Breaking News

Opinion

Community Calendar

Columnists

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Inter-Mountain’s Community Calendar is reserved for nonprofit, civic organizations. Unless otherwise noted, events listed should be considered free and open to the public. Entries appear in chronological order and as space allows. FOREST FESTIVAL GRAND FEATURE PARADE SEATS: will be available at Otterbein United Methodist Church at 1100 South Davis Avenue in Elkins. The seats for the Oct. 4 parade are on sale now. Parade seats may be reserved by calling the church office at 304-636-0569 Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. All seats must be paid for by ...

Low Energy

Editorials

The Wall Street Journal reported in its Sept. 3 edition that the gap in confidence between high-earners and low-earners “is now the widest it has been in the seven years of tracking the data.” The newspaper said that, for this nation’s middle class, this summer has been one of cooling confidence, with consumer sentiment dropping nearly 6% in August. If that “confidence dive” continues, 2025’s end-of-year holidays could prove dismal for retailers, not only somewhere else but here in the Southern Alleghenies region as well. Black Friday, already a skeleton of its former ...

W.Va. loses a good man

Columnists

West Virginia is a small state, and state government is not large, so the longer you cover certain politicians, the more chances you have to see the human side of the people you cover and even become friends. That’s the way it was with Tim Armstead, the late justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and the former minority leader who rose to become the first Republican speaker of the House of Delegates in nearly 83 years. I attended the visitation for Armstead last Tuesday in the chambers of the House of Delegates, not as a news reporter but as a friend. I have a ...

Britain — The Land of the Unfree

Columnists

When the Irish comedian Graham Linehan arrived at London Heathrow Airport this past weekend, he was greeted by five armed British police officers who arrested him for — get this — three rude tweets. Or, as Linehan wrote on his Substack, “I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online — all because I made jokes that upset some psychotic crossdressers.” Whether or not you find his words offensive, it’s hard to disagree with Harry Potter author J. K. ...

Wikipedia and Google

Columnists

While artificial intelligence may make the student research paper obsolete, if today a student does their own research and writing, it’s quite possible they will use Google to search their topic, and Google will invariably send the searcher to a Wikipedia article. If they were to write about cable news, the Wikipedia results are as biased as ... well, cable news. Their entries on Fox News Channel and Newsmax are remarkably different from the ones on CNN and MSNBC. Right away, in the second sentence, Wikipedia tells us Newsmax “has been variously described as conservative, ...

Take Action

Editorials

September is the start of many things: football season, the school year for some, spooky season if you ask the right people … But this is also Hunger Action Month. Note the difference between this “month” designation and many others. This is not just about awareness; this is about action to “provide nutritious food to neighbors facing hunger,” as Feeding America puts it. The idea is to come together with food banks and volunteers in communities “to build a nation where everyone has the food and support they need.” But that doesn’t happen if YOU don’t take ...