This post is way overdue, but I wanted to share student work from our Spring 2021 “Deep Dive” in investigative reporting, in which students looked into local COVID deaths among front line workers. Their remarkable story was published in the May 27, 2021 edition of Triad City Beat.

Jordan Green, now a reporter with the Raw Story, taught students how to build a database using information from death certificates and mine that data for stories.  As they wrote:

“But among the non-elderly population, frontline workers have borne the highest risks. Denied the luxury of working remotely, by necessity they have put themselves in close proximity to the virus through assisting elderly residents in nursing homes, working behind cash registers, delivering food to grocery stores, providing bedside care in hospitals and repairing industrial appliances, among other jobs. And among the working-age residents of Guilford and Forsyth counties, rates of death for people of color and immigrants were more than double their white and native-born counterparts.”

The reporting led students down many dead-ends, but ultimately they succeeded. Congrats to Mariama Jallow, Turner Jones, Alexandra Karlinchak and Lilian Nassif for your perseverance in telling this important but hidden story. Stay tuned for more student work as the year unfolds.

Phoebe Zerwick