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Eye on local news
- Since 2018, The Salt Lake Tribune has doggedly reported on the murder of University of Utah student Lauren McCluskey, who was killed on campus by her ex-boyfriend after making multiple reports to college police about his behavior. In May, the Tribune reported that after McCluskey told campus police that she was being extorted over explicit photos of herself, a University of Utah officer saved the images to his phone and showed them to a co-worker. That story prompted a Utah Department of Public Safety investigation, which found Officer Miguel Deras bragged about being assigned to the case and showed the photos to at least three male co-workers.
- The pandemic has forced a lot of publications to shut down or cut back. One of those newsrooms is independently-owned Post and Courier, which launched two newsrooms in Greenville and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina just as the paper laid off multiple journalists.
- From The Frontier: For most people, it takes several days to score an appointment for drive-through covid testing at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. But another class of Oklahomans, including Gov. Kevin Stitt’s parents, received same-day appointments.
- In Springfield, Missouri, voters approved a $5,000 annual fee on payday lenders.
- From The Daily Memphian: A feature on Skinny Finsta, a German rapper whose style draws from Memphis’ underground rap scene.
A Big If True update
We’re crowdfunding to raise money for a follow-up to our most-read news story this year – this one about evictions in Oklahoma. If everyone who read the story donated $1, we’d have more than what we need to cover our reporting costs for an update on this crucial issue.
If you got something out of our report, please consider chipping in so we can continue following this story.
Thank you for reading Hard Reset. Send me feedback, questions and tips: bryant@bigiftrue.org and 405-990-0988.
– Mollie Bryant
Founder and editor, Big If True
Editor’s note: This post was updated to include information about layoffs at The Post and Courier.
