Siddhesh Joshi (Editor)

Ian Urbina

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Organization
  
The New York Times

Alma mater
  
Georgetown University

Name
  
Ian Urbina

Website
  
ianurbina.com



Born
  
March 29, 1972 (age 51) (
1972-03-29
)

Books
  
Life's Little Annoyances: True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Any

Occupation
  
Investigative Reporter

Global Ocean TV - Episode 42 - The TerraMar Project Interviews Ian Urbina About the High Seas


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. He has received a Pulitzer, a Polk, and various other journalism awards. Several of his stories have been made into feature films. His most recent and ongoing series, "The Outlaw Ocean", explores lawlessness on the high seas.

Contents

Ian Urbina httpspbstwimgcomprofileimages6119730378946

Drilling down with ian urbina at purdue university 02 13 2013


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.

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. and CSPAN.

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 has also written extensively on criminal justice issues, including stories about the use of prisoners for pharmaceutical experiments, immigrant detainees working as unpaid workers, solitary confinement in immigration detention facilities, and the dependence of the U.S. Defense Department on prison labor. 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.

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. 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.

In 2015, Urbina wrote a series called "The Outlaw Ocean", about lawlessness on the high seas. 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.

Films/Creative

Several of Urbina's investigative pieces have been adapted to film. In interviews, Matt Damon and John Kransinski have said 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.

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. Also, in 2011, Urbina's reporting was part of a story optioned for the film Deepwater Horizon with Mark Wahlberg.

In 2015, Leonardo DiCaprio, Netflix and Misher Films bought the movie rights for The Outlaw Ocean series in The New York Times written by Urbina. They intend to make a feature film. They also bought the movie rights for the book by the same name being written by Urbina and to be published by Alfred A. Knopf.

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 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) 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.
  • In July, 2015, Urbina's "The Secret Life of Passwords" was nominated for an Emmy.
  • In 2016, Urbina's series called The Outlaw Ocean won various journalism awards, including the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting, The Maritime Foundation's Desmond Wettern Media Award for Best Journalistic Contribution, The Sigma Delta Chi Award for Foreign Correspondence from the Society of Professional Journalists, The Peter Benchley Ocean Award for Media Excellence, The Best in Business Award for Feature Writing from the Society of Business Editors and Writers, and The Human Rights Press Award Online English Merit Award. The Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) also awarded the series a prize in the Excellence in Digital News category, and an honorable mention in the Human Rights Reporting category. Photos from the series won The National Press Photographers Association's 2016 Award for Best Of Photojournalism Multimedia, and The Photojournalism/Documentary Award from Photo District News (PDN). The series' videos won the National Edward R. Murrow Award for News Series. The series was also a finalist for The Scripps Howard Award in Public Service Reporting, The Gerald Loeb Award in International reporting, and The Michael Kelly Award. The series won an honorable mention for TRACE International's Prize for Investigative Reporting for "Maritime 'Repo Men': A last resort for stolen ships", 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 and at Georgetown Urbina was an accomplished long-distance runner. He has a degree in history from Georgetown University, and a degree in anthropology and history from the University of Chicago. His father is Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, who was also a collegiate runner and the first Latino on the federal bench in DC.

    References

    Ian Urbina Wikipedia