2001 Batten Award Winner

“West Virginia After Coal”
The Herald-Dispatch, Huntington, WV and West Virginia Public Broadcasting
www.wvaftercoal.org 

For West Virginia After Coal an ambitious and interactive effort to engage the entire statein confronting realities of a declining industry. It built multiple entry points had strong online component that fostered wide community involvement. also demonstrated potential moving beyond simple publication towards application journalism. 

Len LaCara
Managing Editor
Herald-Dispatch 

The whole point of what we set out to do was to get people talking and to get a dialogue going on what West Virginia needs to do to prepare for the future, whether there’s coal there or not. 

What was interesting is that, when we did our polling, it was stuff the people out there already knew. They knew we couldn’t depend on coal. They knew there needed to be jobs, jobs, jobs – the No. 1 mantra in West Virginia. 

Our function was to present that message in a form people could understand and react to. And hopefully our state legislature and business leaders would take it to heart and run with it. There’s evidence this is already happening. The legislature has added some new requirements and the West Virginia development office is going to have to show some more results from the money it’s spending. 

We have the opportunity to utilize the coal severance taxes that were at the heart of the project. And with the increase in coal production as a result of the California energy crisis, we have the means to say that maybe now is the time to take a look at how we’re spending this money and start diverting it for economic development. 

Suzanne Higgins
Senior Producer
West Virginia Public Broadcasting

We approached this multimedia effort asking ourselves, how can we do it differently? 

We started with content. We assembled a very impressive advisory board. We brought in economists who had done the studies from our universities. We brought business, coal, organized labor and environmentalists.

We met for six months, one meeting a month. By the second and third [meeting], a lot of the posturing had melted away. It was an amazing, very interesting research exercise.

The experts really did help us focus to get beyond coal. It was clear after all these meetings, we needed to upgrade the state’s workforce. We needed to hold our state government accountable for the investments it makes. And we needed to bend over backwards to nurture our small business community. That helped us define the content.

Giving everyone a voice was a much loftier task indeed. The answer came in a small black box. It’s called the VBrick and it was, up to this point, used only for videoconferencing. In short, we had plug-and-play studios. 

So we had our 10 town hall sites, and we had a new question: “Who do we really want to come to this?” In prior years, environmentalists would pack the audience or the coal operators and coal miners.

We came up with a list of stakeholders – big business, small business and organized labor. Also on our list were job seekers, students, clergy, health care officials, parents and teachers – everyone who had a stake.

So, not only were we trying to hear others’ solutions, but we also gave a voice to some folks who may have been intimidated by special interests. 

It made for a very strong broadcast.