WINTER '26: THE COMING STORMS

Veteran Union-Tribune reporter Gary Robbins will discuss some of the ways that the U-T is preparing for El Nino coverage this fall/winter, and how it will collaborate with first responders.

About Gary Robbins

Maine native Gary Robbins decided to become a newspaper reporter in December 1972 when he saw His Girl Friday, a comedic newspaper movie starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. About a month later, a weekly newspaper debuted near his home outside Bar Harbor, Maine. He asked its editor for a shot at writing and got it.

Robbins went on to journalism school at Northeastern University in Boston. In 1980, he joined an afternoon newspaper in Hollywood, Florida and covered, among other things, the Cuban boat lift and Haitian boatlift. He later moved on to the Orange County Register, where he spent 25 years as a science and technology writer. He joined The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2010 and now covers science and research universities, the military and the weather.

Robbins was a Knight Science Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He later taught journalism at USC and Cal State Long Beach. He is married to Diana McCabe, the U-T's business editor. They have a cat, Sweet Pea, who basically does nothing 35 hours a day.