Dan Barry born Feb. 11, 1958

Dan Barry inaugurated the "This Land" column for The New York Times in January of 2007, after writing the "About New York" column since June 2003. Mr. Barry joined The Times in September 1995, and has served as the newspaper’s city hall bureau chief, Long Island bureau chief, acting police bureau chief and general assignment reporter for the Metropolitan Desk. Over the years he has written extensively for The Times about city politics, police brutality and life in upstate New York, among other topics, and was a major contributor to the newspaper’s award-winning coverage of the World Trade Center disaster and its aftermath. He also contributed to the coverage of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.


Born in Jackson Heights, Queens, on Feb. 11, 1958, Mr. Barry graduated from St. Bonaventure University in 1980 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He dug ditches, worked in Long Island delicatessens and earned a master’s degree in journalism from New York University before becoming a reporter for The Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn., in 1983.

In 1987, he joined the Providence Journal-Bulletin, where he covered the Rhode Island state government and organized crime, and wrote regular essays for the Sunday magazine. From January 1991 to July 1995, he was a member of the newspaper’s five-member investigative team.

In 1992, Mr. Barry and two other reporters won a George Polk Award for an investigation into the causes of a state banking crisis. In 1994, he and the other members of the investigative team won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles about the state’s court system; the series led to various reforms and the criminal indictment of the state’s Supreme Court chief justice. His other honors include the 2003 American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for deadline reporting, for his coverage of the first anniversary of Sept. 11, and the 2005 Mike Berger Award, from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, which honors in-depth human interest reporting.

Mr. Barry has also written two books: "Pull Me Up: A Memoir," published in May 2004, and "City Lights: Stories About New York," a collection of his About New York columns, published in November 2007. He lives in Maplewood, N.J., with his wife, Mary Trinity, and their two daughters, Nora and Grace.