This is the WFHB Local News for Thursday, January 8th, 2026.

In today’s newscast, we’re revisiting feature reports from 2025 produced in collaboration between WFHB and students in The Media School at Indiana University. These stories cover housing, homelessness and funding cuts in Bloomington, highlighting the people and issues shaping our community. That’s coming up next in the local news: year in review.

Featured Segments:

On January 22nd last year, temperatures in Bloomington reached as low as three degrees. This is especially dangerous for the unhoused. WFHB correspondent Morgan Reynolds spoke with people braving winter weather and social workers trying to bring them in from the cold, in a report produced in partnership with The Media School at Indiana University. Imagine you have a serious medical condition requiring a colostomy bag, but you are unhoused and using plastic grocery bags instead. Now imagine the temperature drops while you’re sleeping and this bag of your own waste freezes to your body. That’s a true story from the streets of Bloomington, as told in today’s feature report on the plight of the unhoused in the bitter cold of winter.

Bloomington’s population is growing faster than its supply of affordable housing. In a feature report by correspondent RC Glover we hear from an IU student feeling the pinch and a housing expert who says market conditions and our limited buildable land area will likely continue to make the problem worse without intervention from public-private partnerships like the Hopewell neighborhood under development on the site of the old Bloomington Hospital.

Indiana University operates about a half a dozen culture centers on the Bloomington campus, but a Muslim culture center is not one of them. Correspondent Alexis Carvajal talks with IU Muslim Student Association president Ahmed Al Baharna and Islamic Center of Bloomington imam Mohamed Sayed who have been trying to change that for years and are still holding out hope. This special report was produced in partnership with The Media School at Indiana University.

A number of student-run activities and events on the IU Bloomington campus were blindsided this school year by funding cuts. In the case of University Players, a student-run theater group, total funding was cut by 80%. Correspondent Harley Babbitt has the story of how some of these groups reacted to the cuts and how they will pivot to save their clubs in a feature report produced in partnership with The Media School at Indiana University.

Credits: