News

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W.Va. Opioid Settlement Funds are Supposed to Reverse Years of Crisis. In Several Counties, They’re Being Used to Pay Regional Jail Bills.
In rural Wyoming County, West Virginia, Ann Reed is the sheriff’s department’s only social worker. Funded through a temporary ...
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W.Va. Counties Set the Rules for Opioid Funds — with No One Watching
For two hours every Thursday and Friday, Randall Brown gathers a handful of people in front of a whiteboard. They sit on a ...
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The Price of Recovery
As millions in opioid settlement funds reach West Virginia, counties are making high-stakes choices about how to spend it — ...
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North Carolina County Wanted New Court to Stem Its Opioid Crisis. Then Came Trump’s Cuts.
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on ...
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Big Tech Comes to Tucker County, WV
Pamela Moe was reading the paper in late March when she spotted a public notice from a company she’d never heard of. Fundamental Data, a Virginia-based company, had applied for a permit from West ...
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‘Hell or High Water’: Southern W.Va. Three Weeks After the Flood
On February 15, 2025, a catastrophic flood ravaged McDowell County, West Virginia, and much of the state’s southern coalfields. At least three people were reported dead due to the flash flooding, with ...
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In West Virginia’s Southern Coalfields, a Grassroots ‘Jubilee’
On a late spring day in 2022, Rev. Brad Davis was riding along the twisting roads of McDowell County, West Virginia. Davis was soon to start his current job pastoring five United Methodist churches ...
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‘They’re All Damaged.’ Despite Progress, West Virginia is Still Failing to Get Foster Kids the Mental Health Help They Need
Reporting highlights. Locked up: West Virginia still sends kids with physical or emotional disabilities to group homes and treatment centers at a rate three times the national average, according to ...
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‘An Ecosystem of Dysfunction:’ West Virginia Still Has a Child Welfare Worker Shortage, and It’s Taking a Toll on Foster Kids and Families
Reporting Highlights. Continued shortages: West Virginia is still struggling to hire and retain child welfare workers, with wide-reaching consequences for kids in the foster care system. Permanency: ...
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Tyler Childers’ Appalachia: How the Country Singer Challenges our Relationships with Addiction and Religion
The first time I heard Tyler Childers’ voice I was riding in the passenger seat of a 15-year-old car late at night through the back roads of West Virginia. It was 2019, and I was 17 years old. And ...
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Front Porch Politics: JD Vance, Tim Walz, and Appalachian masculinity.
From an attempted assassination and an historic withdrawal from the race, the 2024 election has already had more twists and turns than an Aaron Sorkin screenplay. I should be forgiven, then, for how ...
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A Survivor Recounts His Escape From Impact Plastics
A sign at the entrance of Riverview Industrial Park in Erwin, Tennessee, where Impact Plastics is located. On Friday, September 27, 2024, intense rainfall from Hurricane Helene flooded the Nolichucky ...