The following excerpt was sent out to staff from NPR’s chief climate editor Andrea Kissack:
I have exciting news to share with you as we build NPR’s new climate team. We’re delighted to welcome Sadie Babits as NPR’s new Supervising Climate Editor. Sadie will work with NPR reporters on the desk and lead work with member stations to cultivate station reporters’ talent and stories on the biggest story of our time.
Sadie is currently the board president for the Society of Environmental Journalists, North America’s largest nonprofit dedicated to supporting environmental journalists. She’s also writing a book about journalism in the age of climate change to be published by Island Press due out in late 2023/early 2024.
Sadie comes to us from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix where she’s been a professor of practice. She’s focused the last four years teaching students how to report on climate, sustainability and other environmental issues for broadcast and digital platforms.
Sadie also founded a thriving audio program within the school’s professional program Cronkite News/ Arizona PBS. The audio news briefing she created with her students just won a National Edward R. Murrow award for the best student newscast.
Prior to teaching at Cronkite, Sadie was a Ted Scripps Environmental Reporting fellow at the University of Colorado-Boulder where she spent an academic year (2017/2018) studying climate change, renewable energy technology and environmental law.
Sadie has served in public radio leadership roles for nearly a decade, including as news director for Colorado Public Radio from 2014 to 2017.
Sadie begins her new role on November 21, and I hope you’ll join me in welcoming Sadie to NPR.