EPISODE 28: ERIC EYRE

An Appalachian coal town of under 400 with a tiny drugstore making so much money selling opioids that the owner served popcorn to the throngs waiting in long lines for their pills. What happened in Kermit, West Virginia, is a story of America’s poor being exploited for profit by corporations headquartered hundreds of miles away. Eric Eyre's Pulitizer Prize-winning reporting opened the country’s eyes to an epidemic that has taken nearly a million lives. 

Eyre has written a book, but the original work for was for a small-town paper in Charleston, West Virginia — the kind dwindling from the media landscape as big media companies take over. His work is a triumph of the kind of investigative journalism that often comes from local papers, but sadly, we are seeing the end of an era.