Have questions about your community? The N&O’s service team wants to find answers
Earlier this fall, The News & Observer announced big changes, including a new, reimagined approach to coverage of important topics on Sundays and Wednesdays, and plans for more food, retail and technology stories.
Along with those changes, we announced the creation of a new team of reporters that will focus on explaining our communities and answering vital questions.
The News & Observer is proud to introduce you to its service journalism team: reporters Kimberly Cataudella and Korie Dean, and myself, Brooke Cain, the editor.
Even before our team was officially formed, many on The News & Observer and Durham Herald-Sun staffs worked throughout the pandemic answering questions about staying safe, getting kids ready for virtual learning, obtaining tests and vaccines — even how to get our groceries.
The work of the service team — and of other members of our newsroom — is an extension of that utility work and based on the feedback we received from readers.
This team will focus on the service-oriented work of explaining topics and answering questions important to the communities where we live. Our aim is to write practical and useful stories and present information in a way that’s easy to read and understand.
Already this fall, we’ve written stories about safety measures at the N.C. State Fair, where to find mental health resources, how to guard against attacks by testy owls, what to know about an invasive pest killing the state’s ash trees and a comparison of admission requirements at the Triangle’s top four colleges.
And we are going to do so much more.
We have big plans, but we also want to hear from readers about the kinds of questions they want answered. Is there something about the history of your community you’d like to know? A problem in your neighborhood you’d like to see explained?
We are collecting questions already through an online form linked below, and by email at ask@newsobserver.com.
Here’s a little more about our team.
▪ Kimberly Cataudella comes to The News & Observer from a stint working on the investigative team at the Center for Public Integrity. She is a Long Island native who recently moved to Chapel Hill from Washington D.C., where she got a master’s degree in journalism from American University.
▪ Korie Dean is a North Carolina native and a recent graduate of UNC Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism. She comes to The News & Observer from working a Dow Jones Data Fellowship at The Virginian-Pilot and is happy to be back doing journalism in her home state.
▪ I am also a North Carolina native, and have lived in Raleigh since moving here to attend N.C. State University. I have worked at The N&O for more than 25 years — starting right out of college — beginning in our research department and then working as a writer and editor, covering TV & media and local news.
We are excited to work together as a team — and to collaborate with our N&O and Herald-Sun colleagues — to bring useful (and sometimes, we hope, entertaining) information to our readers.
And we’d love to hear from you.
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 10:17 AM.
