The crisis in local news is global.

Kristen Mueller was in the final stages of her emergency medicine residency at Washington University when a patient who had attempted suicide with a gun was brought in. That patient survived, but was left blind and with severe facial injuries. That was seven years ago. Mueller, who now researches firearm violence and injury prevention at Washington University, has treated hundreds, if not thousands, of St. Louis gun violence victims.  “Every now and then you get those cases that just stick with you, and you roll over at 3 in the morning and you’re awake thinking about it,” Mueller said. Those types of cases have only become more common over time. This reporting by Report for America corps member Humera Lodhi with The Kansas City Star is part of the Missouri Gun Violence Project, a two-year, statewide journalism effort supported the Missouri Foundation for Health and three Report for America corps members.

A sea of protestors, about several thousand strong, flooded the streets of Chicago’s LGBTQ neighborhood one chilly afternoon in June 2020. With each step up North Halsted Street, their chants of “Justice for George Floyd” and “Black Trans Lives Matter” echoed more loudly off the gay bars and LGBTQ centers that line the strip. They waved rainbow and blue-and-pink Pride flags, along with protest signs demanding justice for Floyd, Breonna Taylor and transgender man Tony McDade. Their leader was Jo Mama, a six-foot-one drag queen in a baby blue pantsuit and afro hairstyle. 

When Lake Powell is filled or near capacity, as was the case through much of the 1980s and 1990s, the river current stopped just downstream of the drops, its muddy waters becoming a limpid blue reservoir as hundreds of millions of tons of sediment settled to the river bottom. Scouting the Big Drops today, that scene is almost impossible to picture.

With $140,000 in funding from the City of San Bernardino, the Highland Senior Center provides lunches for 40 individuals and dinner for another 40 individuals — seniors can sign up for one or the other. Donations come from Walmart and include poultry, vegetables, dairy products and if they’re lucky, beef. Located along Highland Avenue near the unincorporated community of Patton, the center borders the vicinity of the City of San Bernardino where fast food restaurants and liquor stores exist in abundance. A sizable portion of residents in the area have low access to grocery stores — a “food desert,” according to the federal government. This reporting by Report for America corps member Breanna Reeves with Black Voice News is part of Barren Mile, a historic reporting collaboration among four Black-owned Report for America newsroom partners. 

Jail officials in Maine promised jailed defendants that the phone calls between defendants and their attorneys would be private, but Report for America corps member with The Maine Monitor Samantha Hogan found that county jails routinely recorded attorney-client calls, and state police used these calls to investigate cases — potentially using them to build the prosecution’s case.