Hannah Dreier

Hannah Dreier is an American journalist. She works on longform investigations at the New York Times. Previously, she was a 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 also worked at ProPublica, where she was the recipient of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, and The Washington Post. In 2024, her New York Times series on migrant child labor won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. She is the only journalist to have won Pulitzer Prizes in both the Feature Writing and Investigative Reporting categories.

Education and career
Hannah Dreier grew up in San Francisco. After completing high school at The Urban School of San Francisco, she graduated from Wesleyan University in 2008, then interned for The Mercury News.

Dreier joined the Associated Press as a politics reporter in the Sacramento bureau and later covered the business of gambling from Las Vegas. She was the AP's Venezuela correspondent for three years, moving to Caracas in 2014 amid a nationwide protest movement, and told the story of the country's unraveling from inside prisons, hospitals and factories. Her 2016 "Venezuela Undone" series illustrated Venezuela’s social and economic collapse through deeply reported accounts of ordinary citizens struggling to survive and was recognized by the Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest, the Michael Kelly Award, the Gerald Loeb Award for International business journalism, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Following the narcosobrinos affair which saw president Nicolás Maduro's nephews arrested in the United States for drug trafficking, Dreier was detained by SEBIN (Bolivarian Intelligence Service) agents in Sabaneta, Barinas. Agents threatened her during an interrogation, saying they would behead her like ISIL did to James Foley and said that they would let her go for a kiss. Finally, agents said that they wanted to coerce the United States to exchange Maduro's nephews for Dreier, accusing her of being a spy and sabotaging the Venezuelan economy.

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.

In 2017, Dreier joined ProPublica as a reporter covering immigration. There, she wrote a series of investigative magazine features about the gang MS-13. At The Washington Post, Dreier reported on immigration, policing and federal disaster aid. Her reporting on inequities in disaster aid programs led to "major process changes at FEMA to directly address these issues."

Awards
Her stories have been recognized by the Overseas Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, the National Magazine Awards, the Peabody Awards, Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. In 2017 she was the recipient of the James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for her coverage of the recurring turmoil in Venezuela.

In 2019, Dreier won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

In 2021, she won the Livingston Award for stories showing how the Trump administration was weaponizing confidential disclosures that young asylum-seekers made in therapy sessions. In 2013, she was a finalist for the Livingston Award for revealing that the state of California had been raiding a fund meant for children who lost parents in the 9/11 attacks. In 2017, she was a finalist for the Livingston Award for “Venezuela Undone,” which documented that country’s humanitarian collapse. In 2017, she was a finalist for the Livingston Award for “Trapped in Gangland,” which tracked a botched police crackdown on the gang MS-13.

She won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2024, her second of each, for her New York Times work on migrant child labor.

Books
Dreier's work has been republished in collections including The Best American Magazine Writing and Best American Newspaper Narratives.