
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.
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When students return to San Diego Unified School District classrooms this August, they will be without their phones for the majority of the day.
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The settlement with Gateway Energy Storage concerns cleanup efforts in connection with the lithium-ion battery fire that broke out on May 15, 2024, and lasted nearly two weeks due to flare-ups at the site.
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Immigration raids have many mixed-status immigrant families living on edge. The fear of being detained has some limiting ordinary activities, like trips to the grocery store. Others are feeling health impacts of stress.
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The forward rate of spread for the Steele Fire in Rancho San Diego has been stopped, according to Cal Fire. The fire remains approximately 28 acres and is 85% contained. Evacuation orders and road closures have been lifted.
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President Trump defended former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is accused of plotting an attempted coup following his loss in the 2022 election.
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As a war expert on a CIA panel, UC San Diego political scientist Barbara Walter helped forecast civil wars in other countries. Along the way, she discovered some of those predictors apply to the United States.
- Trump administration freezes $50 million in San Diego County public school funding
- San Diego political expert details steps that could lead to US civil war
- Steele Fire update: Spread halted, evacuations hold
- Carlsbad pumping brakes on traffic circles, putting federal funding at risk
- Fear of immigration raids reshaping daily life for many