Ken Ward Jr., an investigative reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, is one of the newest recipients of the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” He is the only West Virginia University alumnus and fourth native West Virginian to receive the honor, and the only journalist among the 2018 class. With more than 25 years at the Gazette, Ward has earned a national reputation for reporting on the coal mining industry’s exploitation of Appalachian communities.
Ken Ward Jr., an investigative reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, is one of the newest recipients of the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” He is the only West Virginia University alumnus and fourth native West Virginian to receive the honor, and the only journalist among the 2018 class. With more than 25 years at the Gazette, Ward has earned a national reputation for reporting on the coal mining industry’s exploitation of Appalachian communities.
How did you end up studying journalism at WVU? Was this something you were interested in as a kid? When did it occur to you that investigative journalism was your calling?
I started delivering the Cumberland Times-News when I was 11. My father was a big newspaper reader, and I guess that rubbed off. I took a newspaper course in high school and worked at the student newspaper at Potomac State College and then The Daily Athenaeum at WVU, though I started out college as a music major, and also someone who took a lot of math and science. I guess I got involved in investigative reporting when I was looking into some funny business by the administration at WVU, and then the proposal for the MEA power plant in Morgantown and writing about the concerns residents had about that.
You’re a West Virginian who seems to care deeply about the well-being of other West Virginians. You’re also known for asking the tough questions. Do those things go hand-in-hand? What does it take to do what you do? Do you think your personal connection to the issues helps you dig deeper?
I think that’s obviously the job of a journalist – as opposed to others who may use similar writing skills in PR or advertising or what have you – is to ask hard questions, to ask the questions the public needs to know the answers to about issues that affect their lives and their community. West Virginia is my home, and I think few places need reporters asking tough questions more than West Virginia does.
Is there a specific piece or project that you would consider career-defining and why?
Probably covering the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster and the trial that followed, in which Massey CEO Don Blankenship was convicted of conspiring to violate federal mine safety and health standards.
What does the future of journalism look like? What does local journalism offer that national news outlets can’t?
The only honest answer to the first question is nobody knows. When I started at the Gazette we didn’t have a fax machine in the newsroom … and look now. Hopefully, local journalists are in a better position to understand their community and to write about the challenges that community faces – but not all local journalism does that. There’s a lot of bad local journalism out there, too. And sometimes it takes an outsider to ask certain questions. But if local journalists care about their communities, they will not wait for national outlets to do that.
What do you hope to do with the McArthur Foundation grant money?
Send my son to college, maybe be able to someday retire. Newspaper work doesn’t pay much in money, and my family has paid the price for my hobby of a career. But given the state of the industry, it’s also nice to have a backstop. And who knows, maybe I’ll find some ways to use some of the money to help figure out what comes next for local journalism.
EXTRA BITS OF INFO:
· Read more about MacArthur Fellows at macfound.org/fellows
· Ken Ward is the second native of the tiny town of Piedmont, West Virginia, to receive a MacArthur Fellowship. The first was Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., the great African American scholar and writer.