, then quit his PhD

History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

program, when he moved south to Los Angeles County in 2012, to join the staff of the

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'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, 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. de ...

, and

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

. 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 ...

, a data visualization and cartography studio in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, as a partner in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

References

External links

UCLA Institute of the Environment & Sustainability: Jon Christensen

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