2022 End Of Year Local News Roundup

In our End of Year Local News Roundup, we gather our team of local journalists to go through the top local and regional stories they’ve covered in 2022.

SEGMENT 1:
We cover education and the environment. From book bans to a payroll issue in Gaston County, to this year’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board race, safety issues, a revolving door of superintendents and more stories, education has frequently had top billing on the roundup this year. We’ll be joined by our education reporters to remind us about the year in education and what’s ahead for 2023. We’ll also be joined by environmental reporter David Boraks to cover energy reform, electric vehicles, lithium mining and those beach houses falling into the ocean this year.

Guests:

David Boraks, WFAE reporter
Ann Doss Helms, WFAE education reporter
Shamarria Morrison, WCNC reporter
Jonathan Lowe, WSOC-TV education reporter
SEGMENT 2:
Politics is always at the top of the list of topics we discuss on the local news roundup, whether it’s about Charlotte Area Transit System and the loss of bus ridership with CATS, North Carolina Republicans missing the supermajority in the General Assembly, city council and county commission dramas, or the idea of the independent state legislature theory. We’ve spent time this year on the Unified Development Ordinance, on voting maps, transparency, ethics and, of course, elections. Politics in our area in 2022 could be the focus of several hour-long shows, but we’ll distill down the stories we’ve told this year with our political reporters.

Guests:

Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”
Steve Harrison, WFAE’s political reporter
Joe Bruno, WSOC-TV reporter
Nick Ochsner, WBTV’s executive producer for investigations & chief investigative reporter
SEGMENT 3:
We’ll dive into topics that help shape the city and region we live in, from the health of our sports teams (and who was fired and hired) to aborted business deals between the owners of some of our sports teams and local governments. We’ll get an update on crime in the Charlotte and talk about how we’re weathering another year of the coronavirus pandemic along with flu and RSV thrown in and more for the remainder of the hour.

Guests:

Katie Peralta Soloff, reporter for Axios Charlotte
Hunter Saenz, WSOC-TV reporter
Danielle Chemtob, investigative reporter with Axios Charlotte
Erik Spanberg, managing editor for the Charlotte Business Journal