Mark Obbie
As seen in:
LinkedIn,
Medium,
The New York Times,
Bloomberg CityLab,
The Atlantic,
POLITICO,
Slate,
VICE,
RealClear Politics,
Pacific Standard
and
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Mark Obbie
Canandaigua, Bristol, and South Bristol Collaborate to Celebrate Nation’s 250th
When New York state officials put out the call four years ago urging town historians and historical societies to plan events commemorating the nation’s 250th birthday, the historians of Canandaigua, Bristol, and South Bristol decided it made more sense to collaborate than compete.
Phil Terrie on the search for meaning in the Adirondack wilderness
Sixty years ago this summer, 17-year-old Philip Terrie, a counselor at Adirondack Wilderness Camp on Long Lake, summited his first Adirondack high peak, a bushwhack up the lowest and arguably least impressive of the 46 High Peaks: Couchsachraga. Fortunately for him and for the rest of us, his day hike continued on to neighboring Panther Peak.
Nearly four decades after his death, a local artist renowned for his paintings of landscapes and landmarks in the Bristol Hills and Naples will be remembered with an exclusive exhibition of dozens of his original paintings in a show that opens with a free lecture on his life and art at the Bristol Hills Historical Society’s Grange Hall on September on Rte 64.
Researcher Challenges Myth of Untouched Forests Before White Settlement in Western NY
What did the Bristol Hills and western Finger Lakes forests look like when white settlers began moving here in the late 1700s? A SUNY Geneseo geographer will present research that shows the significant role of Indigenous land management long before European-American settlement, and how legacies of their land use persist today, if you know where and how to look. SUNY Geneseo geographer Stephen J.
Adirondack Life Magazine
It was July 1973. Richard Nixon was trying to contain Watergate; Marlon Brando had just won an Oscar for The Godfather; I had completed my junior year of high school. That month found me catching bullheads with my grandfather on Adirondack Lake, in Indian Lake. I’ll never forget the horrifying news and the palpable tension. Robert Garrow was on the run. The 37-year-old who grew up in the Adirondacks hunting, fishing and trapping had left a trail of terror in the wilderness.
Adirondack Life Magazine
The first time I saw Cali Brooks it was 1999 and she rose like a yellow-haired spirit out of the vegetable garden at the Blue Mountain Center, the former central Adirondack Great Camp turned writers’ retreat. It was only my third or fourth day in the Adirondacks. I was utterly lost. Brushing her dirty hands on her blue jeans, Brooks put me at ease with a laugh (I asked, she has no memory of this meeting) and sent me in the right direction.
Take the Great Adirondack Life Challenge
by | August 2024, Featured Wood sorrel, ermine and campfire photographs from shutterstock. Lake photograph by Jamie West McGiver. Diner and Hammock photographs by Nancie Battaglia Sometimes we need a little nudge. Our first Adirondack Life Challenge, in 2019, was a lot of fun—and not just for our readers. It was a blast looking at all those pictures of families living park-perfect summers.
High Drama: OK Slip Falls
Photograph by Johnathan Esper From the river, the mouth of OK Slip Brook is little more than a comma in the epic poem of a trip down the Hudson Gorge. For decades, white-water guides longed to beach their rafts here and pause by a quiet pool before shooting the steepest rapid on the Hudson. The guides knew that this little break in the trees was a portal to an alluring but private inner kingdom.
Buck Mountain Fire Tower Trail
Photograph by Johnathan Esper This spectacular view of the Whitney Wilderness Area and Little Tupper Lake comes to you courtesy of a very good boy. In 1933 two veterans of Byrd’s 1929 South Pole expedition, Jack Bursey and his lead sled dog St. Lunaire, hauled the bones of a 60-foot fire tower up Buck Mountain, in Long Lake. Now the tower has been rehabbed, and an easement donated by Cedar Heights Timber allows a new generation to follow in St. Lunaire’s pawprints.
Zen and the Art of Discomfort
Photograph courtesy of the author The Northville-Placid Trail cuts through the West Canada Lakes Wilderness in some of the most remote terrain in the Adirondacks. It’s about as far from human hubbub as one can get. But one rainy July morning, it’s anything but placid. Deep in a blowdown-filled beaver swamp, the woods reverberate with the voice of my daughter, Rae, who at the moment has—let us be frank—quite the potty mouth.
Documentary Seeks to Put the 'Sexy' Into Crime Data
In the 13 years since it formed as a non-profit helping local police, courts and prosecutors to get better at capturing and reporting the data that can reveal systemic problems, Measures for Justice has grown to an impressive size: a staff of nearly 80, operations in more than 20 states, and a gusher of philanthropic support in the tens of millions of dollars.
Reporter’s Outtakes: How a Local CVI Program Won Outside Help
Community organizers from 16 cities receiving community violence intervention training gathered during the 18-month program / Provided photo As hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed into community violence intervention programs over the past two years, government and private funders have faced a pair of troubling prospects: What if the many community-based organizations getting newfound resources don’t use the money wisely?
'Still Evolving' Violence Interventions Need Breathing Room: Panel
Moderator James Start (top left) and panelists Buggs, Timpson, Bocanegra, Decker (clockwise from top right) Despite an unprecedented federal investment in community-based violence intervention (CVI) programs in the past few years, such work is at risk of failing to meet expectations about how quickly and conclusively it can help reduce everyday gun violence, a panel of experts said in a Department of Justice webinar on Monday.
Report Tracks Boom in Violence Prevention Units, Offers Tips
The number of U.S. cities and counties that have formed violence-prevention agencies independent of law enforcement will soon top 50, having more than doubled since 2020’s social-justice protests and surge in community gun violence. A new report by the Vera Institute of Justice takes stock of the trend to form offices of violence prevention and neighborhood safety and recommends ways to make such offices function effectively and insulate them from political blowback.
Four Bristol Hills Cemeteries in Wreaths Across America Event
In its second year as part of the National Wreaths Across America Day, the Bristol Hills Historical Society has expanded from two to four local cemeteries where wreaths will be laid on every veteran’s grave to remember them and their families during the holiday season. The Historical Society is seeking sponsors to pay for the fresh evergreen wreaths that will be delivered shortly before ceremonies at the cemeteries on Dec. 16. Volunteers also are needed to help lay the wreaths.
Faced with a violent killing, a family chooses forgiveness over prison
Criminal justice freelance journalist focusing on violence prevention and crime victims Now "Especially in cases of violence, people often have long-term connections with each other somehow, whether they are family members, or they are members of the same community, same neighborhood, young men who’ve grown up together, and ended up in these situations.” That's when restorative justice comes into play, helping repair what's broken: a relationship.
Bristol Hills Historical Society: Community Converges with Unique Picture Book Venture
When a small-town historical society publishes a book on local history, the template is pretty well set: lots of grainy, black-and-white photos, descriptions of famous citizens and noteworthy buildings, and maybe a version of the town’s origin story that overlooks the thousands of years of human history before white settlers arrived. The Bristol Hills Historical Society took a different route.
Bristol’s Famous Burning Springs Open to Public on Two Upcoming Weekends
The Bristol Hills Historical Society hosts its annual opening of the privately owned Burning Springs on two upcoming weekends, with a lecture on the site’s centuries-old history and an optional hike up the gully to see the lit flame and waterfall. The Burning Springs farm’s lush gardens will also be in full bloom, including more than 150 tree peonies. The event will be held on two consecutive weekends: Saturday and Sunday, May 27-28, and Saturday and Sunday, June 3 and 4.
The Man Who Would Be King
by | From the Archives, October 1987 Roger Jakubowski: I decided that I can’t work for nobody. They’re liable to find out how dumb I really am. Never educated or nothin’. What can I do? A guy’ll tell me to take out the trash, I won’t even do that right. I have to be the boss. James Kunstler: Why do you think you’re so dumb if you’ve done so well? RJ: Because I should have a hundred times more. I should own the entire Adirondack Park, that’s what I think. I don’t own it.
We’re missing the real gun violence epidemic
In a single month following the mass shooting on May 14 in Buffalo, 33 people were shot — five fatally — on the streets of Rochester, according to police. Combined, the casualties in that span would constitute one of the bloodiest mass shootings in America this year if they occurred all in one incident. Instead, they happened in ones and twos, day by day, concentrated in the city's so-called Crescent neighborhoods among young Black victims.
On to my next career phase
Today is my last day of work at Solutions Journalism Network, where I’ve been the criminal justice specialist since May 2020. Back when I started, I wrote about why I was drawn to the organization and this position. Since then, my dedication to the SJN mission and admiration for the founders and staff has grown that much deeper. But it’s time to move on, to refocus on my own solutions reporting.
Can CAHOOTS Blaze a Path to Police Reform?
CAHOOTS van in Eugene, Ore. Photo via KVAL TV Last June, as protests over George Floyd’s killing swept the nation, two main types of stories crossed my desk at Solutions Journalism Network (SJN): evaluating various types of police reforms, and telling the tale of one policing alternative in particular, called CAHOOTS. SJN is a nonprofit journalism-support organization that encourages journalists to write about responses to social problems, not just about the problems themselves.
The power of asking, ‘Is there a better way?’
How one reporter’s solutions-focused question helped catapult CAHOOTS, a small local response to police violence, into the national spotlight By Mark Obbie, criminal justice specialist, Solutions Journalism Network In October 2018, sheriff’s deputies in San Mateo County, California, confronted an unarmed 36-year-old man walking in traffic. They started shouting at and chasing the man, who suffered from mental illness, ultimately using a Taser on him repeatedly.
Backwoods Brotherhood
June 2021 Backwoods Brotherhood With Barbara McMartin’s Adirondack guidebook as their bible, this crew’s adventures brought them more than 40 years of camaraderie in the wilderness by Mark Obbie I began to wonder what kind of camping trip this was shaping up to be when the guys I’d met just hours earlier tapped me to play the dog in a fox hunt.
The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation
By Mark ObbieApril 21, 2021 In the week this research synthesis was released by HFG, CNN reported that 45 mass shootings had occurred in the U.S. in the previous month. While not a new phenomenon, such violent events have again moved near the top of the American issue agenda. In Mass Shootings: Causes and Prevention, criminal justice journalist Mark Obbie presents key findings from leading research on mass shootings.
The Upside of Trauma
The Year of Living Traumatically: The Boston bombings (above), the Newtown school massacre, and the West, Texas, fertilizer plant explosion all played out within a few months of each other. (PHOTO: JOHN TLUMACKI/THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES) The event that changed Bill Benson’s life revealed itself in his Twitter feed early last Christmas Eve morning.
Essay: Gun essay was based on a 'Big Lie'
Shame on the Daily Messenger for publishing a guest essay based on a blatant and inflammatory misstatement of fact — otherwise known as a Big Lie. In his Oct. 15 essay, “Second Amendment rights at stake in November,” Len Lisenbee writes that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “have repeatedly stated their intent to disregard all aspects of the Second Amendment.
Can Social Workers Replace Cops? One Experiment, From All Angles
For the past three decades, the city of Eugene, Ore., has conducted a long-running experiment in replacing police officers with social workers to handle mental-health crises and other quality-of-life calls to 911. The program, Crisis Assistance Helping Out On the Streets ( CAHOOTS) has hardly been a secret.
What Works to Prevent Gun Violence? A Journalism 'Solutions' Archive
Can better environmental design help to curb the U.S. epidemic of gun violence? What about the use of street-outreach violence interrupters? These are some of the solutions many U.S. journalists are covering in stories about the most effective evidence-based strategies for reducing community gun violence. A new collection of news stories using the “solutions journalism” framework for writing about gun violence is now available.
Jail and Prison Population Drops Slow in New Analysis
Pandemic-driven decreases in prison and jail populations have slowed, and even reversed in some states, the Prison Policy Initiative found in a new report. An earlier report found that local governments at first acted swiftly to minimize jail populations, resulting in a median drop of more than 30 percent between March and May. But, from May through July 22, 71 percent of the 668 jails covered by PPI’s tracking showed population increases.
Meet the last man standing who thinks criminal justice reform is a terrible idea.
Crime Nothing can stop the bipartisan coalition pressing for criminal justice reform. Nothing, except maybe Bill Otis. Bill Otis on PBS NewsHour in August 2013. Screenshot via PBS NewsHour This is the third installment in a series on victims of crime. Read Part 1 and Part 2.
Looking for Innovative Policing Solutions? You Can Find Them Here
If the defund-police debate struck some people as a new idea, then they haven’t been paying attention to the reporting done by journalists for many years about police accountability and successful programs using other civilian professionals to replace police in some of the tasks cops traditionally shoulder.
“We Are Not Lost Causes”
Universal Images Group / Getty / Photo illustration by Katie Kosma Mark Obbie | Longreads | March 2020 | 45 minutes (12,427 words) The three young men sauntering down a city sidewalk showed no signs of alarm as a thin man in a dark hoodie hopped out of the passenger side of a gold Honda minivan. They did not flinch as the man rushed toward them on foot while the van, its windows heavily tinted, continued on past.
Mark Obbie
Mark Obbie | Longreads | March 2020 | 45 minutes (12,427 words) The three young men sauntering down a city sidewalk showed no signs of alarm as a thin man in a dark hoodie hopped out of the passenger side of a gold Honda minivan. They did not flinch as the man rushed toward them on foot while the van, its windows heavily tinted, continued on past. This neighborhood on the northeast side of Rochester, New York, has ranked among one of the poorest and most violent in the United States.
This Man Says His Anti-violence Plan Would Save 12,000 Lives
On a chilly evening in early May, Mitchell Thomas, a Buffalo, New York, police lieutenant, pulled his patrol car away from an East Side district station to lead a three-vehicle caravan on an unconventional policing mission. Thomas and his team of four Buffalo cops and an FBI agent were making home visits, a form of intervention that Buffalo police had recently begun relying on more heavily to head off imminent violence.
New Justice Group Aims to Provide 'Center of Gravity' for Reform
A research and advocacy organization whose founder bills it as a new “center of gravity and crossroads” for criminal justice policy was set to launch Tuesday with a roster of prominent members from multiple disciplines across the ideological spectrum.
The 'Great Crime Decline' in U.S. Cities Isn't Enough
Violent crime is at historic lows in cities like New York. But the stark disparities that remain should be worrying.
The Sessions Debate: Did Ex-AG Take Deliberate Aim at Police Reform?
Two analysts square off over the motives and impact of Jeff Sessions' parting shot, when he reined in the use of Justice Department consent decrees to reform local police departments . . . Want to read more? Please subscribe to The Crime Report!
NYPD Has Been Quietly Revamping How It Treats Crime Victims. The Results Are Impressive.
Susan Herman. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Drew Angerer/Getty Images and NYPD.
Adirondack Life Article - Four Peaks - Adirondack Life
At Home in the Adirondacks 2018 Four Peaks Remembering my favorite place on Earth—and my long and complicated relationship with its owner by Mark Obbie IN THE FIRST FIVE YEARS after moving my family back to my native New York after a long out-of-state exile, I wandered the Adirondacks searching in vain for the perfect vacation rental.
American Bar Association Calls for Repeal of Stand Your Ground Laws
American Bar Association Calls for Repeal of Stand Your Ground Laws A new report by the national lawyers group finds that self-defense laws are racially-biased and provide "a low-cost license to kill." More than two years after the Trayvon Martin case inspired a re-examination of Stand Your Ground self-defense laws nationwide, an American Bar Association report to be published this week issues a sweeping condemnation of the policies, citing concerns about public safety and racial bias.
The NRA’s Favorite Supreme Court Ruling Failed to Gut Gun Control. A Law Professor Explains Why.
The National Rifle Association, and its lawyers, draw a line straight from the founding fathers to the modern “good guy with a gun.” In their framing, people who arm themselves with lethal weapons to defend themselves, their families, and their communities do so with the blessing of the Constitution, as evidenced by the meaning of the Second Amendment. But that understanding of the Second Amendment was enshrined by the courts only recently.
Adirondack Life Table of Contents
Great Pines An Adirondack landmark gets a stylish update photographs by Daesha Devón Harris Four Peaks Remembering my favorite place on earth—and my long and complicated relationship with its owner by Mark Obbie The Irondequoit A million-dollar renovation transforms a Piseco Lake inn by Olivia Dwyer photographs by Carrie Marie Burr Champlain Rocks The timeless—and prized—beauty of our region’s billion-year-old foundation text and photographs by Mark Bowie Saving Account For the Hales on...
‘We’ve Been Doing Too Many Things Wrong for Too Long’
While in St. Louis on an assignment for The New York Times a little over two years ago, I visited the nonprofit social services agency Better Family Life to witness an event billed as a novel attempt at preventing gun violence. Better Family Life produces a number of programs aimed at prevention, victim aid, and prisoner re-entry for St. Louis, a city with a long history of some of the highest rates of homicide and other serious crime in the nation.
Will Keeping Mass Killers Out of the Media Spotlight Save Lives?
When authorities in Texas made a point of not mentioning the name of a man who killed 26 people during Sunday church services in November, saying they did not want to glorify him, their gesture was only the most recent expression of a sentiment that has found growing support in law enforcement and journalism. The notion that rampage killers act, in part, out of a craving for attention—the so-called “contagion effect”—has long found support in and thought.
An Author’s Guide to the E-Singles Scene
I know it’s a mistake for an author to take every review on the Internet seriously, but I admit this one about my true-crime e-single stung: “This was not worth the money. Not a bona Fidel book by any means. Buy a full fledged book instead.” Assuming that’s not a sly reference to the Cuban leader, this review serves as a useful reminder that e-singles are new enough that we all struggle to peg them. More a book than an article, or vice versa?
Sessions' Recycled Crime-Fighting Strategy Is Doomed to Fail | RealClearPolitics
Sessions' Recycled Crime-Fighting Strategy Is Doomed to Fail Newly minted Attorney General Jeff Sessions was in St. Louis, the latest stop on his tour to promote his muscular solution to what he called the “dangerous new trend” of the rising national violent crime rate.
The False Promises of the Trump Justice Department's Strategy for Fighting Gun Violence
Newly minted Attorney General Jeff Sessions was in St. Louis, the latest stop on his tour to promote his muscular solution to what he called the “dangerous new trend” of the rising national violent crime rate.
Why Jeff Sessions’ Recycled Crime-Fighting Strategy Is Doomed to Fail
A memorial for sisters Antquonette Hale, 20, and Tahnaizja Smith, 15, in north St. Louis, March 24, 2016. | Whitney Curtis Law And Order Funneling more gun criminals into federal prison won't reduce homicides. Just look at St. Louis. Continue to article content Newly minted Attorney General Jeff Sessions was in St. Louis, the latest stop on his tour to promote his muscular solution to what he called the “dangerous new trend” of the rising national violent crime rate.
What We Know About Where His Picks Stand on Guns
What We Know About the Gun Rights Records of Trump’s Supreme Court Picks Several favor ending firearms restrictions for the mentally ill, abusers, and on college campuses, but a few of the president elect's other selections have more ambiguous Second Amendment views. In his first interview as president-elect, Donald Trump said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that his nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat that has been vacant for nine months would be “very pro-Second Amendment.” The vow was nothing new.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Mark
Contact Mark, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack