Draft:Deborah Zabarenko

Deborah Zabarenko is an American journalist and consultant. She spent the bulk of her career, 27 years, at Reuters, where she joined in 1986 and stayed until 2013. From 2014-2020 Zabarenko served as editorial manager for the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank.

Education and early career

Zabarenko received a BA in Oriental Studies and Political Science from Barnard College in 1975. She earned a Master of Journalism degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1978. From 1985-1986 Zabarenko focused on Asian Studies and Civilization as part of a Gannett Fellowship at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She got her start in journalism as a freelance field producer for Newsweek television in the San Francisco bay area from 1977 to 1979, working with a two-person video crew to produce short features. Zabarenko worked for the Associated Press from 1979 to 1986 in Indianapolis and New York City. While in Indianapolis, she covered stories ranging from court trials to museum exhibits.

Writer

Zabarenko joined the Reuters news agency (later Thomson Reuters) in 1986, covering a variety of beats from the White House to the Pentagon, later establishing a beat as environment correspondent in 2006. She wrote stories about climate change, wildlife extinctions, environmental disasters

Zabarenko was also a specialist in space coverage, writing about cosmic discoveries and space travel.

With a grant from the National Science Foundation, Zabarenko traveled to Antarctica in 2006 and wrote a series of stories ranging from the rigors of Antarctic travel to climate change research.

She took part in the Arctic Summer College, a virtual global college focusing on the Arctic in June of 2013 and won a reporting fellowship with the University of Hawaii’s East-West Center in 2013 to examine disaster resilience after Superstorm Sandy, which hit New York and New Jersey in 2012; in eastern Japan after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident; and in Sichuan, China after a 2008 earthquake. While at Reuters, Zabarenko was a leader in the Newspaper Guild, later renamed the Newsguild, representing staff as Unit Chair from 2007 to 2013. She took a buyout from Reuters in 2013. From 2014-2020 Zabarenko served as editorial manager for the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank. She put together annual reports, wrote editorials and blogs, managed internal communications, set standards for editorial products and trained colleagues in colloquial writing and editing.

In 2014, she founded Sonoma Road Strategies, a communications consultancy firm.

Awards and Fellowships

1985-1986 Gannett Fellow at the University of Hawai’i Asia Fellowships Program for Journalists Newsguild of New York’s Tom Keenan award in 2006 for work on winning a new Guild contract with Reuters.

Controversy

In 2011, Zabarenko played a prominent role in the first government case against an employer involving Twitter when the National Labor Relations Board said it planned to file a civil complaint against Thomson Reuters. It accused the company of reprimanding Zabarenko for having posted a complaint on the social media platform. The tweet, involving Guild negotiations, read: “One way to make this the best place to work is to deal honestly with Guild members.” In interviews, Zabarenko said she had felt threatened by a call from the then-bureau chief. The Guild later asked the NLRB to withdraw the charge after working out a social media policy with Thomson Reuters.