With a leadership vacuum in Washington, the San Francisco Bay Area’s shelter-in-place orders led the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Jen Chien
Senior Radio Editor
Jen Chien is a former senior radio editor for Reveal. Previously, she was managing editor for KALW in San Francisco, where she also was host and executive producer of Sights & Sounds, an arts coverage, community engagement and community media training project. She has edited for podcasts including “70 Million” from Lantigua Williams & Co, “The Stoop” and Wondery. She has been a contributor to “All Things Considered,” Radio Netherlands Worldwide, BBC/PRI’s “The World,” Making Contact, the San Francisco Public Press, the East Bay Express, New America Media and KPFA in Berkeley, California, where she took part in the First Voice Apprenticeship Program. Her work has won awards from Public Radio News Directors Inc., the Religion News Association, the San Francisco Press Club and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter, which named her Outstanding Emerging Journalist in 2013. Chien holds a bachelor’s degree in American studies from Smith College and a master’s degree in interdisciplinary performance from New College of California. Before entering journalism, she had a successful career as a professional dance and theater artist, teacher and massage therapist.
Divided states of the pandemic
The federal government’s failure to manage the pandemic shifted the burden to local officials. We look at state responses in California and Florida.
Reproducing racism
As racial disparities in health come into the spotlight amid COVID-19, we explore how the legacy of racism affects maternal health in the U.S.
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The cost of COVID-19
Can the biggest U.S. stimulus stave off home foreclosures, save businesses and prevent the worst economic crash since the Great Depression?
Detained and exposed
Social distancing and hand-washing are meant to keep us safe from the coronavirus. But in immigrant detention centers, those measures are impossible.
Essential workers
Farmworkers, grocery store clerks and airline employees are on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis. But what’s being done to protect them?
Containing the coronavirus
How the coronavirus came to California and whether the response could have been better. Plus, a forgotten lynching in Atlanta raises new questions.
The lost homes of Detroit
Hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes should never have been charged, but Detroiters still had to pay or risk losing their homes.
Think globally, report locally
A high number of high school sports concussions. A low number of arrests for sexual assault. Reveal’s Reporting Network digs in.
Pushed out
Black girls are being pushed out of school and into jails at alarming rates, but this issue often is overlooked.