Local Columns

Media Literacy

I’ll be the first to say that I, as a reporter, am not perfect. No one is. I can sometimes make mistakes in stories, both grammatical and factual. I can sometimes read a bill or a study too quickly and miss something important. If I get something wrong, I work as quickly as I can to send up a correction to my copy desk. Sometimes mistakes escape me and my copy desk. When you write as many words as I do in a week and you read as many words as my editors do, sometimes mistakes fall through the cracks. But when they are pointed out, we try to fix them. I believe the same goes for my ...

Fixing Hancock County Schools Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

By now nearly everyone has most likely seen the dire financial situation that the Hancock County school system currently finds itself in. Years of inadequate personnel management, overspending, and a lack of thorough financial oversight finally caught up with them when it was recently announced that the school system is facing a budget shortfall of approximately $8 million. All of this occurred over the stretch of multiple superintendents and numerous county board members, and was finally brought to light this past fall when then-superintendent Dan Enich notified the West Virginia ...

We All Need To Figure Out How To Disagree Better

Over 225 years ago, in 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” I find myself thinking about that quote often lately, especially as we approach America’s 250th anniversary and look honestly at how we talk to each other today. At 22 years old, my experience of national events has almost entirely come through a phone screen. “Doomscrolling” became a common phrase during the once-in-a-lifetime pandemic my generation lived through. I watched an attempted ...

Justice vs. Morrisey

Since former governor Jim Justice took his oath of office as a U.S. senator last year and former attorney general Patrick Morrisey was sworn in as West Virginia’s 37th governor, there has been somewhat of a cold war between the two officials. I won’t go over the entire history of the cold war, but the most recent incident involves the announcement by the Morrisey administration last week that Arizona-based Frontieras North America finally closed on the purchase of 183 acres in Mason County to move forward with a proposed $850 million investment in the state to construct a new coal ...

Celebrating Dr. King Transcends Boundaries

On July 18, 1957 Evangelist Billy Graham, a white minister from North Carolina, a native southerner was holding services at Madison Square Garden. He noticed over the first two months that the audiences were not mixed. In his efforts to have more of an integrated audience, his team invited a 28-year-old, Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. to lead the prayer at the crusade. Dr. King had just led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, from December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956. The two shared the pulpit that night, when he gave the opening prayer. He prayed for a “warless world’” and a “brotherhood ...

From Rock Bottom to Remarkable for Wheeling Hospital

When WVU Medicine assumed leadership of Wheeling Hospital in 2019, the headlines weren’t flattering. The state’s oldest hospital — a 170-year pillar of the Northern Panhandle — was under federal investigation, financially unstable, and struggling to retain its workforce. Quality scores had slipped, critical investments had stalled, and morale across the campus reflected the uncertainty of its future. At the same time, the Northern Panhandle, and Ohio Valley at large, was reeling from the uncertainty left in the wake of both Ohio Valley Medical Center and East Ohio Regional ...