W. Va. newspaper takes shot at Mississippi

Y’all Politics had an interesting out-of-state piece this morning. Editorial writers at the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail took a pot shot at Mississippi in an editorial they published on Monday.

The good news for West Virginians is that the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates their personal income per capita rose by 4.7 percent in 2007.

That evidently reflects the continuing upturn in the coal industry and privatization of the workers compensation system, which should help make the state more competitive.

But the bad news is that a 4.7 percent growth in per capita income failed to keep pace with the 5.2 percent growth experienced by the nation as a whole. West Virginians continue to slide further behind the rest of the nation.

And the embarrassing news is that Mississippi is catching up to West Virginia. (Emphasis added.)

The point of the editorial was to examine West Virginia’s subpar growth in per capita income. And while they went on to write a few “positives” about our state and its growth, the understanding was clear:

Mississippi is the bottom of the barrel, and they beat us.

So, I sent a letter to the editor to their publisher, editorial page editor and managing editor. If I get a response, I’ll post it here.

The following is a copy of the letter:

All:

“And the embarrassing news is that Mississippi is catching up to West Virginia.” — Charleston Daily Mail editorial, Monday, March 31, 2008

So, I’m not going to pile on here. I don’t want to be another angry voice from our state.

That said, your editorial decision regarding the above was incredibly stupid. As a former newspaper columnist and publisher, I can’t imagine ever letting that one little sentence — constructed the way it was — go into print. It was just poor judgement and writing prowess.

Whatever you think about our fair state, you should have been wiser in your writing. I understand your point. The poorest state in the nation is showing faster growth than you guys. That’s a legitimate point to make.

But instead of calling it an embarrassment, perhaps a better, point to make would have been recommending your state leaders to look at us and other faster growing states to see what we are doing right. (To your credit, you somewhat did so by lifting quotes from a Mississippi story about the issue.)

For full disclosure, I do not agree with most of the policies of our governor. He’s devastated health care in this state, and he’s trying to destroy our tax code as well.

Most of the growth we have seen, to this point, comes from policies and economic development initiatives launched prior to his administration or solely by the Legislature.

Add to that the growth due to rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina, and you will see that we are not as well off as it may first appear. The real trick, and our state is more than capable of doing this, is to ensure we continue our growth through other measures already in place.

That said, and in all fairness, Barbour was able to land a Toyota plant. And, as governor, he gets the credit for what happens on his watch.

I sincerely hope that your better professional angels will prevail upon you and that you will print an apology. It may not mean anything to your readers, and you will likely get little credit from those irate here in Mississippi. But at least your journalistic integrity will be in tact over this issue, and you can rest easily that you simply did the right thing.

Best wishes.

If you would like to weigh in on the subject, you can find their e-mail directory here.

UPDATE: Editorial Page Editor Johanna Maurice called me this morning. We had a good conversation. She is going to print my letter.

Maurice did say that their intention was not to slight Mississippi but to pat us on the back for doing better and making progress. If that was the case, I still maintain that the wording was poorly chosen.

Instead, it appears that the Daily Mail was trying to shame West Virginia lawmakers into working harder before poor, pitiful Mississippi catches up with them.

All that said, it was a pleasurable conversation.