Behind the Headlines

Redlining is the discriminatory practice of banks and other institutions “lining off” parts of a community where investments and loans are not approved due to the demographics of the area. And by demographics, of course, we're talking about gatekeeping, class and race. Redlining as a specific term and policy has been around since 1920 and was the focus of a 1988 Pulitzer Prize-winning series  The...

On this episode of Behind the Headlines, host Teri Barr is talking with David Wilcox , features editor for The Citizen in Auburn, New York, who realized rising suicide and overdose statistics tell another story about the COVID-19 pandemic. David had been interested in mental health numbers, both pre-pandemic and during the peak in 2020 and 2021, and you may be surprised by what his reporting uncov...

Teri Barr is talking with David McGee , a staff writer with the Herald-Courier in Bristol, Virginia.  David dove into a recent report which shows half of the public schools in Virginia are more than 50 years old, and in Bristol, Virginia, six of the seven schools are even older, including the one that is 107 years old.  School leaders and lawmakers have blamed the aging buildings issue o...

Host Teri Barr is talking with Press of Atlantic City Meteorologist Joe Martucci about a recent series of stories focused on tidal flooding. Joe shares why this is a growing problem, and how often schools now have to be closed due to flooding. He also discusses the options city leaders and lawmakers are considering to fix the issue before it's too late. More from Joe Martucci: Press of Atlantic Ci...

Residents in Long View, North Carolina, in general, are living 20 years less than those living in neighboring Hickory. No one knew about this and other health data until reporter Virginia Annable dug into it. Virginia works for the Hickory Daily Record in Hickory, North Carolina and recently looked through health department data for a number of reasons. But what she uncovered, specific to people l...

When two separate shootings, described as ”suspects firing at each other between cars” by police, resulted in multiple children being shot, including an 8-year-old who was killed, Statesville Record & Landmark reporter Ben Gibson brought the story to readers and continues to cover the case as it follows the suspects through the court system. In this episode of the Behind the Headli...

When Nebraska officials refused to release information related to the number of residents getting COVID-19 vaccinations, Omaha World-Herald reporters Julie Anderson and Henry Cordes dug deep into federal data. What they found last year was the widest gap in the country between urban and rural vaccination rates.  In this episode of Behind the Headlines, Teri Barr talks with Cordes and Anderson...

In this episode of Behind the Headlines, host Teri Barr talks with Tulsa World Editor Jason Collington, assistant editor Kendrick Marshall , and and reporter Randy Krehbiel . They share some of the new information learned while covering the anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre this year, along with the many things that remain unknown, and why a search for answers still continues. The horrible hi...

Earlier this year, the Sioux City Journal published Stolen lives: The epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women , a special three-part series by reporter Dolly Butz , multimedia producer Jesse Brothers and visual editor Tim Hynds . Dolly Butz spent over a year on the project, investigating the national epidemic affecting Native women and examining steps that tribal officials and others are...

We're excited to tell you about a new program we're debuting soon, Behind the Headlines. Hosted by Teri Barr, the show features interviews with journalists from Lee Enterprises newsrooms in 26 states whose dogged reporting has made a valuable impact on the front page… and beyond. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.