Hey reader. We've made it to Friday! This post marks the first full week since the Look@This feature launched on The Lede blog. It's also National Nutty Fudge Day — a great way to celebrate this milestone, if I say so myself.
Here are a few works of journalism that caught my eye today. Take a look at this:
- School Suspension Disparities: In their regularly scheduled meeting this week, the West Virginia Board of Education discussed the high number of suspensions at the state's public schools, especially among Black, low socio-economic and disabled student populations. Nearly 178,000 instructional days were lost to school suspensions over the past year, according to a Mountain State Spotlight report. Black students were suspended twice as much as their white peers during that time. Now, the board is calling for "a complete overhaul" of public school suspensions. (Duncan Slade, Mountain State Spotlight)
- Covid's U.S. Death Toll: The federal declaration of the COVID-19 public health emergency experied yesterday, but the three years since the coronavirus pandemic began has come at a high price on American lives. As of May 3, 2023, a total of 1,131,729 Americans have died from the disease, according to data published by The New York Times. The newspaper published a series of maps and charts showing the toll the virus has taken since 2020. (Lazaro Gamio, Eleanor Lutz and Albert Sun, The New York Times)
- Hidden Execution Files: The Virginia Department of Corrections may have tried to cover up at least one botched execution, NPR first reported in January. The radio report included audio recorded from the execution chamber moments before an inmate's death in 1989. The recordings used by NPR were obtained from The Library of Virginia, who received it and hundreds of other execution documents through a donation from a former corrections employee. Shortly after the report aired in January, the Virginia DOC requested all Library of Virginia execution documents — including the four original tapes containing the execution audio — be returned. The library complied. Now the collection is once again behind prison walls, out of the public's view. (Chaira Eisner, NPR News)