Pesta leaving NY Times biz desk for climate desk

Hannah Fairfield, who oversees climate coverage at The New York Times, sent out the following announcement:

We are thrilled to announce that Jesse Pesta will be joining the Climate Desk as deputy editor. He comes to Climate from Business, where he is the enterprise and Sunday Business editor and has worked on some of the group’s most ambitious storytelling and investigative projects of the past few years, including “Uncertain Harvest,” “Education Disrupted” and “Bottom Line Nation.”

Jesse has already had a role in climate coverage, by guiding the Business Desk’s climate-related reporting in memorable pieces like Hiroko Tabuchi’s report on “coal rollers,” people who modify their pickup trucks to spew black smoke, and a striking visual piece on Amazon deforestation roaring back.

Before joining The Times, Jesse was an editor on the projects desk at The Wall Street Journal, and was also the South Asia correspondent for the paper for three years. As a foreign correspondent, he wrote about everything from Nepal’s terrible earthquake to New Delhi’s coin divers to Cambodia’s bamboo trains.

He hails from a place called Starve Hollow (no joke!) in southern Indiana, where his family ran a small-town paper for decades. There’s ink in his veins.

— Hannah