SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Lots of statistics have been compiled and reported about the heroin epidemic in America. But recently, a local news organization deployed teams of journalists to report it as the overwhelming event that it is - a war - with losses almost every hour.
Cincinnati Enquirer deployed 60 reporters, photographers and videographers to document one week, hour-by-hour in the streets, homes, emergency rooms and courtrooms of people caught up by this crisis in their city. Peter Bhatia is editor and vice president at The Cincinnati Enquirer. He joins us from the studios of WVXU in Cincinnati. Thanks so much for being with us.
PETER BHATIA: It's a pleasure and an honor. Thank you.
SIMON: This was a multimedia story - video and audio online, 20 pages in the published newspaper. Why did you feel it was important to do?
BHATIA: Well, it's - you know, the epidemic around opioids is a very, very serious issue in the whole country but particularly in the Midwest. And we've had reporters covering the epidemic for five years, at least, and a full-time reporter on it for two years. That reporter, Terry DeMio, and another reporter on our staff, Dan Horn, came to the editors some time ago and said, you know, we really need to go deeper to really document this.
We've done all this great reporting - and it's true they've done distinguished work - but we haven't really captured the depth of it, the daily nature of it, the huge number of overdoses and deaths that are happening every day in our metropolitan area. And when they brought that to me and to other editors, you know, we sort of said, you're right. We haven't. Let's figure out how to do it.
SIMON: For people who haven't had a chance to look at the article - and I'll depart from form and encourage people to look at the link - describe the range of scenes around the Cincinnati metro area that your reporters described and the stories they bring back.
BHATIA: We were with addicts on the street as they were having encounters with law enforcement. We were in treatment centers with people trying to kick the addiction. There's this one phenomenal picture of five inmates. They're all pregnant and being let in to get their methadone and things like that. We were in in drug courts, where people were being dealt with by the criminal justice system.
I think one of the reasons that it's gotten so much attention is because of the spareness with which we report it. We just report anecdote after anecdote after anecdote after anecdote over seven days. And anybody who reads it cannot come away without understanding how deep and how pernicious and how totally involving of our society this epidemic is.
SIMON: Are there things that happen in Cincinnati every day that people walk past that you wanted to use this opportunity to share with?
BHATIA: Well, yes, I mean, in the sense that we wanted people to understand that this is going on all around them. Heroin is not a demographic or racial or any socioeconomic status - however you want to put it - drug. Its terrible reach is universal.
And, you know, you know the history. I mean, a lot of this comes out of people who are on painkillers and become addicted to painkillers and then find their way to heroin because it's a much cheaper option. So it can touch anybody anywhere of any demographic, whether in the poorest neighborhood or the most affluent suburb. And that's part of what we set out to show, too. But it's not just that. It's just that it touches everybody everywhere.
SIMON: Peter Bhatia, editor of The Cincinnati Enquirer, thanks so much for being with us.
BHATIA: Really a pleasure. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. I appreciate it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.