Since 2017, the local papers have claimed on various occasions that they are “community newspapers.” On Saturday, the Intelligencer once again reminded us:

But local matters - things affecting the everyday lives of our readers - were and are priorities at The Intelligencer.

That description partly explains their declining coverage of international and national news – especially news that is critical of Trump – in favor of local news.* On the editorial page, the right-wing syndicated columnists and political cartoonists continue their usual attacks, but the editorials have been mostly about local topics. However, as next year’s national election heats up, it certainly appears that distinction may be changing. Today is a good example.

The morning Intelligencer featured an editorial attacking Democratic candidate for president, Bernie Sanders. It featured all the usual words and attacks (see above) that local readers expect from our Republican "newspapers." (In an obvious oversight, it did forget to mention Hillary Clinton.) It also included the local’s often-repeated lie about the Obama administration’s “clean coal” efforts:

In fact, Obama slashed federal funding for research into ways coal could be used without climate change.

Mike Myer used this attack as the basis for an entire column two months ago and it’s simply not true. I wrote about it here and unlike our local editor, I used actual sources to support my points.

While the afternoon News-Register’s editorials were on different subjects, the paper did change the title of Adriana Cohen’s syndicated column about the Democrats in order to use one of its favorite words. Here is the title from the syndicate used by most other news sources:

Dems' Politicizing Is Becoming Toxic for Americans

And here is the title in this afternoon’s Wheeling News-Register:

Democrats Should Drop Vendetta, Focus on Real Problems

Long-time readers of this blog know that “vendetta” was, according to our local papers, the motivation for most, if not all, of former president Obama’s actions toward West Virginia. (I documented it almost two dozen times in his second term alone.)

I did like the editorial’s conclusion:

Talk is very cheap. We’ve heard it before.

Sort of sums it up!

Note -- no link to morning editorial - it's not online.

*I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve already seen enough half-page pictures of the proposed I-70 roadwork (and the construction project hasn’t even started).