XM MLB Chat: NY Times climate reporter takes buyout

Currently writing book for middle school children about disasters.

CJR: "Andrew C. Revkin, one of the most influential and respected reporters on the environment, will take a buyout from The New York Times as part of the paper’s current round of budget cuts....Revkin is currently on assignment covering the Copenhagen climate change summit and will step down from his staff reporting post next Monday after returning to New York.

Although Revkin will leave the Times’s staff, he told CJR he hopes to continue writing his popular New York Times blog, Dot Earth, at least through the end of the year and is talking with the paper’s management about continuing to do so on a contract basis beyond that. He has also accepted a new position as a “senior fellow for environmental understanding” at Pace University, where he will teach, write and develop new environmental programs...

Revkin is also finishing a book on “the age of disasters” for middle-school children....

Revkin has increasingly found himself—and his paper’s coverage—the target of critics on both the right and the left, particularly in the often vitriolic blogosphere. He described himself as “an advocate for scientific reality,” not for either side of the debate....

Most recently, he was in the unusual position of covering the emerging “Climategate” controversy over leaked emails from prominent American and British climate scientists, while also being part of the story:

In one email, Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, warned a colleague to be careful of what he shared with “Andy” because,
“He’s not as predictable as we’d like.”
(A piece by Times public editor Clark Hoyt recently concluded that Revkin and the paper “handled Climategate appropriately—a story, not a three-alarm story.”...

In 2003, he became the first Times reporter to file stories and photos from the sea ice around the North Pole. He spearheaded a Times series, “The Big Melt,”