Sept. 17, 2008—The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism has awarded New York Times science reporter Andrew C. Revkin ’78 its prestigious John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism. Revkin received the honor, which recognizes "distinguished cumulative accomplishments" with a $25,000 check, for his many years of reporting about global climate change. In a press release, the journalism school's dean, Nicholas Lemann, said that Revkin, along with fellow Chancellor winner Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, "set the gold standard for journalists." Times executive editor Bill Keller added that Revkin "has the skills of an old-fashioned reporter: mastering the data, cultivating the sources, going to the story, asking the right questions, applying rigorous analysis."

Among Revkin's books are the 1992 Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, the 1994 The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest, and his 2006 volume aimed at preteens, The North Pole Was Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World. In an interview with the BAM about The North Pole Was Here, Revkin maintained that writing for a young audience about global warming was not that different from writing for adults on the subject. "I didn’t really think about writing for kids so much as I thought about writing as clearly as possible," he said. "Frankly, when I’m writing for the New York Times readership, I’m not really writing for that much different a level of understanding of science, because sadly most Americans really don’t know much about science anymore."

Revkin was on the Brown campus in May, when he delivered a Commencement forum detailing his work on global climate change. In that forum, he warned of the effects of unrestrained economic and industrial development on the environment. "Science," he told his audience, "is like the grown-up in the room saying, 'I don't know about that. Be careful.'" Five years earlier Revkin, at another Commencement forum, lamented the lack of interest on the part of his editors in the slow-moving story of climate change. “You’re never going to see a headline saying ‘Global Warming Happened Today,'" he said at the time. "Climate change is the antithesis of news. The loss of biological diversity is the antithesis of news. An oil tanker hitting rocks and spilling oil is news.” The recognition granted by the Chancellor Award illustrates how timely Revkin's beat has now become.