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A look back at 2025 Guardians

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: Although the 2025 Major League Baseball season came to an end for the Cleveland Guardians as a result of their being defeated by the Detroit Tigers two games to one in the American League Wildcard Series, as a longtime supporter of the Guardians-Indians baseball franchise, I am very pleased and encouraged by their outstanding and overachieving regular season in 2025. Prior to the beginning of the 2025 season, literally none of the baseball experts predicted that Cleveland would win the American League Central Division race, which they did, and many even picked them ...

Student loan debt a growing concern

Editorials

Among the concerns for some of those worried about their finances amid a federal government shutdown, continued increasing inflation, high interest rates and an unsteady jobs market, is the burden of student loan repayment. In West Virginia, that burden is especially heavy. According to WalletHub, the Washington, D.C.-based personal financial website, West Virginia carries the eighth most student debt in the country. The Mountain State is 25th for average student debt, but third for the proportion of students with debt and fourth for student debt as a percentage of income. Meanwhile, ...

Getting a handle on credit card debt

Editorials

For some, use of credit cards is a carefully planned luxury — perhaps used to ensure the accumulation of lots of airline or hotel points — for purchases that can be paid off within a month or two. But for Tri-State Area residents between the ages of 18 and 34, a recent analysis of Federal Reserve data shows the use of credit cards feels like a necessity — and one that is causing them to rack up higher-than-average levels of debt. Along with those high levels of debt come high levels of delinquency, according to reports on the data by the Ohio Capital Journal and Upgraded Points, ...

Plan would help with child care

Editorials

For many families, finding affordable child care is one of the bigger obstacles to being able to be full participants in the workforce. Sometimes it just makes more sense for a parent to stay home with the kids than to go out into a job that perhaps doesn’t even cover the costs of child care. With the launch of Ohio’s Child Care Cred Program, funding is now available for a program that helps split the child care burden. “Ensuring a stable workforce for Ohio’s growing economy encourages us to support our working families,” said state Sen. Tim Schaffer, R-Lancaster. “By ...

Keeping everyone safe should be goal

Editorials

Every once in a while, politicians will float the question of whether drivers should have to retake their tests as a requirement for license renewal after a certain age. With age comes the possibility of reduced vision, perhaps hearing loss, reduced reflexes and other changes we all laugh about as a fact of life until someone mentions them in the context of affecting a person’s ability to drive safely. Then pride kicks in. Well, pride and a little stubbornness as most of us bristle at the idea of the government telling us it’s possible we are less able to do something we’ve ...

Glimpse inside the mailbox

Local Columns

There are few constants in a newspaper office. But that’s the very thing that always has made them a great place to be. While you can come to work with a pretty solid plan of how you’ll spend most of your hours, the reality is something will always come up that will force you to go in a different direction — sometimes in many varying ways all at the same time. It’s the kind of work that isn’t for everyone. If you are the type of person who always has to be in a structured environment, you will be better off in a different profession. Something that never seems to ...