Starre Julia Vartan

Andrew Revkin is one of the reasons I started writing about the environment in the first place, and he is one of the few reporters who was covering environmental issues before they became commonplace (environmental reporting only became widely-covered topic within the last decade, thanks in part to early bloggers’ tenacity and dedication to the issues, and journalists like Revkin.) We were also neighbors back in my hometown of Garrison, New York, for a time.

So I was so honored to be a guest speaker in Revkin’s “Blogging a Better Planet” class at Pace University (well, virtually) last night. Here’s what I had to say in response to his questions about how I got my start with Eco-Chick, whether I consider myself a journalist, and why I think I’m well-suited to the blogging medium.

According to Revkin’s Wikipedia bio: A reporter for the New York Times from 1995-2009, Revkin currently writes the Dot Earth environmental blog for The Times’ Opinion Pages. He is also Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at the Pace Academy for Applied Environmental Studies at Pace University, as well as a songwriter and musician.