Rob Barry runs the data journalism team at The Wall Street Journal — a legendary group of reporters who dig important stories out of hidden datasets and occasionally introduce powerful people to consequences.

The team’s investigations have exposed TikTok’s pipeline to teen self-harm, tracked Russian troll operations across social media, uncovered toxic fume events on commercial flights, investigated the government’s use of force during immigration raids and built the tools to analyze millions of newly released Jeffrey Epstein files.

They also build most of the infrastructure they run on — a podcast search engine, entity extraction platforms, investigation databases, deployment pipelines and a fleet of AI agents that never sleep. He studied math and English at the University of Miami, which turned out to be a surprisingly useful combination right up until generative AI ruined all hope. Now he lies awake at night thinking about that.

Before the Journal he was at the Miami Herald, where he covered North Miami Beach, built a social media site for Pedro Pans, wrote obits and interviewed cops at all hours of the night. He joined WSJ in 2011.

If you want to talk, share a tip or tell him he got something wrong, he’s easy to find.