ProPublica announced today that Andrew Revkin will join its staff as a senior reporter covering how the world – from countries to corporations – is, and isn’t, responding to climate change.
Revkin spent 21 years writing for The New York Times, where he was an environmental reporter from 1995 to 2009, and his Dot Earth blog, for which Time Magazine named him one of 2013’s 25 top bloggers. For the last six years he was also Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at Pace University, where he taught courses in online communication and environmental filmmaking.
He has been writing about the environment and climate change since the 1980s. In 1983, he won an IRE award for a story on untallied deaths of people who ingested the herbicide Paraquat. During the George W. Bush administration, he exposed how a NASA scientist’s conclusions about climate were being silenced and how federal climate reports were being edited by political appointees with ties to the petroleum industry.
Revkin has been widely recognized for his fairness and fact-centric approach to a subject that is often highly polarized.
“While a few dispute the science around climate change, this beat isn’t about whether or not climate change exists,” said Robin Fields, ProPublica’s managing editor. “This is an investigative beat about the ways in which the world is dealing with a changing climate, and it is our pleasure to name Andy to the job. With his extensive reporting background on this issue – from covering the sea ice drifting around the North Pole to the smoldering roadsides of the Amazon – we are confident he will bring an accountability approach, unearthing stories that surprise, probe deeply and test underlying assumptions.”
“I was excited to see ProPublica create a new position for reporting on humanity’s intertwined climate and energy challenges, and I’m thrilled I’ve been invited to join such a devoted team of deep diggers,” Revkin said. “Even through my six years as an opinion writer, my only advocacy was for reality. In today’s communication climate, I can’t imagine a better home and job.”
Among his many honors, Revkin has won Columbia University’s John Chancellor Award for sustained journalistic excellence in climate change coverage and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a two-time winner of the National Academy of Sciences Communication Award. He is also the author of three books: The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest; Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast; and The North Pole was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World.
Revkin starts at ProPublica on Dec. 5. You can follow him, or send him tips or queries, on Twitter and Facebook.
