More reporting on coal

I want to do some original reporting this year on coal. It could be for this blog and its 14 readers (yes, we're up to 14 now). Or it could be for The Herald-Dispatch opinion pages.

Back in my reporting days, I always resented it when a big-city newspaper or tv show parachuted in and did a story about this area and then left.

I'm seeing a lot of that now with coal. Just before the Sago disaster, but particularly after, metro papers discovered that coal mining causes problems for the poor folks in Appalachia.

The most recent example I know of was this one in the Boston Globe. (Found courtesy wvablue.com).

This article appears to touch a lot of bases well. I recommend it. It avoids stereotypes that people used in the 1980s to describe Appalachia and the Ohio Valley.

There will be more of this type of article. We need them, from inside Appalachia and outside.

As I've said before, it seems as though we can't live with coal but we can't live without it.

Yeah, that's really deep. But I have a lot of thinking to do this year about coal. Any reasonable input is welcome, whether you're a coal executive or a tree hugger.