Ian Urbina

Ian Urbina (born March 29, 1972) is an investigative reporter who writes most often for The New York Times, but is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic[1] and The New Yorker. Urbina is the author of The New York Times bestseller[2] The Outlaw Ocean (2019),[3] based on more than five years of reporting, much of it offshore, exploring lawlessness on the high seas.[4][5][6] As a journalist, his investigations typically focus on human rights, worker safety and the environment, and he has received a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award, and has been nominated for an Emmy.

Ian Urbina
Ian Urbina
Born (1972-03-29) March 29, 1972
Alma materGeorgetown University
OccupationInvestigative Reporter
OrganizationThe New York Times, The Atlantic
Websitetheoutlawocean.com theoutlawoceanmusic.com

Early life

As a student at St Albans[7] and at Georgetown, Urbina was an accomplished long-distance runner.[8][9][10] His father, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, who was also a highly accomplished collegiate runner, was the first Latino on the federal bench in DC.[11][12][13][14]

Education and career

Ian Urbina has a degree in history from Georgetown University. 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.[15] As a Fulbright scholar, he did his doctoral dissertation research in Havana.[16]

Based at a think tank in Washington DC called The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP),[17] he spent two years writing about the Middle East[18] and published in The International Herald Tribune, Harper's Magazine, The Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor. He is a regular contributor to NPR[19] and C-SPAN.[20] In 2016, National Geographic designated Urbina as one of its resident Nat Geo Explorers and in 2020 he was awarded a National Geographic Storytelling Fellowship to make a podcast about The Outlaw Ocean Music Project and the use of music to convert and amplify journalism.[21] In 2017, he became a Resident Fellow at The Safina Center, a research and creative collective focused on environmental conservation, which was founded by the naturalist writer and scholar, Dr. Carl Safina.[22] In 2019, he was brought on staff as an investigator for the United Nations in affiliation with the UN's World Maritime University in Malmö, Sweden. In 2019, Urbina also founded a non-profit organization[23] called The Outlaw Ocean Project, dedicated to producing journalism about the environmental, human rights and labor concerns that exist offshore around the world.

Journalism at 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 other breaking stories. He has also written extensively on criminal justice issues, including stories about the use of prisoners for pharmaceutical experiments,[24] immigrant detainees working as unpaid workers,[25][26] solitary confinement in immigration detention facilities,[27] and the dependence of the U.S. Defense Department on prison labor.[28] 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.[29][30][31]

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.[32] 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-users' "secure" passwords.[33]

In 2015, Urbina wrote a series called "The Outlaw Ocean," about lawlessness on the high seas.[34][35][36][37] 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.[38] U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, has repeatedly cited the reporting as the impetus for a series of policy changes.[39][40][41] John Kerry mentioned The Outlaw Ocean's reporting during a news conference where he explained the U.S. State Department’s decision to give Thailand the lowest grade on human trafficking.[42] This series served as the basis of the 2019 book, The Outlaw Ocean, which has since been published in various countries and languages.

Creative work

In 2019, Urbina created Synesthesia Media, which specializes in mixing mediums. In its first project, the firm functioned as a music label and recruited hundreds of musicians from more than 80 countries.[43] As part of The Outlaw Ocean Music Project,[44] these artists ranged in genre from classical and ambient to electronic and hip hop.[45] Each musician made their own album, inspired by the book and using field recordings that Urbina collected while reporting the book. The project's stated goal is to serve as an experiment in translation, converting journalism into music, while also disseminating the reporting more broadly, especially to younger demographics globally. The project has been widely reviewed by NPR, Billboard magazine, GQ, San Francisco Classical Voice, The Pulitzer Center and elsewhere.[46][47]

Four movie projects have emerged from Urbina's investigations. In interviews, Matt Damon and John Krasinski have said that their 2012 film Promised Land was partly inspired by the Times' investigative series, "Drilling Down".[48]

In 2010, Urbina wrote a profile for Vanity Fair on Sam Childers, a former Hell's Angel 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.[49] Also, in 2011, Urbina's reporting was part of a story optioned for the film, Deepwater Horizon with Mark Wahlberg.[50]

In 2015, Leonardo DiCaprio, Netflix and Kevin Misher bought the scripted and non-scripted rights for The Outlaw Ocean book to produce a documentary series about the reporting as well as a non-scripted series based on Urbina's reporting.[51]

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.[52][53]

Awards & Fellowships
  • In 2001, Urbina was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to be based for a year in Havana, Cuba on behalf of The University of Chicago for anthropology and history doctoral research.[54]
  • In 2006, Urbina was a member of the team of reporters that wrote a series 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[55] 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).[56] "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 Gerald 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 Award that year in the international reporting category.[57]
  • In 2015, Urbina's, "The Secret Life of Passwords" was nominated for an Emmy.[58]
  • In 2016, Urbina's series, "The Outlaw Ocean" won various journalism awards, including the George Polk Awards for Foreign Reporting,[59] The Maritime Foundation's Desmond Wettern Media Award for Best Journalistic Contribution,[60][61] The Sigma Delta Chi Award[62] for Foreign Correspondence from the Society of Professional Journalists, The Peter Benchley Ocean Award for Media Excellence,[63] The Best in Business Award for Feature Writing[64] from the Society of Business Editors and Writers, and The Human Rights Press Award Online English Merit Award.[65] 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.[66] Photos from the series won The National Press Photographers Association's 2016 Award for Best Of Photojournalism Multimedia[67] and The Photojournalism/Documentary Award from Photo District News (PDN).[68] The series' videos won the National Edward R. Murrow Award for News Series.[69] The series was also a finalist for The Scripps Howard Award in Public Service Reporting,[70] The Gerald Loeb Award in International reporting,[71] and The Michael Kelly Award.[72] The series won an honorable mention for TRACE International's Prize for Investigative Reporting for "Maritime 'Repo Men': A last resort for stolen ships,"[73] and won an honorable mention for The Anthony Lewis Prize for Exceptional Rule of Law Journalism, given by the World Justice Project.
  • In 2019, The Outlaw Ocean was placed on Amazon’s List of Best Books of 2019[74] and The New York Times Best Seller List for Non-Fiction.[75][76]

Bibliography
  • 2019: The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier. Knopf Doubleday, New York 2019, ISBN 978-0451492944.
  • 2005: Life's Little Annoyances: True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore. Reprint, Henry Holt and Company, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0805083033.

References
  1. "Ian Urbina Joins The Atlantic as Contributing Writer". The Atlantic. The Atlantic. Retrieved 15 August 2019.
  2. "The New York Times Hardcover Non-Fiction Bestsellers". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved 31 August 2019.
  3. "The Outlaw Ocean". The Outlaw Ocean. Retrieved 24 June 2019.
  4. "Kirkus Review". The Kirkus Review. Retrieved 31 August 2019. "Urbina’s book ranks alongside those by Mark Bowden and Sebastian Junger."
  5. Iglesias, Gabino. "'The Outlaw Ocean': A Forgotten Frontier Where Slavery And Illegal Activities Abound". NPR. NPR. Retrieved 31 August 2019."The Outlaw Ocean is an engrossing and immersive book that shows the ocean is the last frontier: a vast place where the laws don't apply. The narratives have a cinematic quality to them that is intensified by the many photos and drawings that accompany most each story. That he has condensed all that into 560 pages is a testament to his reporting skills and proof that outstanding writing is still one of the best tools we have to get to know the world we live in."
  6. Braverman, Blair. "Pirates, Slavers and Poachers: Violence on the High Seas". The New York Times. The New York Times. Retrieved 31 August 2019."These chapters are vibrant as individual stories, but as a collection they’re transcendent, rendering a complex portrait of an unseen and disturbing world. Urbina pursues a depth of reportage that’s rare because of the guts and diligence it requires — not to mention the budget, which must have been enormous. The result is not just a fascinating read, but a truly important document."
  7. Sonner, Tim (1989-09-28). "Free from pain, St. Albans' Urbina regains momentum". The Washington Post. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  8. Graber, Michael (1994-11-24). "Hoyas men chase 1st National Championship". The Washington Post. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  9. Niewiaroski, Donna (1993-10-11). "Running". The Washington Post. Retrieved 23 March 2020.
  10. Georgetown, University (1995). "TFXC_Record_Book_Proof". Georgetown University. Retrieved 23 March 2020. Ian was the Big East Champion in the 3,000-meter Steeplechase in 1994 and 1995. He was added to the Georgetown Track & Field Record Book for having the 13th fastest time in the 10,000-meter (He ran 29:29) and for his time in the 3,000-meter Steeplechase (He ran 8:53).
  11. Hoyas, Georgetown (1989-09-28). "Athletic Hall Of Fame Members". Georgetown University Athletics. Retrieved 31 March 2020. Judge Urbina held the NCAA indoor national 1000-yard collegiate record in 1966 and that same year he won the indoor NCAA Div. I title in 880 yd. run.
  12. Hall of Fame (2019-03-15). "Ricardo Urbina '63". Monsignor McClancy Memorial High School. Retrieved 31 March 2020.
  13. Wilber, Del Quentin (2011-06-01). "Judge who had "no passion for punishment" retires after 31 years". The Washington Post. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
  14. Gonzalez, Charlie. "Tribute to Honorable Ricardo M. Urbina". Scout - Sunlight Foundation. Sunlight Foundation. Retrieved 4 March 2016.
  15. "Author Biography". Macmillan. Macmillan Publishers. Retrieved 1 October 2015.
  16. "The University of Chicago". National Geographic Society Newsroom. The University of Chicago. Retrieved 1 October 2015.
  17. "Ian Urbina - MERIP". MERIP. Retrieved 5 July 2003.
  18. "Against Israeli Apartheid". The Nation. The Nation. Retrieved 27 June 2002.
  19. "WNYC - People - Ian Urbina". WNYC. WNYC.org. Retrieved 1 October 2015.
  20. "Natural Gas Drilling and the Environment". CSPAN. CSPAN. 2011-03-04. Retrieved 1 October 2015.
  21. "National Geographic Storytelling Fellows". National Geographic Society Newsroom. National Geographic. Retrieved 23 July 2020.
  22. "Ian Urbina". The Safina Center. Retrieved 21 November 2019.
  23. "Non-Profit The Outlaw Ocean Donation". Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  24. "Panel Suggests Using Inmates in Drug Trials". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 August 2016.
  25. "Using Jailed Migrants as a Pool of Cheap Labor". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 August 2016.
  26. "Colbert Report - The Word - Debt or Prison". Comedy Central. Retrieved 20 August 2016.
  27. "Immigrants Held in Solitary Cells, Often for Weeks". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 August 2016.
  28. "Stars and Stripes" (PDF). The New York Times. Retrieved 20 August 2016.
  29. McKibben, Bill (2012-03-08). "Why Not Frack?". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 27 September 2015. 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."
  30. Petit, Charlie. "New York Times Science Times". Knight Science Journalism at MIT. MIT. Archived from the original on June 2, 2012. Retrieved 27 September 2015.CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) 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 investors and regulators and gov't planners step with care and not be blinkered by all the money that's pouring in."
  31. Kennedy, Robert F. (2011-10-20). "The Fracking Industry's War on The New York Times and the Truth". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  32. Starkman, Dean. "Three things to like about the Times OSHA exposé". Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 27 September 2015. 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."
  33. Urbina, Ian (2014-11-23). "The Secret Life of Passwords". The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 2018-09-22.
  34. Murphy, Tim. "Deep Dive". The University of Chicago Magazine. The University of Chicago. Retrieved 2 March 2016.
  35. Torrence, Marc. "Murder, Slavery, A Harrowing Chase: Behind the Journalism Series That's Changing the Oceans". Patch.com. Patch Media. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
  36. Damanski, Maria. "Quick Take: Growing Momentum to Fight Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing". Talk. Nature.org. Retrieved 27 September 2015. 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.”
  37. Ryan, Chris (2015-07-20). "'True Detective,' Season 2, Episode 5: 'Other Lives'". Grantland. Retrieved 27 September 2015. 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."
  38. "Long Island University Announces 67th Annual George Polk Awards In Journalism". PR Newswire. PR Newswire. Retrieved 19 March 2016.
  39. John Kerry, former Secretary of State and founder of the Our Ocean Conference. "The Outlaw Ocean Book Review". The Outlaw Ocean. Ian Urbina. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  40. "Lang Long's Story Is Not Unique". Youtube. Ian Urbina. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  41. "Slavery as a Fishing Industry Problem". Youtube. Ian Urbina. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  42. "A Global Industry of Sea Slavery". Youtube. Ian Urbina. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
  43. Colin, Molly. "Art and Advocacy Combine in The Outlaw Ocean Music Project". www.sfcv.org. The San Francisco Classical Voice. Retrieved 8 December 2020.
  44. "The Outlaw Ocean Music Project". The Outlaw Ocean Music Project. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
  45. "Behind the Story: The Outlaw Ocean Music Project". Youtube. The Pulitzer Center. Retrieved 9 October 2020.
  46. "The Outlaw Ocean Music Project Press". The Outlaw Ocean Music Project. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
  47. "Artists | The Outlaw Ocean Music Project". www.theoutlawoceanmusic.com. Retrieved 2020-07-23.
  48. Karpel, Ari (2013-01-02). "Matt Damon and John Krasinski on making "Promised Land," A Non-Message Message Movie". Fast Company. Retrieved 27 September 2015. 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."
  49. Urbina, Ian. "IMDB (2021)". imdb.com. Retrieved 18 February 2011.
  50. Manly, Lorne (22 September 2016). "The New York Times". Retrieved 16 December 2016.
  51. "The Tracking Board". The Tracking Board. 20 June 2016. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  52. O'Sullivan, Michael. "'American Honey': Travels with a youthful subculture, fleeing crushed dreams". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 6 October 2016.
  53. "Urbina has also been credited as a writer on various movie projects as listed by IMDB". Retrieved 6 October 2016.
  54. "Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellows". The University of Chicago. Retrieved 6 October 2016.
  55. Shafir, Doree (2007-04-17). "Bill Keller: Why is this Pulitzer different from all other prizes?". Gawker. Archived from the original on 2 July 2015. Retrieved 27 September 2015. "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."
  56. "Cornellcast". American Studies Program, College of Arts and Sciences. Cornell University. Retrieved 1 October 2015.
  57. "Gerald Loeb Awards, 2014 Finalists". Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  58. "The New York Times Nominated For Eight News and Documentary Emmy Awards". NYTCO. The New York Times. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
  59. "Long Island University Announces 67th Annual George Polk Awards In Journalism". Long Island University. February 14, 2016. Retrieved 24 May 2016. "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."
  60. "New York Times reporter Ian Urbina lands 'best maritime journalism contribution in 2016'". Maritime Foundation. October 27, 2016. Retrieved 28 October 2016.
  61. "Maritime Media Awards 2016: Ian Urbina, The New York Times". Maritime Foundation. October 27, 2016. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  62. "2015 SIGMA DELTA CHI AWARD HONOREES". www.spj.org. Society of Professional Journalists. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  63. "Ian Urbina | Peter Benchley Ocean Awards". peterbenchleyoceanawards.org. Retrieved 24 May 2016. "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."
  64. "2015 Best in Business Honoree List « SABEW". sabew.org. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  65. "2015 HRPA winners – English version | Human Rights Press Awards". humanrightspressawards.org. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  66. "SOPA 2016 Award Winners".
  67. "NPPA Best Of Photojournalism Multimedia Category Winners Announced | NPPA". nppa.org. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  68. "PDN Photo Annual 2016". PDN 2016 Photo Annual. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  69. "National Edward R. Murrow 2016 Award Winners".
  70. Company, The E.W. Scripps. "Scripps Howard Foundation announces winners of 2015 Scripps Howard Awards". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
  71. "2016 Gerald Loeb Award Finalists". Retrieved 9 July 2016.
  72. "The Michael Kelly Award". www.kellyaward.com. Retrieved 24 May 2016. "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.”"
  73. "TRACE International Prizes for Investigative Reporting". Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  74. "Amazon's picks for best books of 2019 are out and on sale". Retrieved 14 November 2019.
  75. "The New York Times Best-Seller List of 2019". Retrieved 8 September 2019.
  76. "The New York Times Best Seller List For Hardcover Nonfiction". Retrieved 31 January 2020.
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