Award-winning New York Times journalist Andrew Revkin  tied the media’s long-term stability with its ability to adapt to new forms of communication, and he used his own presentation on campus Wednesday evening to prove it.
“If we’re not thinking outside of the box of words and pictures, we’re missing some unique opportunities,” Revkin said during the journalism school’s annual Johnston lecture.
Revkin, who writes the environmentally focused blog Dot Earth on nytimes.com, gave the lecture in a partially full Lillis 182 Wednesday evening, discussing the necessity of journalism’s evolution, along with how journalism and environmental science interact.
Revkin started his presentation with two pictures beside each other. One was of the world with all of the water taken and put into a sphere above where New York City lies. The other was of all the gases in the atmosphere at sea-level air pressure displayed in a similar fashion.
“I’m starting out with an image that has nothing to do with journalism,” Revkin said. “This image, to me, is a fundamentally different understanding of the finite nature of the planet.”
Revkin’s use of diverse media went further than just using a slideshow. Revkin’s presentation involved multiple YouTube videos and also included a couple humorous interruptions from his Skype program.
University senior Eric Diep appreciated Revkin’s methodology behind using differing forms of media to convey messages.
“When you’re trying to communicate climate issues, don’t think about just using the conventional tools, use a goofy video,” Diep said. “It’s still conveying the same information, but it’s in a humorous way. I thought that was a good device.”
Revkin spent part of the presentation relating the evolution of new media back to the past, comparing the consumption of news to the consumption of food.
“The 20th century norm of journalism was a black and white one. We were, as a nation, dining on comfort food,” Revkin said. “We were all eating mac and cheese.”
Revkin completed his analogy by calling the 21st century media a buffet, based on its wide array of choices.
“The blogosphere, the Internet is a fundamentally different thing than Cronkite,” he added.
University senior journalism major Ashley Pennington found herself fixated by Revkin’s analogy for the evolution of media.
“It was a really good way of him showing and not telling when he was talking about Walter Cronkite and the macaroni and cheese analogy, and I could just imagine,” Pennington said. “It just gave me a great visual and you could imagine being in the 1950s.”
Revkin has blogged for the Times for two years, but had been an environmental reporter for the newspaper since 1995. Before that, he served as senior editor of Discover magazine. He stepped down from the Times’ print edition to become the senior fellow for environmental understanding at Pace University’s Academy for Applied Environmental Studies.
Revkin ended his presentation by commenting broadly on what is in store for the future
of journalism.
“We’re at a very special point in time in our history,” Revkin said.

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