Andrew Revkin, prize-winning author and New York Times environment reporter, will speak at West Virginia University tonight (Oct. 25) as part of the P.I. Reed School of Journalism’s Harry Bell Lecture Series.
The lecture on media coverage of climate change will be held at 7:30 p.m. in 101 Clark Hall on WVU’s downtown campus. It’s free and open to the public.
Revkin’s talk, “The Daily Planet: Covering Climate Change from the North Pole to the White House,” will draw on his nearly 20 years covering climate science and politics.
Global warming is a breaking story on a century-long time scale, Revkin says, and thus is a bad fit for conventional media, which have tended to alternate between ignoring it and hyping it.
During his talk, Revkin will describe the challenges journalists face covering global environmental problems and his own experiences reporting on climate change.
One of America’s most honored science writers, Revkin has covered subjects ranging from Hurricane Katrina and the Asian tsunami to the assault on the Amazon, from the troubled relationship of science and politics to climate change at the North Pole. He has been reporting on the environment for The New York Times since 1995, a job that has taken him to the Arctic three times in three years.
In addition to his reporting for The Times, Revkin has published books for both adolescent and adult readers. His first book, “The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World,” tells the story of the once and future Arctic. “The Burning Season” chronicles the life of Chico Mendes, the slain leader of the movement to save the Amazon rain forest. Both books will be available for purchase and signing after the lecture.
Revkin has served as senior editor of Discover, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and a senior writer at Science Digest.
He earned his biology degree from Brown University and a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.