Celebrating the first year of West Virginia Watch

West Virginia Watch reporters Lori Kersey (from left), Amelia Ferrell Knisely and Caity Coyne work in the West Virginia House of Delegate chambers during the regular session of the Legislature on Feb. 2, 2024, in Charleston, W.Va. (Perry Bennett | West Virginia Legislative Photography)

This time last year, I was slightly panicking but trying to act like I wasn‘t at all.

I had started working at States Newsroom in May, and I had to come up with our name and our logo, hire reporters and plan strategy.

Amelia Ferrell Knisely joined me the next month and began reporting. Lori Kersey started on July 3 and Caity Coyne on July 5 — the same day we announced to the world that West Virginia Watch would launch the following week on July 11. We had a goal of 12 stories for our first day, so now you may understand the reason for my panic.

Would I have chosen to launch the week after a major holiday knowing what I know now? Absolutely not. Turns out, lots of people take vacations the week of July 4. Kinda makes it hard to write stories. And we needed lots of stories for our launch.

We didn’t have office space yet, so we met at our unofficial office, Mea Cuppa on Charleston’s West Side for our launch announcement day. We watched our tweets go out announcing our website, our newsletter and telling people a little about each of us. It was so exciting to see people share our posts and show interest in West Virginia Watch.

Meanwhile, Amelia, Caity and Lori worked on their articles. We had six days to finish everything — and we had to keep reminding ourselves that we would have to work on more for the next day and the next day and the next day.

Several of our stories from our first day covered topics we’re still following closely a year later — the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s silica dust rule , the West Virginia First Foundation , Medicaid and the state’s foster care system .

The last year has been a lot of learning and feeling things out. Sometimes stories you think will have lots of engagement don’t get much, and then a daily story from the Legislature gets tons of views — like Lori’s Medicaid denture bill story. Obviously it’s an important story, but we were surprised to see that it’s our 15th most read story in the last year.

The point is, it’s hard to determine sometimes what your audience wants to read. We’ve tried to focus on topics we as West Virginians feel are important. I’m extremely proud of the work my reporters have done in the last year.

Lori is doing an incredible job of covering issues involving people who are homeless around the state. She’s covered some issues with the local soup kitchen in Charleston, and in March, she traveled to Wheeling to talk to members of the homeless encampment that has been moved multiple times by the city.

Her articles about Wheeling’s encampment were even included in an amicus brief filing in the U.S. Supreme Court case of City of Grants Pass v. Johnson .

Caity, who has years of experience covering addiction and recovery, especially in Southern West Virginia, has been aggressively covering the West Virginia First Foundation , the board tasked with distributing $1 billion in opioid settlement funds to communities across the state.

Caity prodded the foundation when they didn’t publicly announce its first meeting and called out the board for going into executive session to talk about transparency.

She also keeps in mind people who are in recovery, most recently attending an annual softball tournament in Southern West Virginia and through it delving into what is working and what still needs to be done to help those who struggle with addiction.

Amelia has been covering foster care for years. One of her first stories for West Virginia Watch focused on how West Virginia’s vouchers for foster parents barely cover costs associated with fostering children.

She’s continued to report on how nearly 300 foster children ran away while in state care, the growing number of children in the system, the class action lawsuit against the former Department of Health and Human Resources related to foster care and DHHR’s missing emails . And that’s only stories from July to November of last year.

Amelia’s also doing an incredible job of covering the issues with Child Protective Services in the state.

During the 2024 regular legislative session, Amelia, Caity and Lori were  there every single day there were meetings, writing multiple stories. They worked together on planning coverage and had amazing insight to know which bills to follow, and which wouldn’t go anywhere. It was a strange session, but they did an outstanding job.

I’m so proud every day of the reporting we’re producing, and I’m incredibly lucky to work with kind, supportive and talented people. We often talk about how fortunate we are to be a part of States Newsroom and to be supported by people who understand how journalism works.

We’re also so grateful to the other news outlets who have supported us by republishing our work and the support system of reporters we’ve formed while covering the statehouse. And we can’t forget our readers who cheer us on, share our work and who generously donate so we can continue to do this important work.

I thought we’d have a good first year, but it really went beyond my expectations. I can’t wait to see what our second year has in store for West Virginia Watch.

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