1. An October 22 PR release from WVU gets front-page coverage

Here’s a screenshot of the original:

Here’s that same press release (word-for-word) on the front page of today’s Wheeling newspapers:

WVU Extension Service Program Helps Youth Struggling With Weight, Pre-Diabetes

2. E-Tablets for WV inmates – A late-October story finally gets coverage in today’s Wheeling Intelligencer

A timeline:

October 25 – WV Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety issues a press release:

W.Va. prisons offer inmate tablets

October 25 – the Beckley Register-Herald covers the story by printing the press release.

October 26 – the Associated Press publishes a story based upon the press release.

October 30 – the Fairmont Times West Virginian editorializes that the “free” tablets are “anything but” concluding that:

This is the opposite of justice. This is antithetical to correction or rehabilitation — it's predatory.

November and December – numerous online sources pick-up the story. Most are critical. (See here, here, and here, for instance.) A number of these sources cite the Appalachian Prison Book Project which is very critical of the WV program.

December 12 – Ogden Newspapers’ political reporter, Steven Allen Adams, finally covers the story. Adams does devote two paragraphs to some of the Appalachian Prison Book Project points but then gives six paragraphs for the state’s spokesperson to answer.