'It was like a heartbeat': Residents at a loss after newspaper shutters in declining coal county

Months after Missy Nester ended The Welch News’ 100-year run, she can barely stand to walk through the office doors of the newspaper her mother taught her to read with growing up in West Virginia’s southern coalfields. It’s too painful.

The Welch News owner and publisher’s desk is covered with unpaid bills and her own paychecks — a year’s worth — she never cashed. Phones that used to ring throughout the day are silent. Tables covered with typewriters, awards and a century’s worth of other long-abandoned artifacts are reminders that her beloved paper has become an artifact, too.

Wiping away tears, Nester said she wishes people understood why she fought so hard to protect her county's last remaining news outlet, and why it feels like communities left behind by the journalism industry are often the ones who need it most.

“Our people here have nothing,” said Nester, 57. “Like, can any of y’all hear us out here screaming?”

In March, the McDowell County weekly became another of the thousands of U.S. newspapers shuttered since 2005, a crisis Nester called “terrifying for democracy” and one that disproportionately impacts rural Americans.

Residents suddenly have no way of knowing what’s happening at public meetings. Local crises, like the desperately needed upgrade of water and sewer systems, are going unreported. And there is no one to keep disinformation in check, like when the newspaper published a series of stories dispelling rumors of election tampering at local precincts during last year’s May primaries.

“It was like a heartbeat, like a thread that ran through the community,” said World War II veteran Howard Wade, a retired professor specializing in Black history.

Sitting on a rocking chair in his home at the base of lush, green hills, 97-year-old Wade is worried about the county history the newspaper chronicled. He was born three years after it opened in 1923.

The decline of American newspapers is well-documented. Those most impacted tend to be older, low-income and less likely to have graduated high school or college than people in well-covered communities.

For McDowell residents, the news was a shock. Many said they didn’t realize how much they depended on the paper.

Sarah Hall, McDowell County's first Black prosecutor elected in the 1980s, said it’s tragic when any community loses its newspaper. But for communities like hers, it’s detrimental.

The 535-square-mile (1,385-square-kilometer) county is dominated by rugged mountain terrain. Residents live miles apart in hollers connected by winding roads and no interstate access. Cell and internet service is inconsistent — or nonexistent. There are no local radio or television stations.

“We’re in a unique situation because our community is unique,” she said. “We have no other substantial way of communicating.”

It bothers Hall not knowing what decisions county commissioners are making with taxpayer money. With the school year approaching, she’s worried families won’t know about an upcoming ministry program providing free school supplies.

Sprawling across Appalachia's Cumberland Mountains, McDowell County was once the world’s leading coal producer, attracting European immigrants and Black families fleeing the Jim Crow South seeking work. In 1950, its population was nearly 100,000. A quarter of residents were Black, unconventional in a predominately white state.

Today, 80% of the 17,850 remaining residents are white, still making it one of West Virginia’s most diverse counties. It’s also the poorest, with some of the lowest graduation and life expectancy rates in the nation.

Over the years, the county lost big box stores, schools, thousands of jobs and people. But it had its newspaper — one that tracked government spending, published election, spelling bee and basketball game results and spreads with photos and biographies of every member of the graduating class.

“Now when people die, a lot of people don’t even realize they’re dead,” said Deputy Magistrate Court Clerk Virginia Dickerson, 79, who relied on the paper for its obituaries.

Dickerson said losing the paper was like “losing a family member.”

Paulina Breeden, who works at the sole gas station in neighboring Maybeury, said people still come in and ask about the paper. When she informs them its closed, they’re often incredulous.

Although the county is now without a local news source, its residents are no strangers to news coverage — often by national outlets focused on the poverty rate, opioid use, infrastructure woes and the declining coal industry.

Local pharmacy owner Shawn Jenkins said national coverage of McDowell County is overly “political, unfair and often negative.” But he never felt that way about the local newspaper.

“I never saw anything that really raised my hackles. I thought they were pretty much center line, which is the exception these days,” he said, adding that he advertised in the paper. “I wanted them to survive.”

Before Nester took over in 2018, the paper ran summaries of local government meetings written by county employees. That changed when 32-year-old Derek Tyson, the paper’s single reporter and editor, began covering meetings. The attention seemed to bother some local officials, who called to grumble about stories. The city of Welch declined to comment on the newspaper’s closure.

One story the paper followed for years was the work of the McDowell Public Service District upgrading aging water infrastructure in coal communities. For decades, some county residents have relied on polluted mountain streams because of disintegrating — or completely absent — systems.

Now, long-awaited federal support is expected to reach communities with the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure act. But the paper won’t be there to cover it.

When Nester was a single mother of three in the 1990s and 2000s, the county’s older residents stopped by her house on surprise visits with meals and cash they’d tape to her front door.

During her time at The Welch News, delivery drivers would sometimes drop off bread, milk and other essentials with the paper.

“I saw keeping the paper going as a way to repay them — or to try to — for everything they did to take care of me,” she said.

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