Dan Barry (born 1958) is a longtime reporter and columnist for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. He is the author of five books, including ''This Land: America, Lost and Found'', a collection of his national columns for ''The Times'' that was published in 2018.

Biography

Barry, whose father was from

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

and whose mother was from County Galway, Ireland, was born in

Queens, N.Y. Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

, and raised in Deer Park, N.Y. He graduated from St. Anthony's High School (now in Huntington, N.Y.) in 1976, when it was an all-boys high school in Smithtown, N.Y. His experiences at St. Anthony's figure in his memoir, ''Pull Me Up''. He graduated from St. Bonaventure University in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in mass communications and received a master's degree in journalism from New York University. In 1983, after years working as a delicatessen clerk and ditch digger, Barry joined ''The Journal Inquirer'' in Manchester, Conn., as a reporter, and moved to the ''Providence Journal-Bulletin'' in 1987. In 1992, he won a shared

Polk Award The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the awar ...

for investigating the causes of a state banking crisis. In 1994, he was part of a Journal-Bulletin investigative team that won the

Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting The Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting has been awarded since 1953, under one name or another, for a distinguished example of investigative reporting by an individual or team, presented as a single article or series in a U.S. news publica ...

after exposing corruption in the Rhode Island court system. Barry joined ''The New York Times'' in 1995. He served as Long Island bureau chief, police bureau chief, City Hall bureau chief, and general assignment reporter for the Metropolitan desk before resurrecting the "About New York column" in 2003. Then, in 2007, he began the "This Land" column, which took him to all 50 states over the course of a decade. He now specializes in long-form narratives. His writing also appears in several non-fiction anthologies.

Personal life

Barry lives in Maplewood, NJ, with his wife, Mary Trinity, and two daughters, Nora and Grace.

Awards

* 1994

for exposing corruption in the

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...

court system * Pulitzer finalist in 2006, for his coverage of post-

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cost ...

New Orleans and life in New York City * Pulitzer finalist in 2010, for his coverage of how the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

changed lives and relationships in America * 1992 shared

for investigating the causes of a state banking crisis * 2003

American Society of Newspaper Editors The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) was a membership organization for editors, producers or directors in charge of journalistic organizations or departments, deans or faculty at university journalism schools, and leaders and faculty of ...

Award for deadline reporting, for his coverage of the first anniversary of Sept. 11 * the 2005 Mike Berger Award, which honors in-depth human interest reporting * the 2010

Sigma Delta Chi Award The Sigma Delta Chi Awards are presented annually by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) (formerly Sigma Delta Chi) for excellence in journalism. The SPJ states the purpose of the award is to promote "the free flow of information vital ...

for column writing from the Society for Professional Journalists * 2015 Best American Newspaper Narrative award * In May 2016, Barry was given an honorary doctorate by his alma mater, St. Bonaventure University, after which he delivered the commencement address for the graduating class of 2016. * In 2018, Barry was named recipient of the

Story in the Public Square Story in the Public Square is an initiative to study, celebrate and tell stories of interest to the public discourse. It is based at Salve Regina University's Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, and it has received support ...

, awarded by the

Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy The Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University Salve Regina University is a private Roman Catholic university in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It was founded in 1934 by the Sisters of Mercy an ...

Bibliography

· ''Pull Me Up'' (2004) — memoir of Barry's

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United States and the 18 ...

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

Catholic upbringing and battle with cancer · ''City Lights: Stories About New York'' (2007) — collection of Barry's "About New York" columns · ''Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball’s Longest Game'' (

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...

, 2011; paperback March 2012) — about the longest game in professional baseball history · ''The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland'' (HarperCollins, 2016) – about the exploitation of a group of Texas men with intellectual disability who worked for decades in a turkey-processing plant in eastern Iowa · ''This Land: America, Lost and Found'' (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2018) – a collection of Barry's national "This Land" columns.

References

External links

Barry bio on the ''New York Times'' website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barry, Dan People from Deer Park, New York People from Maplewood, New Jersey St. Bonaventure University alumni New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science alumni Living people The New York Times Pulitzer Prize winners The New York Times columnists The Providence Journal people 20th-century American journalists American male journalists 1958 births