100 Days in Appalachia

Five Years After It Became a National Park, There’s a Growing Divide In West Virginia’s New River Gorge

Many long-time West Virginians see the divide between their reality of the area — a community that still faces long-standing ...
100 Days in Appalachia

In West Virginia’s Southern Coalfields, a Grassroots ‘Jubilee’

On a late spring day in 2022, Rev. Brad Davis was riding along the twisting roads of McDowell County, West Virginia. Davis was soon to start his current job pastoring five United Methodist churches ...
100 Days in Appalachia

Keep Your ‘Elegy’: The Appalachia I Know Is Very Much Alive

Ivy Brashear is the March 2022 host of 100 Days’ Creators and Innovators newsletter series. Sign up for the weekly email here. She backed her Cadillac long-ways across the one-lane road in front of ...
100 Days in Appalachia

Rural Tennessee is Losing More Hospitals Than Anywhere in the Country, But COVID-19 Isn’t Fully to Blame

This is the third story in Critical Condition, a three part series. Read more here. “I’m hopin’,” Andrea Haas says with conviction. The Remote Area Medical clinic has come to Jellico, Tennessee, in ...
100 Days in Appalachia

‘This Isn’t a Dying Coal Town,’ It’s a West Virginia Community Rethinking Health Care and Succeeding

This is the first story in Critical Condition, a three part series. Read more here. In his history of Williamson, West Virginia, Okey P. Keadle – a member of Williamson High School’s inaugural, 1918, ...
100 Days in Appalachia

Tyler Childers’ Appalachia: How the Country Singer Challenges our Relationships with Addiction and Religion

The first time I heard Tyler Childers’ voice I was riding in the passenger seat of a 15-year-old car late at night through the back roads of West Virginia. It was 2019, and I was 17 years old. And ...
100 Days in Appalachia

What is the New Apostolic Reformation? How a Religio-Political Movement is Affecting U.S. and Appalachian Politics

Apostles and prophets. Spiritual warfare. Dominionism and the New Apostolic Reformation. You might come across these terms if you follow politics these days. Here’s some context and clarity about the ...
100 Days in Appalachia

Ready for a Road Trip? A Guide to the Sights & Bites of Central, Southern Appalachia

This summer, our Pittsburgh family took a long-awaited bucket list road trip through Appalachia. We had recently spent 18 months driving the Pan American highway, and while it was an epic journey, the ...
100 Days in Appalachia

Study: Closure of Rural Harm Reduction Program ‘Fundamentally Changed’ Health of a City

That’s what a 40-year-old man told researchers from Johns Hopkins University about a now-closed syringe services program in the heart of central Appalachia. The Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, ...
100 Days in Appalachia

Big Tech Comes to Tucker County, WV

Pamela Moe was reading the paper in late March when she spotted a public notice from a company she’d never heard of. Fundamental Data, a Virginia-based company, had applied for a permit from West ...
100 Days in Appalachia

Holler, Y’all and Appalachian Drawls: My Childhood of Code Switching in Appalachia

When I was in elementary school, a teacher told me that I needed to speak “properly.” She said my twang made me sound unintelligent. When I began serving on a state leadership board for high school ...
100 Days in Appalachia

Reporting Locally on Domestic Extremism? Here’s How to Not Platform Their Violence, A Case Study

It’s easy to find examples of how not to cover extremist violence and groups in American news coverage. On the national level, everyone from the New York Times to Fox News consistently platform white ...