In a West Virginia county of 6,540, accountability journalism gets personal
Former Washington reporter Dan Parks covers neighbors in rural West Virginia, where holding power accountable can complicate personal relationships
Dan Parks is the founder and editor of Country Roads, a Substack publication that serves Tucker County, West Virginia. A couple of weeks before the midterm elections, he was facing an ethical dilemma.
A public records request for the details of a legal settlement had finally been fulfilled. The documents showed that the county had reached a $275,000 settlement in May with a former employee who had sued the county after being fired. Her lawsuit alleged sexual harassment by the president of the county commission and other county employees.
The commissioner was running for re-election. The election was three weeks away.
This seemed like a classic October surprise, a late-breaking, negative news story that can sway voters to change their votes. Earlier in his career, when Parks was working at Bloomberg and Congressional Quarterly, he’d learned to be cautious about such stories, which can be planted by a trailing opponent as a last-ditch effort to change the outcome.
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