Dividing Lines: How The Pilot is reporting the series — and our blind spots

We’re white.

When launching a project that’s about racial divisions, it’s only fair to start with that fact.

Sara Gregory and Ryan Murphy, the two reporters behind “Dividing Lines,” are white. So is Eric Hartley, their editor.

All three of us grew up in white, suburban areas. We went through school with classmates who looked like us. As adults, we live in largely white neighborhoods and socialize in largely white spheres.

We also work for newspapers with a spotty-at-best history of covering the Black communities of Hampton Roads. The Virginian-Pilot won Pulitzer Prizes in 1929 and 1960 for editorials, respectively, condemning lynching and criticizing Virginia’s decision to close schools rather than integrate them. But at some points in the histories of The Pilot and the Daily Press, coverage of Black communities and issues was virtually non-existent or outright hostile. The Pilot’s owner also owned the pro-segregation Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch.

And we work for a company that, by its own admission, is not diverse enough. We have seven Black journalists out of a staff of 71 — not quite 10% — covering a region whose major cities range from 20% to 55% Black.

So we have blind spots.

All that said, we’ve seen this city.

Ryan covers Norfolk and its government, and Sara covers its schools. It’s nearly impossible to watch the day-to-day workings of the city and its institutions and not see how racial segregation continues to shape modern life.

We began reporting on this project before the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated disparities between communities of color and white Norfolk. The pandemic forced us to change aspects of how we’re approaching it, but made even clearer the urgency with which the city needs to acknowledge and confront its divisions.

In helping illustrate some of the disparities, we’ve had help from Johnny Finn, an associate professor at Christopher Newport University who studies urban geography and race.

Finn, who is white, is also the director of the Living Together/Living Apart Project, which explores the history and contemporary impacts of racial segregation in Hampton Roads.

He and several undergraduate research assistants helped us turn Census and other data into maps that show stark racial divides in the City of Norfolk and how they go back more than a century. The Pilot paid him for that work through a grant from the Education Writers Association, which also supported other aspects of Sara and Ryan’s reporting.

Charles Apple, a former Pilot graphics director, helped prepare maps for print. He was also paid through the EWA grant.

Ryan Murphy, 757-739-8582, ryan.murphy@pilotonline.com

Sara Gregory, 757-469-7484, sara.gregory@pilotonline.com