Ian Urbina

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Ian Urbina
File:Ian Urbina.jpg
Urbina in 2014
Born (1972-03-29) March 29, 1972 (age 51)
Alma mater Georgetown University
Occupation Investigative Reporter
Organization The New York Times
Website ianurbina.com

Ian Urbina (born March 29, 1972) is an investigative reporter for The New York Times based in the Washington Bureau. His investigations most often focus on worker safety and the environment. His most recent series, "The Outlaw Ocean" (2015-2016), explored lawlessness on the high seas.


Education and Early Career

Before joining The New York Times in 2003, Urbina was in a doctoral program in history and anthropology at the University of Chicago, where he specialized on Cuba. As a Fulbright scholar he did his doctoral dissertation research in Havana.[1]

During those years, he wrote freelance for The International Herald Tribune, Harper's, The Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor. He is a regular contributor to NPR.[2] and CSPAN.[3]


The New York Times

Urbina was initially a reporter on the Times' Metro desk. In 2005, Urbina moved to the Times' national desk to become its Mid-Atlantic Bureau chief, where he covered West Virginia coal mining disasters, the Gulf oil spill, the Virginia Tech shootings and numerous other breaking stories. He became a senior investigative reporter for the National Desk in 2010, where he wrote a series in 2011, Drilling Down, about the oil and gas industry and fracking.[4][5][6]

On worker safety, in 2013, he wrote a story about longterm exposure to hazardous chemicals and the federal agency, O.S.H.A., which is responsible for protecting against these workplace threats.[7] For the New York Times Magazine, he wrote in 2014 a piece called "The Secret Life of Passwords", about the anecdotes and emotions hidden in everyday web-user's "secure" passwords.[8]

In 2015, Urbina wrote a series called "The Outlaw Ocean", about lawlessness on the high seas.[9][10][11][12] To report the stories, Urbina traveled through Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, much of that time spent on fishing ships, chronicling a diversity of crimes offshore, including the killing of stowaways, sea slavery, intentional dumping, illegal fishing, the stealing of ships, gun running, stranding of crews, and murder with impunity.[13]

Films/Creative

Several of Urbina's investigative pieces have been adapted to film. In interviews, Matt Damon and John Kransinski have said[14] that the idea for their 2012 film Promised Land came partly from the Times investigative series, Drilling Down.

A 2007 Times investigation by Urbina about so-called "mag crews"—traveling groups of teenagers, many of them runaways or from broken homes, who sell magazine subscriptions—was optioned for a 2016 movie, American Honey, directed by Andrea Arnold and starring Shia LaBeouf.[15]

In 2010, Urbina wrote a profile for Vanity Fair magazine on Sam Childers, a former Hells Angels's biker and gun runner, turned born-again Christian preacher, who joined the guerrilla fighters in South Sudan. Urbina traveled with Childers, after he was ostensibly hired to kill a brutal warlord named Joseph Kony, leader of a group called the Lord's Resistance Army. In 2011, Childers' life story became the basis of a movie called "Machine Gun Preacher", starring Gerard Butler.

Awards

  • Urbina was a member of the team of reporters that wrote a series in 2006 about diabetes, which received a public service award from the Society of Professional Journalists’ New York City chapter and a Society of Silurians award for science health reporting. The series was a finalist [16] for the Pulitzer Prize.
  • In 2008 Urbina was also a member of the team of reporters that broke the story about then-New York Governor, Eliot Spitzer and his use of prostitutes, a series of stories for which the Times won a Pulitzer in 2009.
  • In 2010, Urbina wrote a series called "Running in the Shadows" which focused on the sexual trafficking of minors and the growing number of young runaways in the United States. This series received the New York Press Club’s award for feature reporting.
  • In 2011, Urbina delivered the annual Kops Freedom of the Press lecture at Cornell University titled "Investigating the Natural Gas Drilling Boom" (video) [17] Drilling Down also received a Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW), "Best in Business" award.
  • In 2014, his story about OSHA and worker exposure to Hazardous chemicals was a finalist in the Explanatory category for the Loeb Award. He was also on the Times team covering the death of thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh that was also a finalist for a Loeb that year in the international reporting category.[18]
  • In July, 2015, Urbina's "The Secret Life of Passwords" was nominated for an Emmy.[19]
  • In 2016, Urbina's series called The Outlaw Ocean won various journalism awards, including the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting, [20] The Sigma Delta Chi Award [21] for Foreign Correspondence from the Society of Professional Journalists, The Peter Benchley Ocean Award for Media Excellence, [22] The Best in Business Award for Feature Writing[23] from the Society of Business Editors and Writers, and The Human Rights Press Award Online English Merit Award. [24] Photos from the series won The National Press Photographers Association's 2016 Award for Best Of Photojournalism Multimedia, [25] and The Photojournalism/Documentary Award from Photo District News (PDN). [26] The series was also a finalist for The Scripps Howard Award in Public Service Reporting, [27] The Michael Kelly Award, [28] and won an honorable mention for The Anthony Lewis Prize for Exceptional Rule of Law Journalism given by the World Justice Project.

Personal life

Urbina currently lives in the Washington DC area with his family. As a student at St Albans [29] and at Georgetown [30] Urbina was an accomplished long-distance runner. He has degrees in history from Georgetown University and the University of Chicago.[31] He is the son of bi-racial parents. His father is Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, who was also a track stand out and the first Latino on the federal bench in DC.[32][33]

References

  1. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Author Biography for video interview "Modern Slavery on Asia’s Fishing Boats"
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  4. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. McKibben wrote: "In fact, the most remarkable work on the subject has been done by Ian Urbina, a New York Times journalist, and by the rebel filmmaker Josh Fox. Urbina’s stories, which seem likely to win a Pulitzer, demonstrate why we can’t do without serious newspapers. Beginning last spring, he documented the health risks, lax regulation, industry overstatement, and general corruption that have surrounded the boom."
  5. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Petit wrote: "From here, it appears that the Times and Mr. Urbina are calmly saying we should learn a lesson from the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble, suggesting investers and regulators and gov't planners step with care and not be blinkered by all the money that's pouring in."
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  7. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. The Columbia Journalism Review called the story a "magisterial probe", and "without doubt a great example of agenda-setting public-interest reporting of a kind that, sad to say, is becoming increasingly scarce among mainstream business news outlets."
  8. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Mike Allen of Politico tweeted about the piece "This @nytimes magazine story will keep you reading til the end "
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  11. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Damanski wrote: "If you haven’t read it, it’s a dramatic exposé about the chronic and widespread violence, oppression and lawlessness that exists out on the open ocean. In the series, Urbina shines an important spotlight on the magnitude of challenges facing ocean management and the need for governments to work together. The last in the series, The Longest Chase, gives us a glimpse into the $10 billion-per-year illegal fishing trade “that is thriving as improved technology has enabled fishing vessels to plunder the oceans with greater efficiency.”
  12. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Ryan writes, in reference to "The Outlaw Ocean": "The web of holding companies and money; the apathetic, complicit, or handcuffed law-enforcement agencies and bodies of government; and the powerful men who escape any kind of justice — Urbina’s story has all the makings of a True Detective season."
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  14. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Karpel wrote: "After a moment considering the salmon industry, the pair settled on making a movie about hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking. Krasinski was inspired in part by a series of stories in The New York Times, called Drilling Down. Thus, Promised Land, written by and starring Damon and Krasinski, and directed by Gus Van Sant, was born."
  15. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. "This year we had three Pulitzer finalists — two of them emanating from that engine of excellence known as the Metro Desk. In the explanatory category, The NYT Staff was a finalist for our national wake-up call on the epidemic of diabetes. Sonny Kleinfield, Richard Perez-Pena, Marc Santora and Ian Urbina kicked off the year with an eye-opening series, and throughout the year we had contributions from other departments, accompanied by great video narratives and slide shows that brought the problem vividly to life."
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  20. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. "The reporting also took readers aboard a ship operated by environmental activists in the culmination of a 10,000-mile chase leading to the sinking of a notorious pirate trawler that had eluded Interpol and other authorities for a decade. The series spurred Congressional hearings and testimony, class-action litigation against the seafood industry, and, abroad, a criminal investigation and convictions."
  21. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. "Urbina’s riveting series has generated a high-level of public interest, a NYTimes editorial call for action, and opened the doors for discussion of new regulatory and law-enforcement approaches at the national and international policy-making levels."
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  27. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. "Urbina’s series was brilliantly conceived and expertly told. “This is why we need newspapers,” one reader wrote. Added The Wall Street Journal: “incredible, readable, riveting series.”"
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Further reading and external links