Editorials

Keep Red Kettles Full This Holiday Season

The Ohio Valley air soon will be filled with the familiar holiday sound of ringing bells, as the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle season returns. Throughout the region, people will be standing beside those kettles, bells clanging, bringing attention to the Salvation Army’s mission of helping those who are in greatest need of it. That need has only increased this year. At this week’s Red Kettle Kickoff Luncheon, Salvation Army Lt. John Lawrence said that, because of rising costs and a government shutdown that suspended SNAP fund distributions, his organization has served four times as ...

Learn Your Districts

Given the degree to which so many in Washington, D.C., have shown us their reluctance to do their jobs — or remember for whom they work — lately, it is likely the 2026 elections will be a time for voters to take action. In Ohio, change is imminent, as redrawn congressional districts will mean upheaval for lawmakers and those heading to the polls. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is trying to get out ahead of any confusion by updating the office’s Find My District tool now. The hope is voters will not be caught off guard just as they are looking to cast their ballots in the ...

Make Sure Kids Are Safe Online

Parents and guardians cannot receive reminders often enough about the urgent need to prepare kids for staying safe online. Local residents got an alarming one this week with news that Steven James Boose, 35, of Littlestown, Pa., had been arrested after allegedly traveling to Parkersburg to meet with a person he believed to have been a 14-year-old girl, with whom he’d been corresponding online. Parkersburg Police met up with him, instead, and Boose has been charged with one count of soliciting a minor and six counts of use of obscene matter with intent to seduce a minor. And the ...

Washington Avenue Bridge Fix Needed

Starting very soon, getting around the Washington Avenue area of Wheeling will get more complicated, but those complications are necessary. As early as this month, the Washington Ave. Bridge will close down for replacement. That bridge is one of the busier paths in the city, connecting National Road to the area around WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital, as well as providing an exit and entrance to Interstate 70 from that part of National Road. The replacement for that bridge should take several months, officials say, which will make travel in that area tougher. But an inconvenience for ...

Keep Our Coal Miners Safe

As West Virginians watched for news of the trapped foreman of a mining crew in an Alpha Metallurgical Resources mine in Nicholas County, just days after learning of the death of another miner in an accident at a Mettiki Coal mine in Tucker County, the health and safety of our coal miners was brought back into our collective minds. For the miners themselves, a renewed fight over their health has been brewing for months, as an Associated Press report over the weekend delved into the fight to get the Trump administration and the U.S. Department of Labor to stop rolling back or delaying ...

Honoring the Bravery of Military Veterans

For more than seven decades, Americans have done on this day the least they can do in thanking those who have gathered arms to fight for their freedom and safety. Since 1954, we have taken pause on Veterans Day to show our gratitude to the men and women who have selflessly put their lives on the line for our well-being as part of the U.S. Armed Forces. Think about that sacrifice: young men and women saying good-bye to their loved ones to travel to all corners of the earth. Many of them over the years have placed themselves in the middle of armed combat, fighting so that the horrors ...