Mark Obbie

Mark Obbie is a journalist who has spent his career writing about crime and courts. Based in upstate New York's Finger Lakes region, he is a full-time freelance writer with an interest in narrative storytelling focusing on violent crime's causes and solutions. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Atlantic.com, Vice, Slate, Pacific Standard, TakePart, Al Jazeera America, The Trace, O, The Oprah Magazine, Inc. magazine, and others. He was a 2014-15 Soros Justice Media Fellow to produce a series of narratives for Slate about crime victims. He is the former executive editor of The American Lawyer, a small but renowned showcase for longform narrative journalism, and the editor and publisher of its affiliated Dallas-based weekly, Texas Lawyer. He started his career covering police and courts for daily newspapers in Ohio and Texas. From 2004 to 2012, Obbie taught magazine journalism at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and helped found SU's Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media. He is a member of Investigative Reporters and Editors and Criminal Justice Journalists. For links to his work and to read his blog, go to http://markobbie.com.