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Most of W.Va. has local news — for now

West Virginia is surprisingly lucky when it comes to local news: All but two of our 55 counties have some kind of local publication, according to recent research by Northwestern University and the Medill Local News Initiative. The good news: With the exception of Putnam and Marshall counties, all of West Virginia has access to at least one non-television local news source. A handful of places, including Mon and Preston counties, have access to two, and Kanawha County has three. By the numbers, West Virginia has 64 newspapers that print either daily or weekly, plus West Virginia ...

Justice will have to choose: D.C.or basketball?

In a recent press briefing, Gov. Jim Justice said he’s open to the idea of continuing to coach basketball if he wins the U.S. Senate seat. After all, he said, he’s done it all through his governorship and he’s regularly gone back and forth from his Lewisburg home to Charleston for the past eight years: “I do have the ability to go and come and go very quickly.” It might be premature to discuss this now, considering we’re still six months out from the primary and 11 months from the general election. However, this speaks to his approach to being a federal lawmaker and that ...

How to solve food insecurity: Stop trashing edible food

New York and California recently passed laws to keep edible foods out of landfills — and hopefully into the hands of hungry people. California’s law went into effect in January 2022, with the statewide goal of recovering (i.e., not trashing) 20% of edible food by 2025. Food producers and distributors must donate edible food and compost non-edible food. New York’s law is similar: Businesses and institutions that generate, on average, two tons or more of food waste per week must donate edible food and recycle (compost or send to an anaerobic recycling facility) inedible ...

Gov’t agencies, officials owe us more transparency

Gov. Jim Justice has made an art form out of speaking much but saying little, and his meaningless verbal abstractions were on full display at a news briefing earlier this month as he non-answered questions about West Virginia jails’ myriad problems. If you sifted through enough of the ramblings and Justice-isms, you could eventually come up with what amounted to “We’re still looking” or “We’ll keep looking.” Justice’s administration has been equally opaque. There were, of course, the missing emails and records that brought the wrath of a judge down upon the state. ...

DOH fails first test of winter

North-central West Virginia — Morgantown, in particular — ground to a halt yesterday as the last traces of Monday’s flurries mixed with below-freezing temperatures and early-morning snow squalls to hide a sheet of ice beneath a white dusting. Wrecks backed up the interstates and main thoroughfares; cars got stuck on inclines; vehicles spun and slid into ditches and medians; schools closed and adults got halfway to work before being forced to turnaround (though some had no choice but to power through). All in all, not a good day to be on the roads. To say that the Division of ...

WVU oddly quiet on voluntary give-backs

West Virginia University has been strangely quiet about something that, from a public relations standpoint, it should be shouting from the rooftops. A few weeks ago, it was announced that top administrators had been asked to voluntarily “give back” up to 10% of their annual salary. According to a WVU statement, there was 100% participation, resulting in $772,772 (yes, that is a weirdly specific number) being given back to the university. On a macro scale, this nearly three-quarters of a million dollars doesn’t even put a dent in the $41 million deficit WVU faces. But on a ...