After a week of filling their "newspapers" with few local stories but lots of AP stories, our locals returned to form on Sunday once again emphasizing local stories even if the stories were not exactly front page news or, in one case, not even a new story.

The Sunday front page, in particular, seemed to be filled with feature-article filler:

Area Native Stenger Flying High in F-35

and

McCort Seeks Recognition For War Hero Baker

both above the fold, were interesting feature stories but hardly examples of "hard" news. Below the fold was an AP story on Donald Trump and a recycled and reprinted story from March about the fate of a local pit bull terrier that had killed a man who was attempting to help the dog's owner. It was republished because the editors deemed it one of their top ten stories of the year. (I can hardly wait for the remaining nine stories.)

Finally, the front page included a Casey Junkin's ten paragraph story about local coal and the EPA which contained nothing new -- it was simply a rehash of previous columns: four of the ten paragraphs featured the thoughts of local coal baron Robert Murray (obligatory), the bogus Energy Ventures Analysis was cited in another, the efforts of our senators were contrasted with Democrats Clinton and Sanders, while the rest of the article featured undocumented statistics of what will happen if the Clean Power Plan is implemented. There was nothing new in the article -- my hunch is that Junkins mailed this one in earlier in the week.

I would also note Mike Myer's Sunday column which was entitled "Marketing Wonderful, Wild W. Va." I think the column was about tourism although it skipped from topic to topic: mines shutting down, Hillary Clinton, wild turkeys, Canadian geese at the Heritage Port, tourism and kids with money. Like most of the Sunday paper, his column contained no fresh ideas and for a just a moment I actually felt sorry for Mike Myer -- when I have nothing to write about, I don't have to write.