Tag: narrative journalism
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Silver Bridge tragedy still haunts river city residents
This story originally appeared in the December 11, 2012 edition of the Charleston Daily Mail. Ben Cedar crossed the Silver Bridge three times on the day it fell. He was working as a Kirby sweeper salesman back then, and crossing the bridge was the fastest way to get across the Ohio River from his home […]
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In Search of the Stone Man
This story originally appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of WV Living magazine. Russ Jones navigates the woods with an ease that only comes through vast experience. His running shoes do not lose their footing on this steep, unmarked trail in Kanawha State Forest. As a certified Master Naturalist, he readily spots animal tracks and identifies birdsong, […]
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How Gillian Welch Created an Americana Touchstone in ‘Revival’
This is an excerpt of a story that first appeared online at Rolling Stone Country on November 10, 2016. Read the rest of the story here. Early afternoons were pretty quiet at the Lyric Springs Country Inn. The previous night’s guests usually left in the morning, headed for home or into Nashville about 20 miles away. […]
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High Hopes for a New Cash Crop
This story originally appeared in the August/September ’16 issue of Morgantown Magazine. Susanna Wheeler prefers not to divulge the location of her summer garden. She’ll admit it is planted on WVU property, but that is as much information as she’s comfortable giving out. “We don’t want people to try to come up here and see […]
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A Creek Runs Through It
This story originally appeared in the September 2016 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. The fish weren’t biting when Rick Burgess and his twin brothers Denny and Danny arrived at Spruce Knob Lake for a weekend camping trip in 1976. Denny suggested they try their luck in a nearby stream he’d heard about, so he […]
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At River’s Bottom
This story originally appeared in the August 2016 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. At first, no one knew exactly what was happening, or why. But one fact was clear—lots of things were dying in Dunkard Creek. Division of Natural Resources fisheries biologists Frank Jernejcic and Dave Wellman were at the Monongalia County stream almost every […]
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Casts of Character
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of WV Living magazine. The Native American hunter, all bulging muscle and sinew, lies close to his horse’s neck as the beast reaches full gallop. He clutches a flint-tipped spear in his right hand. With his left he holds a buffalo hide, draping the skin over himself […]
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A Job You Wear
This story originally appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of WV Living magazine. On June 15, 2015, elected officials, members of the public, and journalists crammed into the dark wood-paneled council chambers at Charleston City Hall to watch Kanawha Circuit Judge Todd Kaufman administer the oath of office to Mayor Danny Jones. He had been […]
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Late Edition
This story was originally published in the September/October 2015 issue of West Virginia Focus magazine. Around 3 p.m. on Sunday, July 19, the newsroom staffs of the Charleston Daily Mail and Charleston Gazette were called to the front lobby of their shared headquarters at 1001 Virginia Street East in downtown Charleston. Employees immediately knew something […]
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A Boy and His Bird
This story originally appeared in the February 2016 issue of Wonderful West Virginia magazine. For more than a millennium, people in Japan and China have used aquatic birds called cormorants to help them catch fish. Fishermen tie hemp snares around a trained bird’s throat so that, when the animal dives into the water after its […]