Answer

At most newspapers, the biggest story would likely be either A, C, or D. But the Wheeling News-Register only sometimes functions as a newspaper; its Republican bias in news coverage and its failure to disclose its conflicts of interests leave it woefully short of what some readers might expect.

A look at possible answers: A is the shortest of the articles. It’s on page A5 and it includes the first 400 words of an Associated Press article about the Pope. (This was the extent of national/international news articles in the weekend paper.) Although a little over 500 words, B has no news value; the front-page story’s purpose is to promote an upcoming Ogden Newspaper event. C is news but it is under 500 words. So is D and to its credit, it is a developed news article (over 1600 words). The winner, at 1800 words with three accompanying pictures taking up most of the Life section, is E.

So how is a story about a distillery in Pittsburgh’s Strip District worth almost 2,000 words in a Wheeling newspaper?

A simple answer: the distillery was purchased in 2022 by the newspaper’s owner, Robert Nutting. That information might be critical to a reader's assessment of the article but the author, Ogden's editorial director, John McCabe, fails to tell us that important fact. (Note -- I wrote about Nutting’s purchase here.)

Shouldn’t the article make us aware of Robert Nutting's ownership?

Ethically, yes, it is about full disclosure. Here, I would use a simple definition: full disclosure is “the disclosure of any connection between a reporter (publisher) and the subject of an article that may bias the article.”

Disclosure is a recurring problem for Ogden. Two examples come quickly to mind: the paper's promotion of the Nutting-owned Seven Springs resort and Ogden’s editorial support for a baseball integrity fee.

At the end of 2021, Robert Nutting sold the Seven Springs resort bringing an end, among other stories, to an annual December front page Ogden article which previewed the upcoming ski season. While other resorts would often be mentioned in the articles, Seven Springs always received the bulk (usually around 75%) of the coverage. Additionally, another blog post on Seven Springs noted how “the paper regularly treats the appearance of food trucks, wine and beer tastings, and fireworks at the resort as news stories even though the resort is almost 100 miles from Wheeling.” Nutting's ownership of the resort was never mentioned in any of these articles.

In addition to regularly promoting Seven Springs, Ogden also pushed for the inclusion of a sports integrity fee in 2018 as West Virginia moved to legalize sports wagering. That year, with frequent editorials and news articles, Nutting’s WV papers campaigned for a significant fee to be paid by the sports books to sports owners. As I noted at the time: MLB stood to get $480 million in just its first year. I concluded:

Wheeling's newspapers have supported the integrity fee from the beginning and at no point have they explained that one of prime beneficiaries of the fee would be the papers' owner, Bob Nutting. Forget full disclosure on this one. Once again, this is no disclosure.

Finally, I understand why Nutting’s papers failed to disclose on Seven Springs and the integrity fee. But why not tell us that Nutting owns the distillery?
——-
Note — the original published post has been edited for clarity.