Biography

“He’s taught big-city reporters a thing or two about investigative journalism.”
        –Atlanta Journal and Constitution

Barry Yeoman specializes in in-depth reporting that puts a human face on complex issues. During nearly four decades in journalism, he has brought readers and listeners into:

• a seminary where Christian missionaries learn to convert Muslims;
• a lab where the fundamental assumptions of dinosaur science are being challenged;
• a remote First Nation community in Canada threatened by tar-sands operations;
• a coastline in India where industrialization threatens traditional fisherfolk;
• a training ground for private soldiers on secret missions;
• a Native American tribe whose backyards are crumbling into the Gulf of Mexico;
• a New Hampshire town threatening secession from the United States;
• a Turkish bird paradise that could soon be under water;
• a gathering where people who stutter are redefining disability;
• a boat operated by two shrimpers trying to cope with the BP oil spill;
• the Washington corridors where super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff rose to power before his fall;
• corner blues joints in New Orleans that struggle to keep their doors open; and
• the inside of his own DNA.

He has written about Southern chicken farmers, brain-injured athletes, women veterans, earnest Promise Keepers, an American strategist for the Iraqi resistance, controversial sex researchers, Spanish Carnival musicians, salmon fishermen, Jews for Jesus, anti-fracking rebels, and the women whose lives are caught up in the debate over “partial birth” abortion.

Barry’s work has appeared in AARP The Magazine; The American Prospect; Audubon; CityLab; Discover; Glamour; Good Housekeeping; The Guardian; HuffPost; Mother Jones; The Nation; National Wildlife; New Republic; O, The Oprah Magazine; onEarth; Parade; Popular Science; Saturday Evening Post; Sunset; Talking Points Memo; Texas Monthly; The Washington Post; Woman’s Day; and many other publications. It has been produced in collaboration with journalism non-profits like the International Consortium of Investigative Reporters, Type Investigations, and the Food & Environment Reporting Network. It has been translated into Russian, Portuguese, Khmer, Spanish, Flemish, and Italian.

Barry’s articles have won him a slew of accolades. He won the National Magazine Award for Public Interest, the industry’s highest honor, as part of a team that investigated the Southern poultry industry. He won the Green Eyeshade Award, the South’s top journalism prize, for an exposé of North Carolina’s highway-building system. Columbia Journalism Review, the nation’s premiere journalism magazine, named him one of nine investigative reporters who are “out of the spotlight but on the mark.” The Columbia University School of Journalism and Poynter Institute have described Barry’s work as “the essence of excellence.” For a list of awards, see the righthand column of this page.

He works in audio, too, producing radio documentaries and podcasts about everything from zydeco music to coastal land loss. He served as the editorial producer for the four-year run of Life Reimagined, a TV segment that aired on the TODAY show and was hosted by Jane Pauley.

Besides doing his own journalism, Barry teaches magazine writing to undergraduates at Wake Forest University and Duke University. He teaches narrative non-fiction writing to adults at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies. He has worked with the non-profit Images & Voices of Hope to coach media professionals who are telling stories of community resilience.

Click here for Barry’s resume. Click here to read Allison Kirkland’s 2019 interview with Barry, reposted by Harvard’s Nieman Storyboard. Click here to subscribe to Barry’s occasional newsletter.