Joseph B. Treaster works to enhance cross-cultural communication around the world and teaches graduate and undergraduate classes. He is the editor of onewater.org, the University of Miami’s environmental magazine on the Internet, which focuses on the Worldwide Water Crisis.
The onewater.org website strives to advance cross-cultural communication and understanding of the deteriorating state of the world’s water. In a hands-on cross-cultural engagement, Mr. Treaster has recruited local writers from around the world to share their personal experiences and research with an audience in more than 48 countries. Mr. Treaster writes a weekly blog for onewater.org called “Water and the World,” which is also published by UPI.com, a news features website with several million visitors monthly.
Mr. Treaster reported for The New York Times for more than 30 years. As a foreign correspondent and domestic reporter for The Times, Mr. Treaster covered wars, politics, diplomacy, disasters, business and every day life throughout the world. His assignments for The Times and national magazines took him to more than 80 countries in Asia, Africa, Australia, the Middle East, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and throughout the United States. He has written three books and dozens of magazine articles for such publications as the Atlantic Monthly, Harpers and RollingStone.
One of Mr. Treaster’s specialties is hurricanes. He was one of the few reporters from a major newspaper in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck. His most recent book is Hurricane Force: In The Path of America’s Deadliest Storms. He is the coordinator of The New York Times hurricane blog, “Eye of the Storm,” and a writer for the blog. Mr. Treaster’s work on hurricanes for The Times was an outgrowth of his reporting on the insurance industry in the United States and abroad.
Mr. Treaster began his career with The Times in Southeast Asia. He served for six years as the Caribbean Correspondent for The Times, covering Haiti, Jamaica and more than 30 other countries in the region and in Latin America. He reported from the cocaine fields of Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia and later spent five years as The Times’ specialiston drug trafficking and illicit drug use, reporting in the United States, Latin America and Europe. During stints in New York, Mr. Treaster was often sent to cover breaking international news.
Mr. Treaster is the author of Paul Volcker: The Making of A Financial Legendand aco-author of a book on the experiences of the Americans taken hostage in Iran, Inside Report on the Hostage Crisis: No Hiding Place.
In 1995 and 1996, Mr. Treaster studied at the Columbia University Business School on a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Miami and a Master of Science degree from Columbia University. Mr. Treaster learned French at the Sorbonne and Spanish at a language school in Guatemala. He has received more than a dozen journalistic awards, including three from the Overseas Press Club of America for work in Africa and Latin America.
Mr. Treaster has been a Poynter Fellow at Yale University and at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is a Visiting Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. He has been a guest lecturer at The Wharton School, the University of Cincinnati, the New School and at Princeton University. He has taught at Baruch College in New York and in China, South Korea, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates in an international journalism program of Georgia State University.
Mr. Treaster is married to Barbara J. Dill, a lawyer and writer. They are the parents of a 14-year-old daughter, Chloe.