Bad Journalism in Paden City

The editor of two local newspapers that cover Paden City has become one of the most vocal critics of the elected officials and public servants in the town he has called home for 68 years. But you wouldn’t know it from reading his newspapers.

Ed Parsons, the editor of the Tyler Star News and Wetzel Chronicle, has reserved his ire about water and air pollution in Paden City for less visible forums. He spoke at a West Virginia Public Service Commission hearing and has written letters to the commission.

Parsons’ interactions with the PSC provide a window into his views about the two biggest news stories in Paden City — its status as a Superfund site and an ongoing attempt to close Paden City High School. But his personal activism also raises questions about how his newspapers have covered those issues in recent months.

Past and present water pollution
Parsons first injected himself into the debate over Paden City’s water quality on Jan. 29 when the PSC held a hearing in town. The hearing was part of an investigation into whether Paden City and its water department should be classified as a “distressed or failing utility.”

Parsons emphasized that he spoke as a longtime resident, not in his official capacity for the newspapers. But he cited their archives as proof that Paden City has had water problems ranging from copper to arsenic since at least 1979, not just the dry-cleaning chemical that has been in the water in recent years.

“We haven't had our whole community tested,” Parsons said. “We've had small portions of our community tested with a lot of other areas that need to be tested.”

He suggested that water pollution may explain why three men from Paden City (one of them mentioned in Mountain State Spotlight) have died of the rare neurological disorder Lou Gehrig’s disease and why cancers are common in the town. Parsons added that his wife has been battling esophagus cancer since 2023 and that he has skin cancer.

“I'm sick and tired of seeing people being sick and having to spend extra money for water to drink,” Parsons said. “And then still having to shower and wash our clothes in it.”

Now that Paden City is a Superfund site polluted by the dry-cleaning chemical PCE, he argued that the town needs to find a new water source to ensure people’s safety. “We can't just continue to go on and on and put a Band-Aid over it. We've got to do something to fix it.”

The ‘poisoning’ of Paden City
Parsons reiterated his views in a follow-up “letter of protest” that he sent to the Public Service Commission the day after the hearing in town.

He said the water supply into his house can be dirty and reek of sewage on any given day. He also blamed the deaths of people’s pets on polluted water but did not provide any evidence. “It’s about the poisoning of the community population,” Parsons wrote.

He disputed the town’s claim that it doesn’t get many complaints about the water. “Trying to communicate with the water department is a nightmare,” Parsons said. “They would rather argue than try and help find a solution.” He urged the PSC not to trust the sworn testimony of the town’s water superintendent and even questioned the conclusion of the commission’s own utility analyst, who found that Paden City’s water system is not financially distressed or failing.

Parsons has mostly complained about town officials and employees, but he also has expressed concern about Paden City High School, which sits within the Superfund site. He first raised the issue in a letter dated April 4 — one day after a related public revelation by Wetzel County Schools Superintendent Cassandra Porter.

Parsons noted the involvement of both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Local and state school officials eventually cited the latter agency, but ignored the former, in temporarily closing PCHS over fears of toxic vapors inside the school.

“It is in the best interest of all residents, Paden City school students and community businesses that the PSC seriously not only consider but demand Paden City seek out another source of water,” Parsons wrote. “... Prolonging the situation is unacceptable, dangerous and potentially life threatening to citizens of the community.”

On May 4, Parsons once again called attention to the high school and the “disturbing” reality that it sits atop a Superfund site. “The citizens of Paden City and the students and staff at the high school deserve better,” he wrote.

Questions of objectivity
As a longtime resident of Paden City, Parsons certainly is entitled to his opinion about the water quality in town and the perceived threat it poses to his family and fellow citizens, including at the high school. It is just odd that he does not talk about it in his own newspapers.

At small papers like the Chronicle and Star News, editors typically write the unsigned editorials, which are often about controversial local topics. But based on a review of their websites, the papers have not taken a public stand either way, even as Paden City has made national news.

Instead, much of the coverage of PCHS has come from columnist Chuck Clegg, a cheerleader for school consolidation. Columnists are paid for their opinions, so he is free to share his, too. But Clegg, the self-professed “old guy that’s been talking about Wetzel County schools for the past couple of years,” also has posed as an objective reporter when he clearly is not one.

The softball interview that he conducted with Porter after she closed Paden City High School is a perfect example. It read more like the work of a public relations agent than a journalist. It’s exactly what you would expect from a columnist who has decried the “green-and-white footsteps [of PCHS supporters] at the board office” and who ridiculously implied that PCHS supporters could be held liable for any future health issues of students or staff.

The local media treatment of the debate over the future of PCHS is suspect in other ways. The Chronicle, for instance, gave prominent online placement to a fluff piece about Porter’s “Pickleball in the Park” event. But when a judge reversed Porter’s decision to close PCHS pending a full hearing, Parsons himself wrote the article and the paper buried it under the nondescript headline “Paden City High School.”

So much for ‘open and honest dialogue’
As Parsons holds his own editorial tongue in the Chronicle and Star News, the editor of the sister newspaper up the Ohio River is regularly ripping Paden City officials and residents to rhetorical shreds. The Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register has published four critical editorials since last fall. Here are a few excerpts:

• “It has become clear that, without a major remediation project, Paden City is unable to ensure the water supply will remain safe for its 1,161 customers.”

• “Holding on to the past is doing nothing more than hurting students throughout Wetzel County. ... It’s time to move on in Paden City.”

• “It’s unfortunate that a decision made by Wetzel County Schools Superintendent Cassie Porter ... has been hijacked over a misplaced allegiance to keeping a ‘local’ school.”

The latest editorial was published Sunday. It finally included much-warranted, albeit understated, criticism of Porter’s leadership but also rebuked Paden City residents again. “Perhaps Porter, Paden City community members who want the school to remain open and others should remember that the kids must be the priority,” the newspaper said.

The recent unsigned editorials represent a clear change in tone from the paper’s commentary about Paden City in 2019-2020, when Wetzel County native Mike Myer was the editor. (Full disclosure: Myer published two columns I wrote.) Back then, The Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register dedicated its editorial space to getting federal and state help for Paden City.

The daily newspaper in Wheeling and the two weeklies that serve Wetzel and Tyler counties are all owned by Ogden Newspapers, and their websites include the corporation’s statement of values. They commit the papers to “providing fair, accurate and balanced information” and “a forum for open and honest dialogue on the issues most pressing to our communities.”

But that’s now how it works for Paden City these days. The folks in my hometown can’t even expect equal treatment in the form of pro-and-con guest columns, a fairly common practice on op-ed pages when an issue divides a community.

The holier-than-thou condescension dripping from the pens of leading editors in the Ohio Valley, both in their personal and professional writings, is a disservice to their readers. It is also a dishonor to the journalists who came before them, like former Star News owner and editor Adam Kelly, whose name is memorialized in West Virginia’s most prestigious journalism award.