ERIK OLSEN - ABOUT

Headed out to film on the island of Yap. — Headed out to film underwater on the island of Yap.

I am a Los Angeles-based journalist and filmmaker. Previously, I was the West Coast Video Correspondent for Quartz based in Los Angeles. For over a decade, I was Sr. Video Journalist for The New York Times in New York City, Berlin, and Los Angeles. I joined The Times in 2005 as a founding member of the newsroom's video operation. Here’s a video they asked me to make about my job.

I shoot, write, edit, and narrate documentary video stories. I often write for print and shoot photos. I was one of the earliest journalists to incorporate drone videography into my work. My videos, print stories, and photos have been published in: The New York Times, Quartz, Scientific American, Hakai Magazine, Great Big Story, Popular Science, Business Insider, BBC, Undark, National Geographic, ABC News, and CNN. I have presented in front of numerous groups and organizations including the AAAS Annual Meeting on Visualizing Science.

Over the years, I’ve won various awards for my work. In 2018, my work won the 2018 Edward R. Murrow National Award for Feature Reporting. I was also part of a team that won the 2018 Gerald Loeb Award for video. My video was part of the finalist award in General Excellence in Online Journalism, Medium Newsroom for the Online Journalism Awards. I’ve also won the NPPA award for documentary, the Webby, the RTDNA/RIAS digital media award, and several others.

My work as a video journalist is featured prominently in the latest edition of the college textbook:

Videojournalism: Multimedia Storytelling for Online, Broadcast and Documentary Journalists by Ken Kobre.

I worked at ABC News in Seattle and NYC for five years and as a print journalist.

Inside the Triton submersible filming a video about the ocean’s twilight zone.

I have reported from almost every state in the U.S. and numerous countries. I covered the 2014 Ukraine conflict, the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Sandy, the European refugee crisis, the British election, the Boston Marathon bombing, Germany's energy transition, the Haiti earthquake, and many more global and breaking stories. My passion is science journalism and I have been fortunate enough to report science stories from high above the Arctic Circle, Antarctica, 2000 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, 100 feet up a giant Sequoia, Haiti, Indonesia, the Bahamas, Belize, the Florida Keys, the Aleutian Islands, Sri Lanka, and many other places.

I once traveled overland (including hitchhiking aboard a Chilean navy vessel) from Antarctica to Los Angeles.

One of my favorite things to do while reporting is scuba diving.