The "History Never Stands Still...Be It Good Or Bad!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  The full-length page in my local newspaper told the story of a newspaper in rural West Virginia which had to stop publication due to extremely low sales.  The residents in the area complained of the information void after The Welch News, which bound the community together, folded in the declining coal county.  I think about my local newspaper and how much I would miss it if it stopped publication.  The article which told the story of The Welch News told of the newspaper that ended it's 100-year run in West Virginia's southern coalfields.  The Welsh News owner and publisher's desk was covered with unpaid bills and her own paychecks which she never cashed.....a year's worth!  Phones that used to ring throughout the day have gone silent and tables covered with awards and a century's worth of long-abandoned artifacts stand as reminders of her beloved paper.  Missy Nester, the owner of The Welch News, has stopped the weekly publication just as other owners of a quarter of other publications in our country have done.  For the town of McDowell, the news is still a shock.  Many said they didn't realize how much they depended on the paper until it was gone.  The 535-square-mile county is dominated by rugged mountain terrain, where residents live miles apart in hollers that are connected by winding roads and no interstate access, leaving people isolated.  Cell and internet service is nonexistent in many areas and there is no locally based radio or television stations.  Missy said, "We're in a unique situation because our community is unique.  We have no other substantial way of communicating."  For Missy and her staff of three, the grief of closing the newspaper has felt impossible to confront after years of sacrifices, both financial and personal.  Missy had taken out a loan and scraped together all the money she could to save it.  But, the crumbling building with a caving roof, cracked walls and a 1966 Goss printing press just wasn't enough.  Sprawling across the Cumberland Mountains of Appalachia, McDowell County was once seen as a symbol of American progress.  In 1950, nearly 100,000 people lived in McDowell.  Today the population is 17,850  and the town is the poorest, with some of the lowest graduation and life expectancy rates in the nation.  A third of the residents live in poverty.  Over the years the county lost big box stores, schools, thousands of jobs and people.  But...it still had it's newspaper.   Today, one resident said that losing the newspaper is like "losing a family member."  The void created by the disappearance of The Welch News is being filled by cable news and social media.  But, much of what is circulating today on Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets is unverified.  The newspaper used to act as a counter to that misinformation.  When Missy Nester was raising her three children as a single mother in the 1990s and 2000s, the county's older residents would stop by her house on surprise visits with meals and cash they'd tape to her front door.  Many of the people who read the newspaper are now aging.  She thought she would keep the newspaper going as a way to repay them for everything they did to take care of her.  But, now all that is gone.  So sad to see history fall apart!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.