Public media is not a perfect system, but it may be the best chance for local journalists in a news ecosystem that is rapidly degrading. WHQR News Director Ben Schachtman makes the case for it in the middle of a pledge drive — when the whole thing seems a little fragile, but also urgently necessary.

On today's show, Rachel Keith talks to Duke University assistant professor Dr. Justin Leroy about his new book, The Lowest Freedom — Racial Capitalism and Black Thought in the Nineteenth Century. We discuss American history in the context of prominent Black authors like Wilmington’s own David Walker, along with Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells.

Three years after the 2023 shooting that killed a professor and caused the UNC-Chapel Hill campus to go under a three-hour lockdown, an Orange County judge finds the accused grad student not guilty by reason of insanity.

Following its elimination in the new state budget, minority businesses will no longer have the aid of the Office for Historically Underutilized Businesses, which helped provide assistance with state contracts for more than 25 years.