March 31, 2026 • 30 mins
Part 1 - “With the heightened concern about biased media, we meet a local, young but seasoned journalist whose impartial, investigative reporting focuses on holding government accountable while empowering PA residents.”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Tylvia Austin.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is Insight, a presentation of iHeartMedia, where we really
do care about our local communities and all our listeners
who live here in anis we're going to talk about
in part today is when I hear about constantly from
my listeners, my guests, and even for my own family.
It's something they think as a journalist, I'm either partly
responsible for it or that I should somehow be able
(00:22):
to fix it. It actually goes back to something you
heard me say on this show. Lots of times, take
five minutes to educate yourself because chances aren't things aren't
the way you think they are.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So here's the deal.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
When people say they hate or they don't trust the media,
most of the time they're not actually talking about journalists
at all. They're reacting to opinion shows, to commentary or
editorial content. But they still use the same word, the media.
And that's where a lot of the confusion comes from. Listen, guys, know,
I am a journalist. I don't deliver opinion. I'm all
(00:57):
about journalism, And again, journalism and opinion is aren't the
same thing. They don't follow the same standards and they
don't have the same purpose, but because people lump them together,
the frustration they feel toward one group gets unfairly applied
to everybody who works in the industry. So today we're
going to dig deeper into the issue of media trust
and honestly, who better to explore it than somebody who
(01:19):
represents what real journalism looks like. Not commentary, not opinion,
no noise. This guy's a journalist and the truest sense
of the word. In fact, he's an investigative journalist. My
guest is someone whose work has had profound impact on
the residents of Pennsylvania, and as a true journalist, he
digs in deeply, He listens carefully, and he brings forward
(01:41):
the stories that help us understand what's really happening in
our communities. This guy's reporting doesn't just present information, it
provides transparency. Oh my goodness, we want that accountability and
a sense of connection at a time when so many
people feel overwhelmed or unsure about where they're going to
turn for trustworthy news. Through his work, he's held i'd
(02:01):
keep up. He's sitting there patiently, probably ready to hit me,
because he's very humble. Through his work, he's held governments,
institutions accountable, elevated the voices of every big people, and
broken down complex issues in ways that make them accessible
and meaningful for all of us. I'm telling you the truth. Then,
it is really a thrill for me to introduce you
(02:21):
to Spotlight PA's multi award winning investigative journalist Ed Mayheon.
And you can imagine how long I've been wanting to.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Talk to you.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I'll tell you what I would like your opinion. I
know what my opinion is about that. But as we
were talking off Mike, the issue of I don't want
to say non trust, but we didn't have maybe what
we'd just say about twenty years ago, newspapers couldn't. Now
we're not just newspapers. Things got expensive. News departments had
(02:54):
to cut back. Give us your version why and lead
us up to why you feel there's no trust anymore?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Sure, well, thanks, thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
It's a blessed to be here, in honored to be here.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
So the long and short of it is, back in
the eighties nineties, before then, newspapers were a very lucrative business.
The advertising revenue was what was subsidizing the whole paper.
People wanted that advertising space, and so you could use
all of that interest and money to fund great journalism,
and it could be great independent journalism because there was
(03:26):
so much money that it was basically just go, go
do great journalism. You know. In the early two thousands,
what happened was everybody knows, like you know, the rise
of the Internet, A lot of newspapers gave away that
content for free, tried to have their advertising online. It
wasn't enough to make up for the losses of the
print side. And so what happened over the past twenty years,
(03:48):
I think a lot of people have had a negative
experience with news, just in terms of diminishment. When you
look at some of the numbers, there's been like more
than two hundred thousand newspaper jobs have disappeared since two
two thousand and five. That's right when I started getting
into this industry. So it's you know, you do you
as a reporter. Myself, I ran into a lot of
problems about where I could go to do independent, accountability
(04:14):
focused work, and there were fewer and fewer options as well,
and so that's how I ultimately led to Spotlight PA,
which is nonpartisan nonprofit news outlet, and we're trying to
really cover stories that other people aren't and trying to
rebuild that trust that you mentioned as well.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Well, you know what I think.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
When you and I chatted earlier, I was telling you
about there was this kid that came in from centraled
off in high school when he was in high school,
and we became buddies and everything, and what he was
doing at that time, as I said, just in high school,
he was started.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
His own news network. He was like, what's his name
on CNN?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
You know, I'm talking about who's the famous guy from
CNN Anderson Cooper. And what he did was he started
going out different big things that were going on in
the communities, this and even out of the state, and
he would get all this film, do all this reporting.
He started sending it to the national networks.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
They loved it. They loved it.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Years pass and everything. Now he's the international correspondent for
Fox News. His name is Trey Yanks. And I think
to myself, you, I mean, you you kick ass.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I'm sorry you do.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I mean, I see your work and you are truly
a journalism person. You're the you have the reasons, you
have why most of us who believe what you did
got into it. But I wanted to ask you, and
I think I asked you about this when we were chatting.
You have the tremendous talent. Why do you not want
(05:42):
to go to big markets?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Oh that's a great question. You know, Pennsylvania is where
I grew up. I grew up in Delaware County, Pennsylvania,
and it's where I've done my entire journalism career. I've
lived out of state for one year. I lived in Tacoma, Washington.
I can talk more about that later. I actually worked
at a part of the time I spent doing a
new paper there for the homeless community there. But most
of my career has been in Pennsylvania, and it's, you know,
(06:06):
on a very practical level, it's where my family is.
It's like I love telling the So I guess a
couple of reasons. One is where my family is. My
you know, my my brother, my sister, my wife, now
my kids, and then her side of the family is
pretty close. But two, I do think that like when
you look at some of the state wide issues, they
have such an impact on people's everyday lives. When you
(06:26):
look at like what the state government spends or doesn't spend.
You know, all that trickles down to schools. You know,
if you you either are kids in schools or you
probably are paying property taxes, and all of that is
driven by state policies and interest. And so where I
see having the highest impact is on that state and
(06:46):
regional level. And those are the two big reasons i'd say,
why print, Oh, print, You know, we've experided, I've had that.
I've done things over the years. But I always loved reading.
I loved writing, and I sort of like got into
it through that way. I just I loved writing. But
you know, that seemed to be where my favorite writing
reporting was. But over time I did a lot of
radio writing, writing for the radio, telling stories for the radio,
(07:09):
doing it for TV as well. And so I actually
worked at an NPR affiliate station for a couple of
years at w I t F. Yeah, I did some
radio there, and I've done some video now and it's Ballypa.
One of the cool things is we know mostly we
are web print, but we also have a TV partnership,
and you know we have right now, I was working
with our TV producer, Mitch Blocker. He's doing five TV
(07:31):
segments about some of our opioid settlement work as well,
and so it's been nice to be able to experiment
with how we tell stories.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Why do you think people I mean I ask, like
I asked good top of this program what they feel.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
The issues are, That's all I hear. Yeah, I'm sick
of the media. I mean, why is her hate?
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Yeah, I mean I guess one is people.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
You know, there's there's what happens at the national level,
and people might just see it as you know, not trusted,
or see it as fighting, or see it as not
reflecting their own community. And I think that's like a
big aspect of what we can overcome is at SPOTYPA,
we've launched. You know, we all you know, we live here,
we work here, We are invested in Pennsylvania just like
(08:13):
everybody else. I mean, I coach soccer. I'm coaching soccer today,
involved with my oldest Signs Boy Scouts, one of the.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Troop leaders there. But like we are here for the
long term. And that's I think how you overcome distrust
in the media.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Well, you're you're coaching soccer, and my buddy Trey's over
getting shot ideas.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
On my Facebook page Oh my god, he's in the
Middle East.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Yeah, and he'll be doing.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
These Facebook uh feeds where you can see things blown
up behind him. And I said to him several times,
oh my god, your mom must be going crazy, you know. So, yeah,
I can understand what you're talking about. Okay, I want
to talk about Spotlight a little bit. I'm familiar with it.
I had your editor in here once before. I am
(08:55):
so impressed. But tell our listeners who may not know
where you can find in what you guys do.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Sure, we're SPOTLIGHTPA dot org. We have more than one
hundred and thirty partners as well. So if you get
your news from you know, you know, Patriot News or
Philadelphia Inquirer or Post Gazette, they all run our stories
and so you might be reading our stories and even
if you don't visit our website. But we're at spotapa
dot org and we're really focused on accountability, journalism and
(09:22):
investigative reporting. And you know, something you know and that
kind of work has a real impact. It Just as
a way of example of what I'm talking about, there
was a colleague of mine who revealed how the state
Labor Department overcharged unemployed residents for years.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Oh I remember that.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yeah, and they never and they didn't make the pro
problem public. But then we did make the problem public
directly prompting state officials to admit the error and say
they would return nineteen million dollars to Pennsylvanians. That's like
a staggering, staggering amount of money, a staggering type of impact.
And that's just one example of the kind of work
we're doing.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I want to app and we're going to talk about
more about one ask all this stuff. That's what we
all want to know, that's what we're all upset about.
Things like that. But how do you get the word
out that you're here?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
So you know, we launched in twenty nineteen and we've
been trying to spread the word. I mean, the big
one of the big ways is you know, we do interviews,
we do engagements, but we also have our work up
here in various platforms. We have a TV partnership I
mentioned now, we have our partners O one hundred and
thirty media partners across the state, and so our work
is reaching a big audience that way. We have our
(10:30):
newsletters and so you can sign up for our newsletters.
We have a couple of different ones. We have the
PA Post that's our weekday morning newsletter, and that's got
great information covering sort of everything from a state wide issue.
We also have launched two bureaus in recent years. The
State College Bureau focuses on regional issues. The Burkes County Bureau.
(10:52):
They are State College is regional for north central Pennsylvania
and Burke's County is the Burks County area. Really responding
to problems there. But though you know, we've had a
lot of interest from people who are who have seen
their news decline in their areas and they wanted to
have us launch these bureaus.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
And that's why we've been doing it.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
And understand that. But it's more than just accountability stories.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
You do stuff, I don't want to say fluff pieces,
but there's a lot of wonderful places in the states.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah. Yeah, our you know, our PA Local, our newsletter
we have, uh it launched, you know, within a year
or two, I've launched a Spotlight PA. We launched PA
Local and this has tons of local community stories that
really dive deep into one place. They have travel guides,
they have all sorts of tips and resources.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
They have wonderful.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
You know, they think they have they must see movies
set in Pennsylvania. So that is sort of like, uh,
you know, whether it's more positive news or just another
you know, it comes out every Friday. I believe I
really look forward to it. Uh, And it's it's sort
of trying to you know. You know, some people might
not be interested in sort of you know, you know,
(11:57):
problems for lack of a better term, but but they
do want to see their community reflected and pe Local
does a great job of that.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
You're nonprofits, so how do you support yourself?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
So we are funded through a mix of foundational donors
as well as individual donors, and so the individual donor
that funding is so important. I've done a lot of
speaking the past year or so about you know, threats.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
To democracy, threats to journalism.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
And you know what I'll say when it comes to
threats to democracy is that you know, in order to
stand up to whatever the threats are going to be,
you need a strong independent press.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And you don't know where the threats are going to
come and what it's going to look like. But if
you have a strong independent press, they can be a
source to stand up to whatever problems they're going to
be and the way you have a strong independent presses.
You know, for a nonprofit, it's having a variety of donors.
It's it cannot just be relying on one big donor
or anything like that.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
You need a wide variety of support.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
And that's why like our small donors, they are so
important to the work we do.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Well, you can go on spotlight and you can check
it out. But if you want to join, what's what's
the benefit of becoming a member.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
Becoming a member, you know, you get like sort of
I'm a member.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I've been a member since before I started working at
Spotlight PA. I give my you know, small contribution a month.
But you know some of the benefits are you get
these you know, you know, some communications that some email
or some inside email that not everybody else gets. And
then as levels go up and we have other ways
you can support us too. We have an online shop,
but it's got like Tope bags, it's got other Spotlight
(13:24):
PA swag and that kind of thing. And so there
are individual you know eventually might get invited to as well.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Well.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
You know, I remember I think when when your boss
was in here, we were talking because I found it, Michelle. Yeah, Michelle,
I checked it out. I thought, oh my gosh, these
shows were.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
My representative in the in the state House.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
How they voted. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
So a lot of election time stuff, interviews, all kinds
of stuff. But it's when you check out Spotlight and
you keep your regular viewer of Spotlight, you can keep
track of them. So then when it comes to election
time when people say to me, I don't know how
to well, let me tell you something. You can find
(14:08):
out how that guy voted. Yeah, all kinds of things
like that.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Yeah, and we got it. I was just involved.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I've been doing some editing this Palpai two and I
I was helping out doing like a second round of
edits on a story for my colleague Stephen Cruso and
Katie Meyer.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
They worked on.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
But it's all about the legislative primaries to watch because
we have the state house races. We got like I think,
like two hundred and fifty three seats up for two
hundred and twenty seven something like that, seats up for grabs.
And my colleague Stephen Cruz, so he really broke it
down sort of the different all the ways these races matter.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
All the way they will influence power in Harrisburg.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah, and there's like these different dynamics, which you know,
when it's special interest involved, money involved, we do a
lot of the following the money type of story that's
sort of like.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
The I'm not going to ask it if Shapiro is
a good guy or the last couple of governors, I've
got some situation.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
But you can really check out all that stuff on
on your on spotlight too.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
And you know, when it comes to cover, we do
a lot of coverage of the governor. We've done coverage
of the past governor, and what we try to focus
on is just sort of the real world impact the
consequences of their actions. Because you know, we can't tell
you how to vote. You're not going to listen to
us if we tell you how to vote. I don't
think we want to tell you how to vote, but
we can share information that is going to be relevant
to you and you going to be the truth.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Got to be the truth, got to be the truth.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, and that's part of that is we've had you know,
I can talk with some of our medical marijuana report,
and we've had so many Republicans and Democrats cite that
work because it's the truth.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Wow, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Well, let me ask you this true because you're saying about,
you know, all this stuff that's going on.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Did you cover everything the truth you talk about? What
is it?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Not truth journalism? What do you call it?
Speaker 4 (15:45):
I was just accountability investigative.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, no, no, yet another name of it. Sure, let
me see here. I think I have a written down
because I was going to ask you about her. But
it's not truth. It's we'll figure that out, figure out
where it is. But anyway, let's get into some of
those issues that you've written a lot. Yeah, because I
certainly want to get into the awards because boy, you
I think, Okay, here's the thing. Oh, I know it's
(16:09):
going to ask you. When I was a kid growing up,
and I knew since I was a bought ten years
old that I loved journalism, I love politics, and back
then I had heroes in the media.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It wasn't hard to look for him.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We had Cronkye, you know, we had Huntley Brinkley and
all those guys. And what the media does now or
puts themselves in the position to do.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
We never did that. I mean, they never did that stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
So we had people to inspire, we have politicians to inspire.
It seems like we don't hear anybody anymore.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
What about you? Who inspired you?
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Who inspired me?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Heroes?
Speaker 3 (16:41):
You know, there was a guy I mean, I mean
that when I was young, you know, in my twenties
going to LaSalle University in Philadelphia. I was really inspired
by some of the writers I write at the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Like I know some of them.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Yeah, there's this guy, I think Michael Vitzays is his name,
and he could really write these great compelling fees.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Sure, he wrote one about than It was like the
Big Dance Marathon and Penn State. It was just sort
of like the level of detail he got.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
He sort of broke it down hour by hour, and
I actually saw I was He wrote another story actually
about somebody from Lasallee University.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
It was a sad story.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
This dad his son died on this service trip, or
his son died before going to the service trip. His
son had been like a big leader of this service trip.
He died in this car accident. It was tragic and
the dad, who was in his forties I guess at
the time, started taking classes that was out afterwards and
decided that he was going to go on the service
trip that his son couldn't go in. And I happened
to be on that service trip as well, and this
(17:34):
reporter came along and tag along and then he uh,
he wrote this like really beautiful, compelling narrative all about
this guy Bill Bucker, who was you know, hanging out
with college kids hiking to this waterfall to find a
connection to his son. And just the way he wrote
about it was sort of, you know, it sort of
showed me the power of what journalism can do.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Oh absolutely, I think that's fantastic. Let's get into those
scary issues. So yeah, okay, when the stry uh about
the focus on public health and environmental t tell me
a little bit what.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Was that all about.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I mean, we do a lot of like public health
reporting and like dirty water. I guess some of my
public health reporting we've had. We have a colleague of
mine has written all about problems with a troubled service
water provider. And that's a colleague, Marley Parrish. She's done
great work, but she found out all these reliability problems
and it led state regulators to order an emergency takeover
(18:27):
for that program. The system was finally seeing upgrades and
a lot of my public health reporting, you know, it's
been a lot on like like the medical marijuana program
in Pennsylvania a big one. Yeah, that's a big one.
And we got into that because we got into it
through a weird way. We're doing reporting on the opiate epidemic,
reporting on opiate set up, opioid problems, and access to
addiction treatments. It's a huge public health issue. And we
(18:50):
heard about a young man from Bucks County who was
denied access to addiction treatment and his mom could find out.
I didn't undertan, didn't understand why this program that was
meant to help everybody wasn't helping him. And it turned
out it was his medical marijuana card of all things.
There was confusion about federal and state rules and local rules,
(19:13):
and it led for him to be denied addiction treatment.
And you know, very sadly, he died of an overdose
a few weeks later.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, it was tragic.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I mean, I remember he always Tyler Krdero was his name.
Susann Osterman is the mother, you know he was. He
was a young man from Bucks County. He had sort
of an adventurous spirit. His mom had told me he
was the first to jump in the water to see
how deep it was.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
He was in the marching band in high school.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
He won Christmas, he tied up her present in like
thirty different zip ties, took her forever to open it.
She laughed about it when I met her. And he
struggled with a diction for years.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
He was I think.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Twenty four when he passed away, and you know, the
in the final last weeks of his life, his mom
and his sister tried to get him help, but they
kept being turned away. She got, you know, and then
he tragically and then she tried to get solutions and
answers on her own, and what ended up happening is
she couldn't she couldn't get it, so she reached out
(20:08):
to us, and so we did a big investigation, and
then a month later a lot of things happened that,
you know, we found out that the Feds changed the
policy that have been causing so much confusion, and some
state policies changed as well, some local policies changed, and
you know, that was a big impact. And it's one
of the reasons I keep doing this work is because
of the situations like that were we are like the
(20:29):
natural release velve, like pressure builds up. Government's not responding,
so someone turns to us and just by shining a
light on it, things do change.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
That was my next question. And we're going to get
back to some of your stories. But what do you
get your I mean, who are your resources? People must
somebody's finding an out or somebody might say hey.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
This, Oh yeah, no, that's a great question. I mean
we do a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
I mean a lot of the best tips resources come
from the public if they have specific issues, specific currents,
concerns they're raising, and so you know, that is always
you know, when I was in State College Pennsylvania, I
was a reporter there and somebody came to me and said,
I think there's this financial deal that's kind of cost
the district money. You know, I looked into it. It
(21:11):
was very all this complicated math at the time, but
they were right and it was it ended up.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
We wrote about it, we broke the story, we.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Explained all the missteps along the way, and we explained
how it could cost the district about nine million dollars
and that's ultimately what happened. Yeah, they got in this
complicated financial deal is like during the financial crisis, and
it had a you know, huge negative impact on them.
And that's how we did that story, you know. And
so there's a lot of times where it's like people
come to us and we do that story. There's other
(21:39):
times where, like, you know, I was in your county
for many years and we knew there was a problem
with protective orders. People were denied these protective orders. These
are orders that if you say you're being abused by
your husband pfas protection for abuse orders, you know, the
judges decide whether to grant that or not. And in
your county, what we found fact, you know, your county,
(22:00):
there had been these like high profile murder suicides. They
were very tragic, and we started looking at what were
some of the underlying causes under or things that could
change that could help. And so one of the things
that emerged was this issue of p FA's and how
what we learned is your county ranked very high for
denying temporary protection from abuse orders, and so we wanted
(22:21):
to find out why, and we went into it with
an open mind. We were like, we're not we're not
going to say it's bad or good to deny a
PFA order because there's there's consequences on both sides, but
we are going to explain the consequences. So we got
a big I think it was like two big stacks
of papers, like seven hundred cases in all, and meeting
another reporter, Brandy Kessler, we went through every one of them.
We sat in that office in your County courthouse for
(22:43):
for weeks and months, tracking every PFA order and finding
that there were some that there were a handful of
judges who denied a ton and a handful of judges
who granted more. So it was really just even within
your county, there's a wide range. And somebody said to
a nadvocate, it said to us, it shouldn't come down
to luck of the draw. There's this like how random
(23:04):
this seemed to them was a problem. And in that case,
we reached out to a lot of people we found
in the paperwork, and they weren't they weren't necessarily ones
who came forward to us, but we reached out to them.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
What about the thing.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Wasn't there a big deal about spending in counties? And
did you guys get into something with that? What is
that I'm trying?
Speaker 3 (23:20):
So we did, I mean, we did a lot with
opiate settlement money and how counties are spent that money.
So I mean, that's another story where you know, we
heard I'd been reporting on addiction issues, on public health issues,
and we heard from mothers really who had lost loved
ones to the opiated crisis, and they had big concerns
about how opiate settlement money was being spent. And they
(23:41):
were early. They were one of the first people to
raise this. There hadn't been are they any statewide coverage
of this, and there was like very little national coverage
at the time. But they were saying, we're seeing all
these problems, and you know, I listened to them, and
then I started looking into it, and then we found
problems as well. We found meetings that were about how
to spend this money that were happening in secret. We
(24:02):
saw the public wasn't being allowed to comment at these
statewide meetings where these decisions were being made like people
who are and from the point of view of family members,
they lost loved ones to the crisis and they see
this money as blood money, and sure, but and for
them not to have a say in it, that's you know,
it stings more than just if it's like other kind
(24:24):
of regular tax payer money. And then we saw you know,
big debates about how best to use the money. So
we decided to take their concerns seriously. We talked about
it with others, and then we want to know where
the money was going. So we you know, ended up
filing open records request with sixty seven counties and ten
district attorney's offices as well, all across the state. And
(24:46):
we put this I did it with a colleague at
w SA and Pittsburgh KG Maurici, and we put it
all together and created this ongoing database that was tracking
where all this money was going.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
What sticks out in your mind in your heart is
the one you feel that you've done the best, and
I mean it made the most different.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, I mean I would say, I mean, you know
at Spotlight PA, I mean some of the reporting we've done,
you know, with with Tyler Cordero situations, Susann Osterman situation,
that one, you know, we saw we took the time
to understand what was happening, and we saw a swift
impact as a result. We saw a FED change their policy,
but I saw the state changed their policy. I was
on the phone with someone at a local level in
(25:27):
Delaware County about their program, even after there had been
some announcements of changes, and I was still I said,
that doesn't look right to me. Even though you're even
though you've updated your policy, I still think that might
be an issue. They said, all right, let me take
a coacher look at it, and then like a half
hour later they emailed me and and here's the update
of policy.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
So, oh my god.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Just the aspect of asking the question, it's it has
an impact.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
And there, yeah, there are I mean there are others.
Do there's one.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
We did things like that just by like asking the question,
calling things out.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
You know, we were reporting on the.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Opiate settlement and one of the things we found out
is that Alleghany County was getting a penalty. They weren't
getting all the money that was they could get, and
there were some municipalities that hadn't signed on to the deal.
That was the reason why. And we wanted to know,
you know, why didn't they sign on to the deal.
Maybe they had like objections to these agreements. Maybe they
thought it was a giveaway to these drug companies.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
But we reached out there.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
And it wasn't that. It wasn't anything philosophical. It was
something just like they were like, oh, there was some
paperwork they hadn't done, so we emailed them and then
they got back to us a couple of weeks later.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
They were like.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
They were like, yeah, I know, it's been a hot minute,
but the mayor put it on the agenda and they
approved it, Like THANX for letting us know we were
missing a step in the process. The mayor put it
on the agenda and then it passed, and then Alleghany
County didn't get that penalty, and that's like that was
like nearly five hundred thousand dollars that year and millions
more going forward. And that's a very tangible impact.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
You know, I was talking about Trey's mom and he's
getting shot at the Middle East.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
But I think like.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Years ago, if you were reporting, you revealed something you
had that wasn't supposed to be known, you had to
be afraid maybe your brother would lose his job if
he was working somewhere. These days, people get knocked up.
I mean, aren't you scared?
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I mean I think you there's I mean the fear,
you know, the fear of like violence is like a
real fear, and it's a real thing.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
That can happen.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
But then on the other side, you have people, especially
politically you were telling me, on both sides of the
out that love the stuff.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah, So I mean you do.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
I mean, I think it's this day and age, like
there's just that that general atmosphere and so like there's
on a day to day basis. I mean for me,
it's not like a day to day threat or anything
like that. Yeah, but like and there was something something
tragic or crazy because is always out there, but you
hope that it won't happen or something like that. But
then when it comes to like other arts, I mean
you have we have to worry about, you know, litigation
(27:51):
that kind of like oh yeah, you know, we do.
But we have a whole process in place. Sometimes we
have lawyers review our stories in advance. We have a
whole thorough fact checking process, and so so we try
to do everything we can to minimize and we do
no surprises. We if we have stories coming out, we
will share the findings with people to try and minimize
to both you know, under because if someone's going to
be mad at me about a story, I'd rather know
(28:12):
before it publishes. And find out after the fact, and
so we do all this. Hey, it's just like, so
it's like if we if we're they're like, if they're
mad that we're going to publish something, I'd rather talk
to them in advance and then, uh and not be
surprised on my end. And so we do that and
and so yeah, that's all you can do as far
as I'm as far as I know, but you need
you need institutions that can do that. You need institutions
(28:34):
that have the resources, that have journalists with the training
and experience to do this and then have the editorial
support to backround my passion and the passions extremely important.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Well, tell you what, We're going to leave it there
right now. And I've enjoyed this so much and this
guy is so remarkable. We're going to do part two
in a couple of minutes, but we're going to talk
about his journalism more than one. That is huge and
trust me, I know the industry is huge all the
things he's done. So anyway, I want to thank you
for this part. And don't forget that Inside Airs every
week on ten of our iHeart stations anytime on your
(29:04):
favorite podcast stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I'm Sylvia Moss. This has been Insight. Thanks so much
for listening, and now I'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Hi, this is iHeart, Public affairs director and host of Insights,
Sylvia Moss. Each week on Insight, we address and try
to provide the best local resources for issues that you
tell me are the most important to you, the ones
that have the biggest impact on your everyday lives. Insights
also a place where we can let you know about
exciting community events and introduce you to many of the
incredible people who work hard every single day just to
(29:55):
make all of our lives better. If you're not able
to listen to Insight when it airs on this station
each week, then catch it on your favorite podcast stat
Thank you for listening.
Hi, I'm Tylvia Austin.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is Insight, a presentation of iHeartMedia, where we really
do care about our local communities and all our listeners
who live here in anis we're going to talk about
in part today is when I hear about constantly from
my listeners, my guests, and even for my own family.
It's something they think as a journalist, I'm either partly
responsible for it or that I should somehow be able
(00:22):
to fix it. It actually goes back to something you
heard me say on this show. Lots of times, take
five minutes to educate yourself because chances aren't things aren't
the way you think they are.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
So here's the deal.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
When people say they hate or they don't trust the media,
most of the time they're not actually talking about journalists
at all. They're reacting to opinion shows, to commentary or
editorial content. But they still use the same word, the media.
And that's where a lot of the confusion comes from. Listen, guys, know,
I am a journalist. I don't deliver opinion. I'm all
(00:57):
about journalism, And again, journalism and opinion is aren't the
same thing. They don't follow the same standards and they
don't have the same purpose, but because people lump them together,
the frustration they feel toward one group gets unfairly applied
to everybody who works in the industry. So today we're
going to dig deeper into the issue of media trust
and honestly, who better to explore it than somebody who
(01:19):
represents what real journalism looks like. Not commentary, not opinion,
no noise. This guy's a journalist and the truest sense
of the word. In fact, he's an investigative journalist. My
guest is someone whose work has had profound impact on
the residents of Pennsylvania, and as a true journalist, he
digs in deeply, He listens carefully, and he brings forward
(01:41):
the stories that help us understand what's really happening in
our communities. This guy's reporting doesn't just present information, it
provides transparency. Oh my goodness, we want that accountability and
a sense of connection at a time when so many
people feel overwhelmed or unsure about where they're going to
turn for trustworthy news. Through his work, he's held i'd
(02:01):
keep up. He's sitting there patiently, probably ready to hit me,
because he's very humble. Through his work, he's held governments,
institutions accountable, elevated the voices of every big people, and
broken down complex issues in ways that make them accessible
and meaningful for all of us. I'm telling you the truth. Then,
it is really a thrill for me to introduce you
(02:21):
to Spotlight PA's multi award winning investigative journalist Ed Mayheon.
And you can imagine how long I've been wanting to.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Talk to you.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
I'll tell you what I would like your opinion. I
know what my opinion is about that. But as we
were talking off Mike, the issue of I don't want
to say non trust, but we didn't have maybe what
we'd just say about twenty years ago, newspapers couldn't. Now
we're not just newspapers. Things got expensive. News departments had
(02:54):
to cut back. Give us your version why and lead
us up to why you feel there's no trust anymore?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Sure, well, thanks, thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
It's a blessed to be here, in honored to be here.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
So the long and short of it is, back in
the eighties nineties, before then, newspapers were a very lucrative business.
The advertising revenue was what was subsidizing the whole paper.
People wanted that advertising space, and so you could use
all of that interest and money to fund great journalism,
and it could be great independent journalism because there was
(03:26):
so much money that it was basically just go, go
do great journalism. You know. In the early two thousands,
what happened was everybody knows, like you know, the rise
of the Internet, A lot of newspapers gave away that
content for free, tried to have their advertising online. It
wasn't enough to make up for the losses of the
print side. And so what happened over the past twenty years,
(03:48):
I think a lot of people have had a negative
experience with news, just in terms of diminishment. When you
look at some of the numbers, there's been like more
than two hundred thousand newspaper jobs have disappeared since two
two thousand and five. That's right when I started getting
into this industry. So it's you know, you do you
as a reporter. Myself, I ran into a lot of
problems about where I could go to do independent, accountability
(04:14):
focused work, and there were fewer and fewer options as well,
and so that's how I ultimately led to Spotlight PA,
which is nonpartisan nonprofit news outlet, and we're trying to
really cover stories that other people aren't and trying to
rebuild that trust that you mentioned as well.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Well, you know what I think.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
When you and I chatted earlier, I was telling you
about there was this kid that came in from centraled
off in high school when he was in high school,
and we became buddies and everything, and what he was
doing at that time, as I said, just in high school,
he was started.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
His own news network. He was like, what's his name
on CNN?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
You know, I'm talking about who's the famous guy from
CNN Anderson Cooper. And what he did was he started
going out different big things that were going on in
the communities, this and even out of the state, and
he would get all this film, do all this reporting.
He started sending it to the national networks.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
They loved it. They loved it.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Years pass and everything. Now he's the international correspondent for
Fox News. His name is Trey Yanks. And I think
to myself, you, I mean, you you kick ass.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I'm sorry you do.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I mean, I see your work and you are truly
a journalism person. You're the you have the reasons, you
have why most of us who believe what you did
got into it. But I wanted to ask you, and
I think I asked you about this when we were chatting.
You have the tremendous talent. Why do you not want
(05:42):
to go to big markets?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Oh that's a great question. You know, Pennsylvania is where
I grew up. I grew up in Delaware County, Pennsylvania,
and it's where I've done my entire journalism career. I've
lived out of state for one year. I lived in Tacoma, Washington.
I can talk more about that later. I actually worked
at a part of the time I spent doing a
new paper there for the homeless community there. But most
of my career has been in Pennsylvania, and it's, you know,
(06:06):
on a very practical level, it's where my family is.
It's like I love telling the So I guess a
couple of reasons. One is where my family is. My
you know, my my brother, my sister, my wife, now
my kids, and then her side of the family is
pretty close. But two, I do think that like when
you look at some of the state wide issues, they
have such an impact on people's everyday lives. When you
(06:26):
look at like what the state government spends or doesn't spend.
You know, all that trickles down to schools. You know,
if you you either are kids in schools or you
probably are paying property taxes, and all of that is
driven by state policies and interest. And so where I
see having the highest impact is on that state and
(06:46):
regional level. And those are the two big reasons i'd say,
why print, Oh, print, You know, we've experided, I've had that.
I've done things over the years. But I always loved reading.
I loved writing, and I sort of like got into
it through that way. I just I loved writing. But
you know, that seemed to be where my favorite writing
reporting was. But over time I did a lot of
radio writing, writing for the radio, telling stories for the radio,
(07:09):
doing it for TV as well. And so I actually
worked at an NPR affiliate station for a couple of
years at w I t F. Yeah, I did some
radio there, and I've done some video now and it's Ballypa.
One of the cool things is we know mostly we
are web print, but we also have a TV partnership,
and you know we have right now, I was working
with our TV producer, Mitch Blocker. He's doing five TV
(07:31):
segments about some of our opioid settlement work as well,
and so it's been nice to be able to experiment
with how we tell stories.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Why do you think people I mean I ask, like
I asked good top of this program what they feel.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
The issues are, That's all I hear. Yeah, I'm sick
of the media. I mean, why is her hate?
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Yeah, I mean I guess one is people.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
You know, there's there's what happens at the national level,
and people might just see it as you know, not trusted,
or see it as fighting, or see it as not
reflecting their own community. And I think that's like a
big aspect of what we can overcome is at SPOTYPA,
we've launched. You know, we all you know, we live here,
we work here, We are invested in Pennsylvania just like
(08:13):
everybody else. I mean, I coach soccer. I'm coaching soccer today,
involved with my oldest Signs Boy Scouts, one of the.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Troop leaders there. But like we are here for the
long term. And that's I think how you overcome distrust
in the media.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Well, you're you're coaching soccer, and my buddy Trey's over
getting shot ideas.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
On my Facebook page Oh my god, he's in the
Middle East.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Yeah, and he'll be doing.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
These Facebook uh feeds where you can see things blown
up behind him. And I said to him several times,
oh my god, your mom must be going crazy, you know. So, yeah,
I can understand what you're talking about. Okay, I want
to talk about Spotlight a little bit. I'm familiar with it.
I had your editor in here once before. I am
(08:55):
so impressed. But tell our listeners who may not know
where you can find in what you guys do.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Sure, we're SPOTLIGHTPA dot org. We have more than one
hundred and thirty partners as well. So if you get
your news from you know, you know, Patriot News or
Philadelphia Inquirer or Post Gazette, they all run our stories
and so you might be reading our stories and even
if you don't visit our website. But we're at spotapa
dot org and we're really focused on accountability, journalism and
(09:22):
investigative reporting. And you know, something you know and that
kind of work has a real impact. It Just as
a way of example of what I'm talking about, there
was a colleague of mine who revealed how the state
Labor Department overcharged unemployed residents for years.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Oh I remember that.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Yeah, and they never and they didn't make the pro
problem public. But then we did make the problem public
directly prompting state officials to admit the error and say
they would return nineteen million dollars to Pennsylvanians. That's like
a staggering, staggering amount of money, a staggering type of impact.
And that's just one example of the kind of work
we're doing.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I want to app and we're going to talk about
more about one ask all this stuff. That's what we
all want to know, that's what we're all upset about.
Things like that. But how do you get the word
out that you're here?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
So you know, we launched in twenty nineteen and we've
been trying to spread the word. I mean, the big
one of the big ways is you know, we do interviews,
we do engagements, but we also have our work up
here in various platforms. We have a TV partnership I
mentioned now, we have our partners O one hundred and
thirty media partners across the state, and so our work
is reaching a big audience that way. We have our
(10:30):
newsletters and so you can sign up for our newsletters.
We have a couple of different ones. We have the
PA Post that's our weekday morning newsletter, and that's got
great information covering sort of everything from a state wide issue.
We also have launched two bureaus in recent years. The
State College Bureau focuses on regional issues. The Burkes County Bureau.
(10:52):
They are State College is regional for north central Pennsylvania
and Burke's County is the Burks County area. Really responding
to problems there. But though you know, we've had a
lot of interest from people who are who have seen
their news decline in their areas and they wanted to
have us launch these bureaus.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
And that's why we've been doing it.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
And understand that. But it's more than just accountability stories.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
You do stuff, I don't want to say fluff pieces,
but there's a lot of wonderful places in the states.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah. Yeah, our you know, our PA Local, our newsletter
we have, uh it launched, you know, within a year
or two, I've launched a Spotlight PA. We launched PA
Local and this has tons of local community stories that
really dive deep into one place. They have travel guides,
they have all sorts of tips and resources.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
They have wonderful.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
You know, they think they have they must see movies
set in Pennsylvania. So that is sort of like, uh,
you know, whether it's more positive news or just another
you know, it comes out every Friday. I believe I
really look forward to it. Uh, And it's it's sort
of trying to you know. You know, some people might
not be interested in sort of you know, you know,
(11:57):
problems for lack of a better term, but but they
do want to see their community reflected and pe Local
does a great job of that.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
You're nonprofits, so how do you support yourself?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
So we are funded through a mix of foundational donors
as well as individual donors, and so the individual donor
that funding is so important. I've done a lot of
speaking the past year or so about you know, threats.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
To democracy, threats to journalism.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
And you know what I'll say when it comes to
threats to democracy is that you know, in order to
stand up to whatever the threats are going to be,
you need a strong independent press.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And you don't know where the threats are going to
come and what it's going to look like. But if
you have a strong independent press, they can be a
source to stand up to whatever problems they're going to
be and the way you have a strong independent presses.
You know, for a nonprofit, it's having a variety of donors.
It's it cannot just be relying on one big donor
or anything like that.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
You need a wide variety of support.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
And that's why like our small donors, they are so
important to the work we do.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Well, you can go on spotlight and you can check
it out. But if you want to join, what's what's
the benefit of becoming a member.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
Becoming a member, you know, you get like sort of
I'm a member.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I've been a member since before I started working at
Spotlight PA. I give my you know, small contribution a month.
But you know some of the benefits are you get
these you know, you know, some communications that some email
or some inside email that not everybody else gets. And
then as levels go up and we have other ways
you can support us too. We have an online shop,
but it's got like Tope bags, it's got other Spotlight
(13:24):
PA swag and that kind of thing. And so there
are individual you know eventually might get invited to as well.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Well.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
You know, I remember I think when when your boss
was in here, we were talking because I found it, Michelle. Yeah, Michelle,
I checked it out. I thought, oh my gosh, these
shows were.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
My representative in the in the state House.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
How they voted. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
So a lot of election time stuff, interviews, all kinds
of stuff. But it's when you check out Spotlight and
you keep your regular viewer of Spotlight, you can keep
track of them. So then when it comes to election
time when people say to me, I don't know how
to well, let me tell you something. You can find
(14:08):
out how that guy voted. Yeah, all kinds of things
like that.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Yeah, and we got it. I was just involved.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
I've been doing some editing this Palpai two and I
I was helping out doing like a second round of
edits on a story for my colleague Stephen Cruso and
Katie Meyer.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
They worked on.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
But it's all about the legislative primaries to watch because
we have the state house races. We got like I think,
like two hundred and fifty three seats up for two
hundred and twenty seven something like that, seats up for grabs.
And my colleague Stephen Cruz, so he really broke it
down sort of the different all the ways these races matter.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
All the way they will influence power in Harrisburg.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah, and there's like these different dynamics, which you know,
when it's special interest involved, money involved, we do a
lot of the following the money type of story that's
sort of like.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
The I'm not going to ask it if Shapiro is
a good guy or the last couple of governors, I've
got some situation.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
But you can really check out all that stuff on
on your on spotlight too.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
And you know, when it comes to cover, we do
a lot of coverage of the governor. We've done coverage
of the past governor, and what we try to focus
on is just sort of the real world impact the
consequences of their actions. Because you know, we can't tell
you how to vote. You're not going to listen to
us if we tell you how to vote. I don't
think we want to tell you how to vote, but
we can share information that is going to be relevant
to you and you going to be the truth.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
Got to be the truth, got to be the truth.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, and that's part of that is we've had you know,
I can talk with some of our medical marijuana report,
and we've had so many Republicans and Democrats cite that
work because it's the truth.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Wow, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Well, let me ask you this true because you're saying about,
you know, all this stuff that's going on.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Did you cover everything the truth you talk about? What
is it?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Not truth journalism? What do you call it?
Speaker 4 (15:45):
I was just accountability investigative.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, no, no, yet another name of it. Sure, let
me see here. I think I have a written down
because I was going to ask you about her. But
it's not truth. It's we'll figure that out, figure out
where it is. But anyway, let's get into some of
those issues that you've written a lot. Yeah, because I
certainly want to get into the awards because boy, you
I think, Okay, here's the thing. Oh, I know it's
(16:09):
going to ask you. When I was a kid growing up,
and I knew since I was a bought ten years
old that I loved journalism, I love politics, and back
then I had heroes in the media.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
It wasn't hard to look for him.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We had Cronkye, you know, we had Huntley Brinkley and
all those guys. And what the media does now or
puts themselves in the position to do.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
We never did that. I mean, they never did that stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
So we had people to inspire, we have politicians to inspire.
It seems like we don't hear anybody anymore.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
What about you? Who inspired you?
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Who inspired me?
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Heroes?
Speaker 3 (16:41):
You know, there was a guy I mean, I mean
that when I was young, you know, in my twenties
going to LaSalle University in Philadelphia. I was really inspired
by some of the writers I write at the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Like I know some of them.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
Yeah, there's this guy, I think Michael Vitzays is his name,
and he could really write these great compelling fees.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Sure, he wrote one about than It was like the
Big Dance Marathon and Penn State. It was just sort
of like the level of detail he got.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
He sort of broke it down hour by hour, and
I actually saw I was He wrote another story actually
about somebody from Lasallee University.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
It was a sad story.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
This dad his son died on this service trip, or
his son died before going to the service trip. His
son had been like a big leader of this service trip.
He died in this car accident. It was tragic and
the dad, who was in his forties I guess at
the time, started taking classes that was out afterwards and
decided that he was going to go on the service
trip that his son couldn't go in. And I happened
to be on that service trip as well, and this
(17:34):
reporter came along and tag along and then he uh,
he wrote this like really beautiful, compelling narrative all about
this guy Bill Bucker, who was you know, hanging out
with college kids hiking to this waterfall to find a
connection to his son. And just the way he wrote
about it was sort of, you know, it sort of
showed me the power of what journalism can do.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Oh absolutely, I think that's fantastic. Let's get into those
scary issues. So yeah, okay, when the stry uh about
the focus on public health and environmental t tell me
a little bit what.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Was that all about.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
I mean, we do a lot of like public health
reporting and like dirty water. I guess some of my
public health reporting we've had. We have a colleague of
mine has written all about problems with a troubled service
water provider. And that's a colleague, Marley Parrish. She's done
great work, but she found out all these reliability problems
and it led state regulators to order an emergency takeover
(18:27):
for that program. The system was finally seeing upgrades and
a lot of my public health reporting, you know, it's
been a lot on like like the medical marijuana program
in Pennsylvania a big one. Yeah, that's a big one.
And we got into that because we got into it
through a weird way. We're doing reporting on the opiate epidemic,
reporting on opiate set up, opioid problems, and access to
addiction treatments. It's a huge public health issue. And we
(18:50):
heard about a young man from Bucks County who was
denied access to addiction treatment and his mom could find out.
I didn't undertan, didn't understand why this program that was
meant to help everybody wasn't helping him. And it turned
out it was his medical marijuana card of all things.
There was confusion about federal and state rules and local rules,
(19:13):
and it led for him to be denied addiction treatment.
And you know, very sadly, he died of an overdose
a few weeks later.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, it was tragic.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
I mean, I remember he always Tyler Krdero was his name.
Susann Osterman is the mother, you know he was. He
was a young man from Bucks County. He had sort
of an adventurous spirit. His mom had told me he
was the first to jump in the water to see
how deep it was.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
He was in the marching band in high school.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
He won Christmas, he tied up her present in like
thirty different zip ties, took her forever to open it.
She laughed about it when I met her. And he
struggled with a diction for years.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
He was I think.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Twenty four when he passed away, and you know, the
in the final last weeks of his life, his mom
and his sister tried to get him help, but they
kept being turned away. She got, you know, and then
he tragically and then she tried to get solutions and
answers on her own, and what ended up happening is
she couldn't she couldn't get it, so she reached out
(20:08):
to us, and so we did a big investigation, and
then a month later a lot of things happened that,
you know, we found out that the Feds changed the
policy that have been causing so much confusion, and some
state policies changed as well, some local policies changed, and
you know, that was a big impact. And it's one
of the reasons I keep doing this work is because
of the situations like that were we are like the
(20:29):
natural release velve, like pressure builds up. Government's not responding,
so someone turns to us and just by shining a
light on it, things do change.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
That was my next question. And we're going to get
back to some of your stories. But what do you
get your I mean, who are your resources? People must
somebody's finding an out or somebody might say hey.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
This, Oh yeah, no, that's a great question. I mean
we do a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
I mean a lot of the best tips resources come
from the public if they have specific issues, specific currents,
concerns they're raising, and so you know, that is always
you know, when I was in State College Pennsylvania, I
was a reporter there and somebody came to me and said,
I think there's this financial deal that's kind of cost
the district money. You know, I looked into it. It
(21:11):
was very all this complicated math at the time, but
they were right and it was it ended up.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
We wrote about it, we broke the story, we.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Explained all the missteps along the way, and we explained
how it could cost the district about nine million dollars
and that's ultimately what happened. Yeah, they got in this
complicated financial deal is like during the financial crisis, and
it had a you know, huge negative impact on them.
And that's how we did that story, you know. And
so there's a lot of times where it's like people
come to us and we do that story. There's other
(21:39):
times where, like, you know, I was in your county
for many years and we knew there was a problem
with protective orders. People were denied these protective orders. These
are orders that if you say you're being abused by
your husband pfas protection for abuse orders, you know, the
judges decide whether to grant that or not. And in
your county, what we found fact, you know, your county,
(22:00):
there had been these like high profile murder suicides. They
were very tragic, and we started looking at what were
some of the underlying causes under or things that could
change that could help. And so one of the things
that emerged was this issue of p FA's and how
what we learned is your county ranked very high for
denying temporary protection from abuse orders, and so we wanted
(22:21):
to find out why, and we went into it with
an open mind. We were like, we're not we're not
going to say it's bad or good to deny a
PFA order because there's there's consequences on both sides, but
we are going to explain the consequences. So we got
a big I think it was like two big stacks
of papers, like seven hundred cases in all, and meeting
another reporter, Brandy Kessler, we went through every one of them.
We sat in that office in your County courthouse for
(22:43):
for weeks and months, tracking every PFA order and finding
that there were some that there were a handful of
judges who denied a ton and a handful of judges
who granted more. So it was really just even within
your county, there's a wide range. And somebody said to
a nadvocate, it said to us, it shouldn't come down
to luck of the draw. There's this like how random
(23:04):
this seemed to them was a problem. And in that case,
we reached out to a lot of people we found
in the paperwork, and they weren't they weren't necessarily ones
who came forward to us, but we reached out to them.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
What about the thing.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Wasn't there a big deal about spending in counties? And
did you guys get into something with that? What is
that I'm trying?
Speaker 3 (23:20):
So we did, I mean, we did a lot with
opiate settlement money and how counties are spent that money.
So I mean, that's another story where you know, we
heard I'd been reporting on addiction issues, on public health issues,
and we heard from mothers really who had lost loved
ones to the opiated crisis, and they had big concerns
about how opiate settlement money was being spent. And they
(23:41):
were early. They were one of the first people to
raise this. There hadn't been are they any statewide coverage
of this, and there was like very little national coverage
at the time. But they were saying, we're seeing all
these problems, and you know, I listened to them, and
then I started looking into it, and then we found
problems as well. We found meetings that were about how
to spend this money that were happening in secret. We
(24:02):
saw the public wasn't being allowed to comment at these
statewide meetings where these decisions were being made like people
who are and from the point of view of family members,
they lost loved ones to the crisis and they see
this money as blood money, and sure, but and for
them not to have a say in it, that's you know,
it stings more than just if it's like other kind
(24:24):
of regular tax payer money. And then we saw you know,
big debates about how best to use the money. So
we decided to take their concerns seriously. We talked about
it with others, and then we want to know where
the money was going. So we you know, ended up
filing open records request with sixty seven counties and ten
district attorney's offices as well, all across the state. And
(24:46):
we put this I did it with a colleague at
w SA and Pittsburgh KG Maurici, and we put it
all together and created this ongoing database that was tracking
where all this money was going.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
What sticks out in your mind in your heart is
the one you feel that you've done the best, and
I mean it made the most different.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, I mean I would say, I mean, you know
at Spotlight PA, I mean some of the reporting we've done,
you know, with with Tyler Cordero situations, Susann Osterman situation,
that one, you know, we saw we took the time
to understand what was happening, and we saw a swift
impact as a result. We saw a FED change their policy,
but I saw the state changed their policy. I was
on the phone with someone at a local level in
(25:27):
Delaware County about their program, even after there had been
some announcements of changes, and I was still I said,
that doesn't look right to me. Even though you're even
though you've updated your policy, I still think that might
be an issue. They said, all right, let me take
a coacher look at it, and then like a half
hour later they emailed me and and here's the update
of policy.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
So, oh my god.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Just the aspect of asking the question, it's it has
an impact.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
And there, yeah, there are I mean there are others.
Do there's one.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
We did things like that just by like asking the question,
calling things out.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
You know, we were reporting on the.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Opiate settlement and one of the things we found out
is that Alleghany County was getting a penalty. They weren't
getting all the money that was they could get, and
there were some municipalities that hadn't signed on to the deal.
That was the reason why. And we wanted to know,
you know, why didn't they sign on to the deal.
Maybe they had like objections to these agreements. Maybe they
thought it was a giveaway to these drug companies.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
But we reached out there.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
And it wasn't that. It wasn't anything philosophical. It was
something just like they were like, oh, there was some
paperwork they hadn't done, so we emailed them and then
they got back to us a couple of weeks later.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
They were like.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
They were like, yeah, I know, it's been a hot minute,
but the mayor put it on the agenda and they
approved it, Like THANX for letting us know we were
missing a step in the process. The mayor put it
on the agenda and then it passed, and then Alleghany
County didn't get that penalty, and that's like that was
like nearly five hundred thousand dollars that year and millions
more going forward. And that's a very tangible impact.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
You know, I was talking about Trey's mom and he's
getting shot at the Middle East.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
But I think like.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Years ago, if you were reporting, you revealed something you
had that wasn't supposed to be known, you had to
be afraid maybe your brother would lose his job if
he was working somewhere. These days, people get knocked up.
I mean, aren't you scared?
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I mean I think you there's I mean the fear,
you know, the fear of like violence is like a
real fear, and it's a real thing.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
That can happen.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
But then on the other side, you have people, especially
politically you were telling me, on both sides of the
out that love the stuff.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah, So I mean you do.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
I mean, I think it's this day and age, like
there's just that that general atmosphere and so like there's
on a day to day basis. I mean for me,
it's not like a day to day threat or anything
like that. Yeah, but like and there was something something
tragic or crazy because is always out there, but you
hope that it won't happen or something like that. But
then when it comes to like other arts, I mean
you have we have to worry about, you know, litigation
(27:51):
that kind of like oh yeah, you know, we do.
But we have a whole process in place. Sometimes we
have lawyers review our stories in advance. We have a
whole thorough fact checking process, and so so we try
to do everything we can to minimize and we do
no surprises. We if we have stories coming out, we
will share the findings with people to try and minimize
to both you know, under because if someone's going to
be mad at me about a story, I'd rather know
(28:12):
before it publishes. And find out after the fact, and
so we do all this. Hey, it's just like, so
it's like if we if we're they're like, if they're
mad that we're going to publish something, I'd rather talk
to them in advance and then, uh and not be
surprised on my end. And so we do that and
and so yeah, that's all you can do as far
as I'm as far as I know, but you need
you need institutions that can do that. You need institutions
(28:34):
that have the resources, that have journalists with the training
and experience to do this and then have the editorial
support to backround my passion and the passions extremely important.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Well, tell you what, We're going to leave it there
right now. And I've enjoyed this so much and this
guy is so remarkable. We're going to do part two
in a couple of minutes, but we're going to talk
about his journalism more than one. That is huge and
trust me, I know the industry is huge all the
things he's done. So anyway, I want to thank you
for this part. And don't forget that Inside Airs every
week on ten of our iHeart stations anytime on your
(29:04):
favorite podcast stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I'm Sylvia Moss. This has been Insight. Thanks so much
for listening, and now I'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Hi, this is iHeart, Public affairs director and host of Insights,
Sylvia Moss. Each week on Insight, we address and try
to provide the best local resources for issues that you
tell me are the most important to you, the ones
that have the biggest impact on your everyday lives. Insights
also a place where we can let you know about
exciting community events and introduce you to many of the
incredible people who work hard every single day just to
(29:55):
make all of our lives better. If you're not able
to listen to Insight when it airs on this station
each week, then catch it on your favorite podcast stat
Thank you for listening.
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