What are your hopes for 2025?

With 2024 coming to a close, we have a whole new year to look forward to. What are your hopes for 2025? We put that question to attendees of our recent News and Brews community pop-up.


End of Year Slideshow

This year, our team spent a lot of time outside the confines of the station, visiting communities across the heart of Alabama. Getting out from behind the microphone and discussing the news with our listeners has been a powerful reminder that public media – and WBHM’s work right here in our community – must remain invested in local reporting on issues that affect us all, as well as the art, culture, and events that inspire us.

Living HealthSmart in Alabama is getting easier thanks to a growing UAB initiative

The Live HealthSmart Alabama initiative, which the University of Alabama at Birmingham launched in 2019, has a goal of pulling Alabama out of the bottom 10 states in terms of negative health indicators by removing systemic barriers. Pilot projects in four Birmingham neighborhoods wrapped up this year, and organizers hope their success can be replicated throughout the state.

More News

The 2024 moments that will stick with us: Reflections from the Gulf States Newsroom

Our regional reporters reflect on delightful, discarded moments they had in the field as they covered stories across Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

‘Driven by something greater’: Meet Birmingham’s trainer to the stars of today and the future

Otis Leverette, better known as ‘Coach O,’ is a strength and conditioning coach in the South that’s impacting athletes’ lives beyond sports.

Alabama profits off prisoners safe enough to work at McDonald’s, deems them too dangerous for parole

No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. Best Western, Bama Budweiser and Burger King are among the more than 500 businesses to lease incarcerated workers from one of the most violent, overcrowded and unruly prison systems in the U.S.


Share your thoughts on gun violence in Birmingham

Anyone in Birmingham who wants to weigh in on how to address the city’s gun violence can do so through a survey offered by an independent gun violence commission. The commission has been working since October to find ways to reduce Birmingham’s homicide rates.

Barely Legal: Some officials in Alabama want to outlaw delta-8. Others want to make it safer

Delta-8, which comes from hemp, is processed to create a concentrated form of THC. It’s legal for sale in Alabama … at least for now.

Federal regulators say an Alabama coal mine’s plans may violate law, leaving citizens at risk

A “ten-day notice” issued to Alabama officials aims to mitigate risks to citizens living above Oak Grove Mine. It comes after months of state inaction and community outrage.

Q&A: The little-known history of how enslaved people were jailed in antebellum New Orleans

Author John Bardes discusses how Louisiana’s complicated history with mass incarceration began with imprisonment being used as a tool against enslaved people.

Alabama wants to lower recidivism rates by 2030. What are the obstacles?

Last year, Alabama set an ambitious goal for itself: lower recidivism by 25% and increase post-incarceration employment rates by 50% by 2030. But a recent study on the state's criminal justice re-entry programming shows that many formerly incarcerated people are falling through the cracks.

An Alabama woman is doing well after the latest experimental pig kidney transplant

Towana Looney is the fifth American given a gene-edited pig organ — and notably, she isn’t as sick as prior recipients who died within two months of receiving a pig kidney or heart.