Newspaperman Jack Maurice died in Charleston on December 20, 1999, at age 86. Maurice was born in 1913 in the McDowell County coal town of Vivian. During his childhood, his family moved frequently around the West Virginia and Kentucky coalfields. He graduated from Huntington High School and Marshall College (now University) and immediately started his career with the Huntington Herald-Dispatch in 1935. Three years later, he joined the staff of the Charleston Daily Mail.
During World War II, Maurice served in the U.S. Navy Reserves for three years, achieving the rank of lieutenant. After the war, he returned to the Daily Mail as chief editorial writer. He became the paper’s editor in 1950, editor-in-chief in 1969, and a contributing editor and columnist in 1979. He retired from the Daily Mail in 1984.
Maurice’s most notable accomplishment came in 1975, when he won journalism’s highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize, for a series of editorials about the violent textbook controversy that had polarized Kanawha County the previous year. Until April 2017, Jack Maurice was the only West Virginia journalist to win a Pulitzer, until Eric Eyre with the Charleston Gazette-Mail won for his coverage of the opioid crisis in West Virginia. (Updated December 20, 2017).
Over the past century, Charleston’s two newspapers brought down corrupt politicians, exposed injustice, and served as West Virginia’s first draft of history.
And now, the Charleston Gazette and Charleston Daily Mail are joining into one newspaper. Why is this happening, and what does it mean for West Virginians?
Gazette-Mail Publisher Susan Shumate says the combination is necessary for financial reasons. A federal agency recently filed a $1.3 million lien against the newspaper for missing payments to its pension plan, according to the West Virginia Record.
But in an interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Shumate says the new newspaper also will be more than the sum of its parts.
Hear our interview with Shumate on The Front Porch podcast on iTunes or however you listen. Here are five takeaways from our interview with Shumate:
1. Why the announcement was made on Sunday, July 19
Charleston was one of the last two-newspaper cities in the country, and one of the smallest. With declining print revenues, publishing two papers was unsustainable.
“Financially, for Charleston newspapers, it wasn’t an option any longer,” Shumate said.
Shumate confirmed that the announcement was timed to coincide with the expiration of a federal judge’s settlement of an anti-trust lawsuit. So July 19 was the first possible day they could combine the newspapers.
“There’s nothing positive about somebody losing their job. But the Charleston Gazette and the Charleston Daily Mail really haven’t had the deep news cuts that other news organizations have had to have,” she said.
Credit e-wv, The West Virginia Encyclopedia online. / Ned Chilton, Charleston Gazette, Governor Arch Moore, WV House of Delegates
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Ned Chilton, Charleston Gazette, Governor Arch Moore, WV House of Delegates
Ned Chilton, father of Susan Shumate, was a former Gazette publisher, and coined the phrase “sustained outrage”
2. Why the announcement wasn’t shared with most staff in advance
With 77 journalists in both newsrooms, if they had known in advance, someone would have leaked it. And Shumate said she wanted readers to give the combined newspaper a chance, and not pre-judge it.
“People are passionate about their papers. They really are. By showing them the example of what we can do without letting people worry about it, and fret and say, ‘Oh, my news coverage is going to change in a month, my news coverage isn’t going to be the same…’
“There’s never an easy way to announce this.”
3. Why Shumate believes the combined newsroom will be better than two separate papers
Efficiency. In the past, each paper would have sent its own reporter to a meeting about the landslide at Yeager Airport.
This week, one reporter covered the meeting, and the other filed a story from the site of the landslide.
“It’s making the stories better, deeper, and for me, more fulfilling,” Shumate said.
In the past, the Gazette may have 7-8 local stories on a given day. One day this week, there were 19.
She said readers are telling her, “I used to be able to whip through my paper in the morning and go through my day, and now I’m having to carve out a chunk of time,” to read everything.
Shumate doesn’t think the loss of competition between newspaper reporters is an issue. In the digital age, there’s still plenty of other competition, she said.
Credit Andrew Brown via Twitter: @Andy_Ed_Brown
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The first weekday combined edition of the Gazette-Mail
4. Why the Gazette-Mail is requiring all newsroom staff to re-apply for their jobs
Right now, 77 people work in the Gazette-Mail newsroom, she said – 45 from the Gazette, and 32 from the Daily Mail (one DM position was vacant.)
The goal is a combined newsroom of 65.
There is no master plan for how many employees will be on each “beat” – sports, government, etc. Also, there’s a chance the new newspaper may have new and different beats than the old ones.
Shumate says the employees themselves are helping to shape the combined organization.
“We will have been able to dream up the super newsroom or the dream newsroom,” she said.
“It’s great seeing the staff in the newsrooms putting their stamp on what they think the newsroom of the future will be.”
5. What the focus of the combined newspapers will be
“I see our future and our business model being able to really dig into the local stories,” Shumate said.
Some of their priorities, in no particular order, include:
Better multimedia presence, such as online video
More in-depth and investigative reporting
Local news
Government – state and local
Entertainment – what’s going on this weekend, what can you take your kids to do
Sports – high school, WVU, Marshall, etc.
6. Why they are keeping two separate opinion pages – one literally and figuratively on the left, the other on the right
“I think the Charleston Gazette readers and Charleston Daily Mail readers identify with those pages, and that was the core reason they subscribed to either one of those papers,” Shumate said. “By keeping those, we really want readers to feel we are embracing what they want.”
7. What the mission statement is for the combined newsroom
“Cover everything fairly and evenly,” Shumate said.
“I don’t think you’re necessarily doing a great job if you don’t get criticism from both sides. A newspaper’s job tends to be watching what’s going on in the community. And not everyone is going to like what you say.”
8. How the Gazette-Mail will monetize digital readers (web traffic) – or not
“That’s the question every news organization is asking right now. And it’s very difficult. It’s an industry-wide question, and one that nobody has a great answer for,” Shumate said.
“Every conference you go to is, (the question is) how are you going to monetize the web traffic?”
9. How the Gazette-Mail will continue the legacy of “Sustained Outrage” begun by her father, Ned Chilton, and continued by her mother, Elizabeth Chilton
“It makes me proud when I think of how my parents led with honesty,” Shumate said.
“Any great newspaper has that strong adversarial tone,” she said. The combined newsroom will allow all reporters more time to investigate stories.
“That is their dream job. They want to get to the bottom of the story. They want the whole truth,” she said.
An edited version of “The Front Porch” airs Fridays at 4:50 p.m. on West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s radio network, and the full version is available above.
Share your opinions with us about these issues, and let us know what you’d like us to discuss in the future. Send a tweet to @radiofinn or @wvpublicnews, or e-mail Scott at sfinn @ wvpublic.org
Libertarian candidate, Davy Jones, is running for the 2ndCongressional District seat against Rebublican Alex Mooney, Democrat Nick Casey, and Independent Ed Rabel. Jones lives in Martinsburg and is a political newcomer. He found his way into politics after doing IT work for the West Virginia Libertarian Party.
“I believe that government has gotten way too intrusive into everybody’s life, and gotten way too bloated, and the debt that they seem to be heaping on our children that have to pay it, is just outlandish,” said Jones, “So I’ve decided that I needed to do something about that, and that’s why I decided to run.”
Jones is running on a third party ticket, which could be difficult, but he thinks he’s got a great chance.
“I think people are tired of just what’s going on, and I don’t think parties matter to them at this point,” noted Jones, “I think they’re really looking for a candidate of character, rather than a candidate of this party or that party, and I bring that to this race.”
Where Does Davy Jones Stand in His Political Agenda?
He says he will listen to West Virginians’ concerns and make decisions accordingly.
He’s pro-coal, pro-energy, and pro-constitution.
He has a “live and let live” philosophy.
He supports gay marriage.
He comes from the middle-class.
Credit Davy Jones / www.vote4davyjones.org
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www.vote4davyjones.org
“I think that the big problem in politics today is that we’re electing people to represent us that can’t relate, that are wealthy, that come from an elitist group of people, and they can’t represent the average American, because they can’t understand how we live. I come from the middle class. I know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. You know, deciding whether, oh, am I going to pay my electric bill this paycheck or buy food. So I think that I make a very good representative for the people of West Virginia.”
Davy Jones is banking on his pro-gun, pro-energy, and pro-constitution platform to override the difficulties of running as a third party candidate. He hopes the voters will give him a chance in Washington when they go to the polls in November.
Priscilla Haden, a Republican, resigned from the board in December 2012.
State code requires that no more than five Board of Education members may belong to the same political party. They also cannot be members of a political party executive committee, and cannot hold any other public office or be state or federal employees.
Board of Education president Gayle Manchin says the board hopes the seat is filled soon.
