
Lorie Hearn
Executive Director and Editor of inewsourceLorie Hearn is the executive director and editor of inewsource. She founded inewsource (formerly called the Watchdog Institute) in the summer of 2009, following a successful 35-year reporting and editing career in newspapers. She retired from The San Diego Union-Tribune, where she had been a reporter, Metro Editor and finally the senior editor for Metro and Watchdog Journalism. In addition to department oversight, Hearn personally managed a four-person watchdog team, composed of two data specialists and two investigative reporters. Hearn was a Nieman Foundation fellow at Harvard University in 1994-95. She focused on juvenile justice and drug control policy, a natural course to follow her years as a courts and legal affairs reporter at the San Diego Union and then the Union-Tribune. Hearn became Metro Editor in 1999 and oversaw regional and city news coverage, which included the city of San Diego’s financial debacle and near bankruptcy. Reporters and editors on Metro during her tenure were part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories that exposed Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham and led to his imprisonment. Hearn began her journalism career as a reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times, a small daily outside of Philadelphia, shortly after graduating from the University of Delaware in 1974. During the next two decades, she moved through countless beats at five newspapers on both coasts. High-profile coverage included the historic state Supreme Court election in 1986, when three sitting justices were ousted from the bench, and the 1992 execution of Robert Alton Harris. That gas chamber execution was the first time the death penalty was carried out in California in 25 years. In her nine years as Metro Editor at the Union-Tribune, Hearn made watchdog reporting a priority. Her reporters produced award-winning investigations covering large and small local governments. The depth and breadth of their public service work was most evident in coverage of the wildfires of 2003 and then 2007, when more than half a million people were evacuated from their homes. Contact Lorie at loriehearn@inewsource.org.
-
Italian candy giant Ferrero offered the American breakfast company a $3.1 billion deal too sweet to pass up.
-
They were on opposite sides during Syria's civil war and now must do lifesaving work together. A makeshift brick wall divides them in their Damascus fire station. The psychological wall is higher.
-
DOGE recently gained high-level access to a database that controls government payments and loans to farmers and ranchers across the U.S.
-
A retired Army lieutenant general who led the military response after Hurricane Katrina says searches can take a long time because human remains can be trapped under debris that must be removed piece by piece.
-
The new Netflix series stars Megan Stalter (also Kayla on Hacks) as a 30-something who moves to London after a breakup.
-
Kerr County applied for federal grants to build a warning system to protect residents from flash floods. Under the Trump administration, that kind of funding is drying up.
- San Diego political expert details steps that could lead to US civil war
- A volunteer legal observer says she was left bruised after being detained by ICE agents at federal courthouse
- Springs Fire erupts in East County; evacuations ordered
- San Diego Unified school board passes phone ban, effective first day of school
- Immigration court observer says ICE detained her for hours