Lives of Consequence
Hannah Fairfield Wallander '96
Climate Editor, The New York Times
As climate editor for The New York Times, Wallander leads the paper’s coverage surrounding the science, politics, economics, and social and technological impacts of the changing climate.
An award-winning graphics editor and veteran journalist with nearly 20 years of experience at top-tier news outlets, Wallander is a graduate of Columbia University’s renowned Graduate School of Journalism, where she took a visual journalism course that changed the way she looked at reporting. “I really began to understand that you can’t have a good science story without great visuals,” she says.
Directly after graduation, she went to work for The New York Times, where she spent two years on the business desk covering the nation’s economy, an experience that shifted her focus to using data-intensive reporting. Her work at the Times was wide ranging — from producing and coordinating graphics for the Foreign section, to creating “Metrics,” a periodic Sunday feature that uses smart data analysis and visualization to illuminate business trends. During that time, she also worked as an adjunct professor at Columbia’s School of Journalism, teaching “Graphics in the Newsroom” from 2003 to 2009.
In 2009, Wallander made the move to The New York Times’ bureau in Washington, D.C. A year later, she was hired by The Washington Post as the graphics director, a role that put her in charge of the paper’s graphics department — recognized worldwide as one of the premier information design groups in journalism. She returned to the Times in 2012 as senior graphics editor, heading up visual coverage for projects on climate, including “Greenland Is Melting Away” and “Living in China’s Expanding Deserts,” among others. She was named climate editor in early 2017.
Wallander has won many awards for information graphics from the Society of News Design, including a silver medal for her 2005 portfolio and the best of show award in 2001 for a team portfolio of news graphics covering 9/11. She was also a recipient of the 2009 National Design Award for Communication Design with her colleagues at The New York Times. She won the J-School’s Richard Blood Prize for best reporting & writing story in 1999. Her writing and graphics have appeared in many magazines and newspapers, including Newsday, Life, Ms. and Legal Affairs, and in a book on the visual history of 9/11 and its aftermath.
After receiving her B.A. in both geoscience and English from the Colleges, Wallander went on to earn an M.A. in earth and environmental science from Columbia in 1998 and her M.S. in journalism in 2000.