SC's deadly prison riot

Two years ago today, America's deadliest outbreak of prison violence in 25 years broke out at a maximum-security prison in South Carolina.The public was told very little about what happened that night, so the Post and Courier set out to change that. The resulting project, which was published in December, exposed flaws in the state's prison system that lead to the deaths of seven inmates in one night at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville. If you haven't read the story yet, we recommend you check it out before listening. Read the story here. The piece recently won two national journalism awards: a first-place honor in the Scripps Howard Awards for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment and another first place win in the annual IRE Awards recognizing outstanding investigative work. Project reporters Jennifer Berry Hawes and Stephen Hobbs joined us for a behind-the-scenes look at their eight-month-long reporting process. They, along with reporters Glenn Smith and Seanna Adcox, collected thousands of pages of documents, interviewed more than 150 people and wrote to about 400 inmates. They explain how, with very little information publicly available, they were able to piece together what happened that night on Lee's dangerous West Yard. Listen to find out.