Kathy Lohr
Whether covering the manhunt and eventual capture of Eric Robert Rudolph in the mountains of North Carolina, the remnants of the Oklahoma City federal building with its twisted metal frame and shattered glass, flood-ravaged Midwestern communities, or the terrorist bombings across the country, including the blast that exploded in Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta, correspondent Kathy Lohr has been at the heart of stories all across the nation.
Lohr was NPR's first reporter based in the Midwest. She opened NPR's St. Louis office in 1990 and the Atlanta bureau in 1996. Lohr covers the abortion issue on an ongoing basis for NPR, including political and legal aspects. She has often been sent into disasters as they are happening, to provide listeners with the intimate details about how these incidents affect people and their lives.
Lohr filed her first report for NPR while working for member station KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and began her journalism career in commercial television and radio as a reporter/anchor. Lohr also became involved in video production for national corporations and taught courses in television reporting and radio production at universities in Kansas and Missouri. She has filed reports for the NPR documentary program Horizons, the BBC, the CBC, Marketplace, and she was published in the Saturday Evening Post.
Lohr won the prestigious Missouri Medal of Honor for Excellence in Journalism in 2002. She received a fellowship from Vanderbilt University for work on the issue of domestic violence. Lohr has filed reports from 27 states and the District of Columbia. She has received other national awards for her coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Midwestern floods of 1993, and for her reporting on ice storms in the Mississippi Delta. She has also received numerous awards for radio pieces on the local level prior to joining NPR's national team. Lohr was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She now lives in her adopted hometown of Atlanta, covering stories across the southeastern part of the country.
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It's been 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr., began writing his famous "Letter From Birmingham Jail," a response to white Alabama clergymen who called him an "extremist" and told blacks they should be patient. But the time for waiting was over. Birmingham was the perfect place to take a stand. -
In North Dakota, voters will decide next year whether to approve a constitutional amendment saying life begins at conception. A number of other bills in that state await the governor's signature including one that prohibits abortion if a fetal heartbeat is present at about six weeks. In Arkansas, a ban at 12 weeks passed earlier this month. Abortion opponents hope to get one of those laws before the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Mark Sanford, the South Carolina governor whose infamous affair led to his political downfall, is among 16 Republicans in Tuesday's primary. But he is by far the best-known and the most controversial. The special election will fill the seat left open when Tim Scott was tapped to replace retiring Sen. Jim DeMint. -
Twelve former members of the Florida A&M marching band are charged in the hazing death of drum major Robert Champion. The charges have now been upgraded to manslaughter. Champion's parents said Tuesday that they are encouraged by the stiffer charges.
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The exhibit at Emory University in Atlanta lays out the history of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a group first presided over by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The group tackled issues of health care, poverty and gun violence — issues still seen as relevant today. -
The executive board of the Boy Scouts of America meets Wednesday to talk about whether to drop its policy to ban gay leaders and gay scouts. Activists delivered petitions with more than 1.4 million signatures to the national headquarters this week calling for an end to the ban. The issue has drawn fervent pleas and ignited a passionate debate about what the 100-year-old organization should do.
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Forty years after the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion, a growing number of states are passing laws that restrict the procedure. The regulations, while not banning abortions outright, can make it difficult for a woman to obtain one. -
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has approved regulations requiring clinics where abortions are performed to meet the same building codes as new hospitals. Abortion-rights groups say the regulations are unnecessary, but abortion-rights opponents say they're the only way to ensure that clinics are safe. -
The ability to customize products began with computers more than a decade ago. Now, you can create your own T-shirts, jeans, custom-blend cosmetics and candy. Even luxury brands like Burberry, Prada and Louis Vuitton now let customers design their own looks. -
Two bakeries in Claxton, Ga., make more than 4 million pounds of the holiday treat each year. The bakeries are finding a new market in young hikers and bikers seeking food that won't go bad on the trail. -
Officials at Spelman College, a historically black women's college in Atlanta, have decided to scrap the school's NCAA program. With few students participating in organized sports, the college has decided to devote those funds to a fitness program designed to reach the entire student body. -
A pilot program in Mississippi uses biometric finger scanners on low-income parents who check their kids in and out of day care centers. State officials say they'll save millions of dollars by reducing fraud, but some parents and day care providers see it as discriminatory and are protesting.
