Hannah Dreier is an American journalist and staff writer for The New York Times. Previously, she was Venezuela correspondent for The Associated Press during the first four years of Nicolás Maduro's presidency. In 2016, she was kidnapped by the Venezuelan secret police and threatened because of her work. She has also written for ProPublica and The Washington Post.

Hannah Dreier
Hannah Dreier in Caracas in 2018
Alma materWesleyan University
OccupationJournalist
Employer
Awards
Websitehannahdreier.com

She is the first person in the history of American journalism to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.[1][2]

Education and career

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Dreier grew up in San Francisco and graduated from Wesleyan University.[3]

The Associated Press

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Dreier joined The Associated Press as a politics reporter in Sacramento and later covered the business of gambling from Las Vegas. She was the AP's Venezuela correspondent for five years, moving to Caracas in 2013 amid a nationwide protest movement. She told the story of the country's unraveling from inside prisons, hospitals and factories. Her "Venezuela Undone" series illustrated the country's social and economic collapse through accounts of ordinary citizens struggling to survive.

Following the narcosobrinos affair, which saw president Nicolás Maduro's nephews arrested in the United States for drug trafficking, Dreier was detained by SEBIN secret police agents inBarinas, Venezuela. The agents threatened her during a recorded interrogation, saying they would behead her like ISIL did to James Foley. They also said that they would let her go for a kiss. Finally, agents said that they wanted to force the United States to exchange Maduro's nephews for Dreier, accusing her of being a spy and sabotaging the Venezuelan economy.[4]

A piece in the Columbia Journalism Review highlighted Dreier's work translating the Venezuela crisis for foreign readers. "Dreier has helped the rest of us understand how, why and what, exactly, is taking place in the country. She’s also gained a huge following on social media, where readers catch a glimpse into everyday life there—the quirky, surprising and alarming—sometimes from the window of her apartment," it said.[5]

ProPublica

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In 2017, Dreier joined ProPublica as a reporter covering immigration.[6] There, she wrote a series of investigative magazine features about the gang MS-13.[7] One story showed that the FBI was using teenagers as gang informants, then turning them over to be locked up with the same gang leaders they had informed on.[8] She spent more than a year embedded on Long Island with members of the MS-13 gang. She told the Longform Podcast, “You can’t come up with a good story idea in the office. I’ve never had a good idea that I just came up with out of thin air. It always comes from being on the ground.”[9]

The Washington Post

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Dreier worked for three years at The Washington Post. She reported on topics including policing, mental illness and federal disaster aid.[10][11] In response to her reporting on inequities in disaster aid programs, FEMA reversed a policy that had shut out tens of thousands of Black disaster survivors living on heirs property.[12] She spent weeks in a California FEMA trailer camp for a story. Esquire said, “Read the whole thing. Read it before you start reading about what’s going on in the Congress, because all you need to know about that can be found in an empty trailer park at the edge of the world.”[13]

The New York Times

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Dreier became a staff writer at The New York Times in 2022. She reported on a shadow work force of migrant children working dangerous jobs across the United States. During her research for the project, she interviewed more than 500 working migrant children.[14] The series was called “the most recognized piece of global journalism” of 2024.[15]

In 2024, Dreier served as commencement speaker for the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.[16]

Awards

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Dreier’s reporting has received many honors and awards, including recognition from the National Magazine Awards, the Peabody Awards, the Overseas Press Club, the James Beard Awards, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, and the Gerald Loeb Awards.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] She has twice won Harvard University's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.[26][27]

In 2017, she received the James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for bravery in covering the violent turmoil in Venezuela.[28] She won the Livingston Award, which honors journalists under the age of 35, for stories revealing that the Trump administration was using information from confidential therapy sessions to deport asylum-seekers.[29] She was also a finalist for the award in 2012, 2017 and 2019 and 2021.[30][31][32][33]

Dreier won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 2019. The Pulitzer Board cited her “powerful, intimate narratives that followed Salvadoran immigrants on New York’s Long Island.”[34] She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2022 for “a gripping, deeply reported series that illuminated how FEMA fails American disaster survivors.”[35] She won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2024 for “revealing the stunning reach of migrant child labor across the United States.”[36]

Dreier's work has been collected in several anthologies, including The Best American Newspaper Narratives and The Best American Magazine Writing.[37][38][39]

References

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  1. ^ LaForme, Ren (2024-05-06). "Here are the winners of the 2024 Pulitzer Prizes". Poynter. Retrieved 2024-05-06.
  2. ^ "Feature Writing". April 20, 2019.
  3. ^ "Hannah Dreier To Join The Times". The New York Times Company. 2022-03-02. Retrieved 2024-10-05.
  4. ^ "Departing AP reporter looks back at Venezuela's slide". The Washington Post. 2 August 2017. Archived from the original on 2 August 2017. Retrieved 2 August 2017.
  5. ^ "Q&A: Hannah Dreier on covering a country headed for economic collapse". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  6. ^ "ProPublica Hires Reporter Hannah Dreier to Cover Immigration". ProPublica. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  7. ^ "MS-13 on Long Island". ProPublica. 28 September 2018. Retrieved 2019-01-06.
  8. ^ Dreier, Hannah (2018-04-02). "A Teen Turned Informant to Escape MS-13. Now His Life Is in Even More Danger". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2024-10-05.
  9. ^ "Longform Podcast #381: Hannah Dreier · Longform". Longform. 2020-02-26. Retrieved 2024-10-05.
  10. ^ "Trust and Consequences". The Washington Post.
  11. ^ "The Worst Case Scenario". The Washington Post.
  12. ^ Dreier, Hannah (2021-09-02). "FEMA changes policy that kept thousands of Black families from receiving disaster aid". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2024-10-05.
  13. ^ "Forget Congress. Everything You Need to Know Can Be Found in a Trailer Park at the Edge of the World". Esquire. 2021-10-19. Retrieved 2024-10-05.
  14. ^ Castillo, Amaris (2024-05-07). "Hannah Dreier wins Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for investigative stories into migrant child labor". Poynter. Retrieved 2024-10-05.
  15. ^ Warren, Christopher (2024-05-13). "What is the future of great journalism? Awards give us some clues". Crikey. Retrieved 2024-10-05.
  16. ^ "Columbia University - Graduate School of Journalism on LinkedIn: #cjsendoff2024". www.linkedin.com. Retrieved 2024-10-05.
  17. ^ "Times Wins 5 Awards From ASME". Associated Press. 8 April 2024. Retrieved 2 August 2017.
  18. ^ "ELLIES 2019 FINALISTS ANNOUNCED | ASME". asme.magazine.org. Archived from the original on July 28, 2019. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  19. ^ "ProPublica Named a Finalist for Two Peabody Awards". 9 April 2019.
  20. ^ Brown, Carson (5 June 2017). "Associated Press reporter Hannah Dreier awarded 2016 James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism". Northwestern University. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  21. ^ Press Release (9 March 2017). "Chronicling 'the unraveling of a nation'". Retrieved 21 March 2021.
  22. ^ "The 2024 James Beard Media Award Winners | James Beard Foundation". www.jamesbeard.org. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
  23. ^ "Press release". RFK press release. Retrieved 27 June 2019.
  24. ^ Management, UCLA Anderson School of (2021-05-03). "Winners". UCLA Anderson School of Management. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
  25. ^ Management, UCLA Anderson School of. "Winners of the 2024 Gerald Loeb Awards Announced by UCLA Anderson at New York City Event". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2024-11-01.
  26. ^ Schwartz, Liz (2024-04-04). "Hannah Dreier Wins 2024 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting". Goldsmith Awards. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
  27. ^ "Announcing the Winner of the 2022 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting". 5 April 2022.
  28. ^ University, Medill-Northwestern. "Hannah Dreier Foley Medal - Medill - Northwestern University". www.medill.northwestern.edu. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
  29. ^ "The Washington Post's Hannah Dreier awarded 2021 Livingston Award for national reporting". The Washington Post.
  30. ^ "Livingston Finalists". Archived from the original on 2013-09-05.
  31. ^ "2017 Livingston Awards Finalists Announced". 16 May 2017. Retrieved January 5, 2018.
  32. ^ "Livingston Award finalists 2018". May 2019.
  33. ^ Mastro, Joey (2021-05-04). "Announcing the 2021 Livingston Award Finalists". Wallace House Center for Journalists. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
  34. ^ "The 2019 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Feature Writing". 20 April 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  35. ^ "The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Investigative Reporting". 10 April 2022.
  36. ^ "The 2024 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Investigative Reporting". 6 May 2024.
  37. ^ The Best American Magazine Writing 2019. Columbia University Press. December 2019. ISBN 9780231548663.
  38. ^ Reaves, Gayle (15 June 2018). The Best American Newspaper Narratives, Volume 5. University of North Texas Press. ISBN 9781574417272.
  39. ^ "The Best American Newspaper Narratives, Volume 9". 22 August 2022.
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