Lexington Herald-Leader wins grant for reporter to cover health and social services, monitor big state agency that handles them

The Lexington Herald-Leader has won a grant to hire a reporter to cover health and social services in Kentucky, with special attention to the state agency "that wields enormous power over Kentucky’s most vulnerable citizens with frighteningly little scrutiny and transparency," the newspaper says.

The grant comes from Report for America, which places talented emerging journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered topics and communities. It is the latest initiative of the Ground Truth Project, a nonprofit funded by several foundations and other phuilanthropies. Last year it funded an Eastern Kentucky reporter for the Herald-Leader, and has renewed that grant.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article224586210.html#storylink=cpy

The new grant is also for a year, and is renewable. The newspaper will take applications for the job through Feb. 8, and plans to put the reporter on the payroll June 1.

John Stamper, the paper's accountability and engagement editor, writes that the reporter "will focus on the region’s health problems, expose flaws in Kentucky’s social-services programs, give voice to people struggling to care for themselves and their loved ones, and offer potential solutions to problems that have plagued the area for a century.

"In particular, this reporter will serve as a watchdog of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services," which gets relatively little journalistic attention because of the decline in the number of newspaper reporters, especially in Frankfort. The reporter will spend much in the state capital, especially during sessions of the legislature, and also report from Eastern Kentucky.