Local Columns

The TikTok of the Clock

The news business is constantly changing and that means changing with the times. So, reluctantly, I have started a news TikTok. I’m not a fan of TikTok. I don’t like how the app is designed or how it’s meant to keep a user swiping for minutes and sometimes hours. I don’t like its connection to the Communist Chinese government and how it constantly scrapes information and data. The problem is that is where the young’uns are, and if you want the teens and young adults to read your news stories, you have to be where they are. And TikTok is where they are. I don’t know when ...

Just Who Is My Neighbor: Will We Show Mercy to Those in Wheeling Who Need It the Most?

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the story of a traveler beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. Two respected men pass by without stopping. Finally, a Samaritan — a foreigner, an outsider — sees the man’s suffering, is moved with compassion, and kneels beside him. He tends the man’s wounds, shelters him, and ensures his recovery. When Jesus asks, “Who was his neighbor?” the answer is clear: the one who showed mercy. That ancient story is playing out again on the streets of Wheeling and in communities across West Virginia. Once again, people who have lost ...

Electricity Prices Are Soaring — Coal Is a Key Solution

Electricity bills are climbing almost everywhere, and the reasons have little to do with ideology. Three forces are driving prices higher: massive new utility spending on infrastructure, rising natural gas costs, and growing capacity shortages in electricity markets as power demand soars from the AI revolution. In some states, prices have jumped more than 60% since 2022. The Trump Administration inherited this mess and now has its work cut out for it. The strategy the administration has embraced is built around reinforcing dispatchable power — the generating resources that ...

Let Babydog Eat Cake

You’d be forgiven if you were to think that West Virginia only has one U.S. senator instead of two. Because based on appearances, Sen. Jim Justice appears to be doing the bare minimum. Sure, Justice is casting votes. If he has missed any, I’m unaware. The same goes for committee meetings. Justice is attending meetings, casting votes, and sometimes making speeches, though many times those speeches have little to do with whatever the committee is discussing that day. But is doing the bare minimum enough? One of my favorite movies is “Office Space.” In one scene, a server played ...

A Path To Solve West Virginia’s Water Problems

For many years, numerous water systems in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle have been in distress. Whether it’s from industrial pollution, lack of adequate supply or simply limited infrastructure investment, many communities have been impacted and left with no or limited access to this vital resource we call water. I grew up in the Ohio River Valley where I graduated from Paden City High School, West Liberty State College and West Virginia University. I still have family and friends who are part of the region. It’s hard to witness what many residents have had to endure when it ...

Nice Work If You Can Get It

Last week, I covered the final two days of permanent injunction hearings to block a June directive from the West Virginia Board of Education to county boards of education to continue to enforce the state’s compulsory vaccine law and not accept religious exemptions approved by the Department of Health and made possible by Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s January executive order. I’m not going to rehash all of the particulars. You can read my coverage of both days. But I wanted to use my column to focus on last Thursday morning’s testimony by Dr. Mark McDaniel, the acting state health ...