Today’s front page of the Wheeling Intelligencer features three pictures of construction equipment* that take-up roughly half of the front page. Two of them are connected to a story about the construction of a home improvement store at the Highlands:

Menards Going Up Fast At The Highlands

Okay, one of those does illustrate how far the construction has progressed. The other is just a picture of a piece of equipment. The third is a picture of construction equipment being used to work on Interstate 70 repairs. (I-70 construction pictures have become an almost-daily, front-page feature.)

At the bottom of the page is “A Note to Our Readers.” The note explains that the Intelligencer has been listening to reader concerns and suggestions and has decided to showcase “a new, easier-to-read type face.” (It translates to a larger font size.) They care about reader concerns? Or, is it (as most college students can tell you) that a larger font size mean fewer words are necessary to fill-up a page? For our local “newspapers,” I think that this is not about reader concerns; it’s about saving money. Additionally, the cliché that “a picture is worth 1000 words” may need to be revised. With a larger font, it’s probably more like 800 words. (Does that mean even larger pictures of construction equipment?)

It should also be noted that the editorial page features the efforts of the WV Division of Highways to fix a traffic bottleneck 36 miles north of Wheeling in New Cumberland, WV. I assume it came from Ogden’s Weirton paper. It has nothing to do with Wheeling but that doesn't matter -- it takes up space.

*I don’t know about you, but I never tire of seeing pictures of construction equipment in the news.