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Football, other fall sports returning

This is the week that fans of high school football across the Tri-State Area have been waiting for since late last fall. Friday is opening day, and action will get underway in stadiums throughout the region. Steubenville Big Red will host Cincinnati Archbishop McNicholas, Indian Creek will host Cambridge, Edison will visit Shenandoah, Toronto will travel to East Canton, Harrison Central will visit Claymont and Buckeye Local will travel to Bellaire for what will be an historic contest — the first night home game in Bellaire history. On Saturday, Catholic Central will open against ...

Fire departments need volunteers

For many Ohioans, particularly those living in rural communities, a call to 911 for a structure fire or wildfire is answered by the men and women of a volunteer fire department. They stretch to their limits to protect those living outside the service area of larger, professional departments. They make up nearly 70 percent of the departments in the state. Those limits are being stretched thinner by the day, as shortages across the state make it harder for volunteer departments to do their jobs. But last week, Gov. Mike DeWine announced an awareness campaign to address that shortage and ...

Our football edition continues tradition

Our annual football edition will be included with your Wednesday newspaper, marking the return of local high school sports for 2024. The high school football season, which officially opens this week in Ohio and next week in West Virginia, will be the topic of many conversations and will occupy the hearts and minds of fans from all parts of the region for at least the next 10 weeks — and, hopefully, beyond. With all of that in mind, members of our local sports staff, led by Sports Editor Andrew Grimm, have spent much of the last several weeks conducting interviews, taking ...

‘Private’ entities must be transparent

Bureaucrats and elected officials in Columbus have gotten quite good at using public money to create what they want us to believe are “private” entities. OneOhio Recovery Foundation, for example, is registered as a private nonprofit organization, despite having been launched by Gov. Mike DeWine and Attorney General Dave Yost to distribute the public money from settlements of lawsuits related to the opioid epidemic. That organization has rightly received challenges to its attempts to operate with less transparency than would be required of a public entity. Another example is ...

Let’s stay safe as school opens

Area motorists, be alert. School children are heading back to Tri-State Area classrooms, and drivers need to heighten their awareness in the coming days. Drivers need to be extra vigilant in the early mornings and mid-afternoons when children are walking to and from schools or bus stops. And remember, it’s the start of a school year, so children will be excited to see friends they haven’t seen in a few months. They may be scurrying to greet classmates and could easily dart out into traffic. With that in mind, there are some basic safety measures all drivers should follow. ...

Seeking a way to lift everyone in Ohio

Buckeye State residents who feel as though they are struggling to a greater degree than those living in other parts of the country are not imagining things. A report by Oxfam America says nearly one-quarter of Ohio workers are making under $17 an hour. According to Axios reporting, that is the figure Oxfam America considers to be a living wage. But the nonprofit anti-poverty group dug deeper into Ohio’s data and found that here we have a higher number of people under that line than the national average; and that approximately 1.3 million Ohioans may be struggling to keep up with ...