Benny Becker News Today

Journalists played an important role last year in bringing attention to the human toll of workplace hazards. One section of "The Year in US Occupational Health & Safety" is devoted to the best reporting from national and regional reporters.

This week on Inside Appalachia, Rev. George Mills Dickerson of Tazewell, Virginia was born in the years after slavery ended. He’s remembered today through his poetry. And a new wave of black lung disease is ravaging Appalachia. We’ll hear more from a black lung town hall in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Coal miners have their own thoughts about black lung, too.

The Chicago Tribune and ProPublica have won the 2022 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism for an investigation about police and schools punishing Illinois students with costly tickets.

Communities across the country await funding from the federal infrastructure bill. Some that need it most worry they won't get enough.

The downturn of coal in Harlan County, Kentucky has led to an exodus of Black residents in search of work. This week on Inside Appalachia, we listen back to our conversation with William Turner, whose book about growing up in a vibrant Black community in eastern Kentucky just won the Weatherford Award for nonfiction from the Appalachian Studies Association.

Destabilized watersheds, pollution and public health are some of many issues Appalachian and Navajo coalfield regions are grappling with.

The downturn of coal in Harlan County, Kentucky has led to an exodus of Black residents in search of work. This week on Inside Appalachia, we speak with William Turner, whose new book looks at growing up in a vibrant Black community during Harlan’s boom years.

Credit Benny Becker | Ohio Valley ReSource   Eastern Kentucky’s water problems are well documented, but for Pike County, some help may be on the way. The county’s two Appalachian Regional Commission applications for water system improvements and flood prevention infrastructure have officially been recommended for federal funding by Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who announced his support for the projects during a tour of the county on Monday.  A little more than $670,000 of the proposed fun...

In December, Kathy Fletcher, a lifelong Martin County, Kentucky, resident and mother, found her water was shut off. When it came back on, something was

Racism is the idea that one racial group is inferior or superior to another, and has the social power to carry out and benefit from systemic discrimination. This applies to most, if not all, institutions in this country, including public media. Anti-Blackness and white supremacy shape both the institutional policies and practices of society and shape the cultural beliefs and values that support racist policies and practices. White supremacy is the political and socio-economic system that allows...