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Introduction
Making West Virginia Better
Four years ago, West Virginia was at a crossroads: substance abuse ripping families apart, the coal-based economy bottoming out, trust in government cratering, and a global pandemic bearing down.
Legacy media organizations were struggling. West Virginians starved for basic information. Enter Mountain State Spotlight, a nonprofit newsroom created to put the public interest first.
Since then, thousands of you have put your trust in us. You are reading our stories. You are subscribing to our newsletter. You are donating your hard-earned money. Thank you.
Our mission is bold and ambitious: To help West Virginians improve our state by producing “sustained outrage” journalism that exposes abuses of power by government, business and other institutions.
It’s working. Our journalism is prompting policy changes, holding powerful people accountable, and lifting up voices that are often not heard.
For example:
- Our investigation of jail conditions led to a law giving families of West Virginians who die in custody more information about those deaths.
- After we revealed a federal judge was secretly pushing a one-sided settlement of a lawsuit over the state’s foster care system, that judge stepped aside from hearing the matter.
- We exposed dangerous air pollution from a chemical plant in a Black community, and we’ve continued to report on the failure of federal officials to do anything about it.
- Our reporters are foregrounding stories of marginalized communities, from LGBTQ+ students to Black business owners to rural residents struggling with poverty.
We know that change comes slowly in West Virginia. Power doesn’t give up power without a fight. But it is our privilege to work for you.
As the following pages show, we’re focusing legislative coverage more on the big picture of inaction on West Virginia’s most pressing problems instead of the drip-drip-drip of committee meetings. Read on, and you will also see that we’re revolutionizing election coverage to make it more about you and your community and less about campaign commercials and horse race polls.
Please let us know what else you and your corner of West Virginia need from our team at Mountain State Spotlight.
Ken Ward Jr.
Founding Editor-in-Chief
As our media outlets have cut back on reporting, West Virginians desperately need intelligent, in-depth, and independent news. Over the last four years, I’ve watched proudly as our Mountain State Spotlight reporters have written story after compelling story showing how the decisions of our elected officials affect our lives. These stories have an impact, and are free for everyone to read. But they cost money to produce.
We’re building the nonprofit newsroom that all of us in West Virginia need. I’m proud to be part of it, and I hope you will join us.
Ben Bailey
Board Chair
Four years of accountability journalism
2020
From the beginning, Mountain State Spotlight has drawn the ire of powerful political leaders. When a story published on our second day revealed major problems with the state’s COVID case map, Gov. Jim Justice attacked us as “hit job Ken Ward’s people” and “just an arm of the Democratic party.”
Our journalism also tries to show how West Virginians are finding solutions, like one community’s rural broadband cooperative.
2021
When we covered a major opioid trial in the spring of 2021, we revealed how executives at a leading drug distributor made light of the crisis.
Through our partnership with ProPublica, we highlighted how one of the nation’s most deadly chemical plants sits in one of West Virginia’s only majority-Black communities.
2022
After our investigation of deaths in West Virginia jails, lawmakers reversed themselves and reopened reports on the causes of these deaths to the families of those who died.
By stepping back from the daily flood of media coverage, we’ve produced simple stories that give West Virginians what they need to know about complicated issues, like the Constitutional amendments on the November 2022 ballot.
2023
Our public health coverage reexamines issues like firearms deaths and shows how the Legislature is moving to loosen gun restrictions can backfire.
We’re focusing on the legacy costs of West Virginia’s fossil fuel industries, revealing who is likely to get stuck with the bill for cleaning up abandoned natural gas wells.
2024
In our most ambitious project to date, we revealed how immigrant workers from around the globe came to Moorefield and ended up shouldering a disproportionate amount of the risks in one of the state’s most dangerous workplaces.
Our sustained coverage of cancer-causing air pollution in Institute showed how new rules failed to address the concerns in that historically Black community.
How we cover the West Virginia Legislature
The annual legislative session is a time of possibility and promise, when elected officials have a chance to come together to make the state better and address its major challenges. But the session can also be a time of missed opportunities, political infighting, grandstanding – even abuses of power by special interests.
We know that West Virginians want, need and deserve legislative journalism that holds powerful interests accountable.
That’s why we deploy our entire team of reporters to the statehouse during the session. We focus on the big picture ramifications of lawmakers passing – or not passing – legislation, rather than the procedural coverage that obscures more significant narratives.
We know sometimes it’s hard to keep up. Who do lawmakers ask for testimony on important bills that will affect your life? What are they saying behind closed doors? Which of the state’s challenges are given short shrift in favor of lawmakers’ pet projects? What are the friction points holding up important bills that would help people?
Rather than glossing over these questions, we’re focusing on them to help readers understand how the sausage is made. In 2023 we illustrated the many ways the process can ignore the public interest with a deep analysis of the bill that made high school sports transfers easier and, in effect, ruined high school football in the state.
In 2023 we launched a newsletter called Statehouse Spotlight to help West Virginians make sense of the session. We designed it with the ambitious goal of bringing our deep reporting and powerful writing to readers more frequently, so they get what they need to know about what happens each day during the session. Like all of our reporting, it’s free; it hits inboxes Monday through Thursday evenings during the legislative session.
Election reporting with voters at the center
Mountain State Spotlight delivered election coverage that voters need, taking the narrative away from campaign consultants and horse-race pollsters. Using the “Citizens Agenda” approach, we asked voters across the state what they wanted to hear candidates talk about as they asked for votes. We published stories based on these conversations then put these questions to the candidates and published their answers or made it clear which candidates refused to answer. Our election coverage does what we try to do every day – lift up the voices of West Virginians and give them information they need to make informed choices about the things that matter in our communities.
As the news landscape eroded, West Virginia voters struggled to get reliable information about political candidates. In November 2022 we launched our first Voter Guide. As it turns out, voters in our state were desperate for basic information, like who was on their ballot on election day. One in five voters used that guide to help them navigate that midterm election.
This year we ramped up these efforts. In addition to a new Voter Guide for 2024, we barnstormed the state, talking to voters in all 55 counties about what is going on in their communities. We used what we learned to frame our interviews with candidates and are building what we heard from voters into our long-range coverage plans going far beyond this year’s election.
Mountain State Spotlight by the numbers
Help us keep reporting
Nearly every day, we ask the same question: What do West Virginians need to know? Our goal is to provide the information you need to make your community and the state better places to live.
Your support of Mountain State Spotlight is a statement that you believe nonpartisan, well-written, thoroughly researched reporting is essential to make West Virginia better. Your help ensures that everyone has free access to journalism that holds government and powerful interests accountable and lifts up the voices that often go unheard. Thank you for your support and your faith in the value of this challenging effort.
Sara M. Crickenberger
Executive Director
To donate go to mountainstatespotlight.org/donate or mail a check to 170 Summers Street Suite 210 Charleston, West Virginia 25301. Mountain State Spotlight is a nonprofit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and your donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Our supporters
Alexis Pugh
American Journalism Project
Appalachian Mountain Advocates in memory of Sean McGinley
Arnold Ventures
Bill Bishop and Julie Ardery
Brian Glasser
Community Foundation of Louisville
Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation
Emerson Collective
Ford Foundation
Galloway Family Foundation
Greg Moore
Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation
Inasmuch Foundation
Jonathan Logan Family Foundation
Martha and Will Carter
Miller-Wehrle Family Foundation
The Paul J. Nyden Fund for Social Justice at the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation
ProPublica
Report for America
Sara and Ben Bailey Family Fund
Sarah and Jim Umberger
Stan Cavendish
States Newsroom
Stuart Calwell
White Family Trust / Katy White
University of Southern California Annenberg School of Public Health
Yellow Chair Foundation
The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation
While our staff covers the whole state, we rely on West Virginians to share what stories you think we should cover. You can send us a tip at tips@mountainstatespotlight.org or by calling or texting 304-506-8477.