UPDATE: Thanks everyone for all the really good and insightful questions. We appreciate you all taking the time and interest.

We've been answering for 2 hours now and are going to head out, but if you've got questions or thoughts, you can always reach us on Twitter (Ryan's and Sara's) and our email addresses are at the bottom of every story we write.

Thanks again! - Sara and Ryan

PS - If you like the work we're doing and want to read as much as you like, you can subscribe to the Virginian-Pilot here.

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Hey Reddit,

We’re Ryan Murphy and Sara Gregory, reporters at the Virginian-Pilot. For the last several years, we've covered city government and schools in Norfolk and we've recently launched the ‘Dividing Lines’ project.

Put simply, the City of Norfolk has a long history of racial segregation and was a national pioneer in efforts that deepend or perpetuated segregation, like the development of public housing and undoing federal school integration measures.

That continues to impact things today, in ways both obvious and subtle. We see the effects of this every day in our reporting, and wanted to tackle this huge, thorny topic. We're starting by establishing a shared set of facts and history, and then exploring how that history continues to shape life in Norfolk today.

We’ll be answering questions about our stories, reporting or whatever else starting at 11 a.m. today.

About the 'Dividing Lines' project

We started with a set of maps that show just how segregated Norfolk is, even half a century after segregation was formally purged from the lawbooks. Neighborhoods that were deliberately segregated 80 or 90 years ago are still segregated, and that carries with it all kinds of economic, health and educational disadvantages.

We've also given a rundown of the city’s oft-forgotten history of segregation. The races didn’t naturally divvy themselves up into Black and white neighborhoods. In fact, the city was seeing meaningful racial integration at the turn of the 20th century, but the city fathers took explicit steps to divide residents and wipe integrated neighborhoods off the map.

We’ve discussed how city schools were re-segregated in the 1980s following a brief period of integration.

And we’ve explored how the city’s segregation is still impacting people today as thousands are moved out of aging public housing to make way for redevelopment. City officials point to ‘resident choice’ as the reason the vast majority are still moving into poor, segregated areas as experts say these residents really don’t have much choice at all.

This isn’t a traditional newspaper series that will run for a month or two and wrap up. We’ve completed the first wave of the project - these four stories that set the stage for where we go next - but we plan to keep writing entries into this series as we explore more of the city’s difficult reckoning with race.

So, ask us anything! We'll be back at 11 a.m. to start answering.

Proof:

Virginian-Pilot tweet

Ryan Murphy tweet

Sara Gregory tweet