Journalism at Denison
Journalism at Denison
Watching West Virginia
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By Eva Altizer
Amelia Knisely is a West Virginian political reporter. That was so hard at one point she had to leave the area. What brings her back?
Uh sometimes in journalism people will say we're a voice for the voiceless. I don't like that. I feel like West Virginians have a really strong voice. It just doesn't always get heard.
SPEAKER_00Amelia Farrell Nicely joining us uh from West Virginia Watch. You have a story posted over at West VirginiaWatch.com.
SPEAKER_01Amelia Farrell Nicely with West Virginia Watch media organization is reporting now.
SPEAKER_02Hi, I'm Amelia Nicely, reporter for West Virginia Watch.
SPEAKER_04I do not like to let things go and Amelia Nicely, a reporter for West Virginia Watch, a nonprofit news organization focused solely on government and policy, sat down with me in Mia Kappa, the coffee shop where the West Virginia Watch reporters turned out stories before they weren't able to rent an office space. Today, with the legislative session in full swing, Amelia is in the middle of the storm.
SPEAKER_03And something, you know, we're in the middle of legislative session coverage, which is like the Super Bowl, as I refer to it, is all hands on deck. It's like the thing, I I am a nerd, so I look forward to it every year, but it's it's a lot. But I was thinking last week, we were the reporters and I were talking about this, like our press corps has shrunk even from last year. And so session isn't necessarily the time that you get to report what you're passionate about. Sometimes it's about just showing people what's happening at the Capitol.
SPEAKER_04The legislative session in West Virginia lasts from January to March, when all legislators come to Charleston from all over the state to draft bills and pass laws. As news deserts in West Virginia continue to expand, a small group of reporters work to keep up with an extraordinary supermajority of Republicans who have hardly any roadblocks between them and their goals.
SPEAKER_03One common complaint or thought that Republican lawmakers will throw out, well, you always put the Democrats in your story, and it's like, well, that's because I sat through four meetings on this bill and not one Republican spoke up about it. Because it's a supermajority, and because they know almost any bill is going to pass, not always, but most are going to have this majority vote behind them because lots of bills are not controversial, right? Very rarely do they explain their bills. The House has a new process where they kind of have to, but it still can be just them reading the text from the bill. So that can be challenging. And also as a reporter, you do want balance in your story. And so it feels like I'm quoting the same people over and over again because there are only 11 Democrats, but I think putting their perspective in is important so that people can see both sides.
SPEAKER_04Growing up in Rand, a small town outside of Charleston, Amelia says that being surrounded by poverty gave her interests in child welfare, social services, and government. In college, she switched from pre-law to journalism.
SPEAKER_03I started reading a lot of news coverage of mining disasters and water quality issues in West Virginia. That's not something that I grew up experiencing, even though I'm from a poor town in West Virginia. So that really just stuck with me. Like I was just thinking about honestly the injustice of mothers having to haul water, carry a city in a car, from the local grocery store just to make a bottle for their children.
SPEAKER_04I also noticed that your daughters are named after like prominent West Virginians.
SPEAKER_03They're actually named after Tudor's biscuits. Which are prominent West Virginians.
SPEAKER_04Amelia is a very passionate West Virginian and everyone knows it. She named her three daughters after items on the Tudor's Biscuit World menu, a West Virginia fast food chain that is synonymous with Mountaineer.
SPEAKER_03So my oldest is Pepper, um, which is the Peppy, obviously. And then um Dottie is just that's the name of a biscuit. And then Goldie, my youngest, is named for Golden Eagle, which is the UC mascot and also a biscuit.
SPEAKER_04So work as a reporter in the West Virginia legislature is full of challenges, sure. But the press lawmaker relationship isn't always as hostile as people may assume.
SPEAKER_03I mean, lawmakers rely on us to tell them what's going on with the state agencies. They wouldn't know about the $300 million broken database if we didn't report on it. They wouldn't know about the former arts commissioner buying a, I think it was a multi-million dollar piano on the state's dime if it wasn't in a story. So they need us and we need them to help us with things too, right? Like we need to interview them and they're also holding state agencies accountable, and then we're covering them. Like it's it's not the easiest relationship, but I think overall, like they respect what we do, and I think in this age of fake news and all journalists are leftist hacks and all the stereotypes, that's not really my experience at the Capitol. And in fact, some of the really right-wing Republicans will even like call me that in a joking way, but they understand we're there to do our job. So I think that's cool that we can kind of bridge that gap and like whatever they've read on Twitter or the national news, we could be like, oh no, we're just local reporters who are here to cover you and the state agency. So I think that's a cool thing. A lot of these lawmakers have been there for a long time. A lot of us press members have been there for a long time. They know my kids' names, they know my friends' kids' names or our dogs' names or whatever. Um, and so there's just a pretty good level of respect there.
SPEAKER_04But sometimes the relationship between the state government and journalists is less than good. In 2023, after reporting on the alleged abuse of disabled people by agency DHHR, the Department of Health and Human Resources, Amelia was abruptly and quietly let go from West Virginia public broadcasting, according to CBS News. This came days after the only newspaper in town, the Charleston Gazette Mail, fired three reporters who publicly criticized owner Doug Scaff, who was also the minority leader in the House. Amelia is not at liberty to say much except how she was impacted.
SPEAKER_03I will say that losing my job the way I did was probably the hardest thing I've ever been through in my life. Um, the combination of financial insecurity that came out of nowhere with three small kids combined with the public nature of it was really hard. And um I was already trying to deal with the stress of now suddenly I don't have a paycheck coming in, and then all of a sudden it was on the national news, and we live in a very small town, and so and I have red hair, some people can usually stop me. And so I had this period of my life where every time I left the house with my three small kids, people were stopping me. Now, granted, all of the times people stopped me, it was to support me, and I'm so grateful for that. I had like the most generous outpouring of love from all over the country, and I will always be grateful for that. But I felt like I was under a microscope.
SPEAKER_04It was clear from where I was sitting at that table in the eternally busy Mia Kappa that despite everything, Amelia would not give up for the sake of her family, her people, her community.
SPEAKER_03I want West Virginia to win. Like I love it here, and I'm really proud to raise my kids here and give them what I think is a good life here. This is not the worst place to live at all, despite what people say. I just, I cannot believe that we continue year after year to not pass policies or approve things that would greatly improve the lives of people that live here. Um I think the issues we're talking about, like clean water, access to OBGYN care, those shouldn't be political things. So I don't feel like as a journalist that I'm crossing that line of being political. It's like, no, these are just basic things that we want our neighbors to have. So I think I'm motivated by helping people, but I'm also motivated by continuing to uplift the stories of inequality in our state. And we can actually change it, right? Like you can't change the landscape of our state, but we can change if people have clean water.