Kathy Lohr
Whether covering the manhunt and eventual capture of Eric Robert Rudolph in the mountains of North Carolina, the remnants of the Oklahoma City federal building with its twisted metal frame and shattered glass, flood-ravaged Midwestern communities, or the terrorist bombings across the country, including the blast that exploded in Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta, correspondent Kathy Lohr has been at the heart of stories all across the nation.
Lohr was NPR's first reporter based in the Midwest. She opened NPR's St. Louis office in 1990 and the Atlanta bureau in 1996. Lohr covers the abortion issue on an ongoing basis for NPR, including political and legal aspects. She has often been sent into disasters as they are happening, to provide listeners with the intimate details about how these incidents affect people and their lives.
Lohr filed her first report for NPR while working for member station KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and began her journalism career in commercial television and radio as a reporter/anchor. Lohr also became involved in video production for national corporations and taught courses in television reporting and radio production at universities in Kansas and Missouri. She has filed reports for the NPR documentary program Horizons, the BBC, the CBC, Marketplace, and she was published in the Saturday Evening Post.
Lohr won the prestigious Missouri Medal of Honor for Excellence in Journalism in 2002. She received a fellowship from Vanderbilt University for work on the issue of domestic violence. Lohr has filed reports from 27 states and the District of Columbia. She has received other national awards for her coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Midwestern floods of 1993, and for her reporting on ice storms in the Mississippi Delta. She has also received numerous awards for radio pieces on the local level prior to joining NPR's national team. Lohr was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She now lives in her adopted hometown of Atlanta, covering stories across the southeastern part of the country.
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Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has approved regulations requiring clinics where abortions are performed to meet the same building codes as new hospitals. Abortion-rights groups say the regulations are unnecessary, but abortion-rights opponents say they're the only way to ensure that clinics are safe. -
The ability to customize products began with computers more than a decade ago. Now, you can create your own T-shirts, jeans, custom-blend cosmetics and candy. Even luxury brands like Burberry, Prada and Louis Vuitton now let customers design their own looks. -
Two bakeries in Claxton, Ga., make more than 4 million pounds of the holiday treat each year. The bakeries are finding a new market in young hikers and bikers seeking food that won't go bad on the trail. -
Officials at Spelman College, a historically black women's college in Atlanta, have decided to scrap the school's NCAA program. With few students participating in organized sports, the college has decided to devote those funds to a fitness program designed to reach the entire student body. -
A pilot program in Mississippi uses biometric finger scanners on low-income parents who check their kids in and out of day care centers. State officials say they'll save millions of dollars by reducing fraud, but some parents and day care providers see it as discriminatory and are protesting. -
Five days after Superstorm Sandy, crews in New Jersey are still working 14-hour days to restore power. Part of the job is cleaning each individual wire, and part is explaining what took so long to get the lights back on. -
Georgia bans undocumented students from attending some of the most prestigious colleges in the state, and the students have to pay out-of-state tuition at other public colleges. Freedom University is a temporary alternative. Students don't get any official credit, but they do get to learn. -
For the first time in decades, the historically black college in Tallahassee played its first home game of the season without its famous Marching 100 band. The band was suspended for the year after drum major Robert Champion died as a result of a hazing incident last November. -
In politically important Florida, seniors react to Mitt Romney's take on the so-called "47 percent" and the Middle East.
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With the symphony's 68th season just weeks away, it's uncertain whether the opening concert will happen. -
Since Republican Rep. Todd Akin first said the words "legitimate rape" last weekend, just about everyone in the Republican Party has condemned those comments. That includes vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. But it's also put a spotlight on Ryan's anti-abortion legislation and voting record. -
Twenty years ago, Homestead, Fla., was in the eye of what was then the worst storm to hit the U.S. Hurricane Andrew wiped out nearly every building here. After a shaky couple of years, Homestead rebuilt, and by 2007, it was the fastest-growing city in Florida. And then the housing bust hit.
