Hi friends, it’s been a minute…

A personal note from the editor...

Hey Friends of Wheeling Free Press,

You have likely noticed that Wheeling Free Press has been fairly dead over the last few months. The last story I published was on Oct. 27, 2025, and prior to that it had been over a month since a story went live. Until now, I haven’t spoken on this absence.

Let’s be real for a moment: writing Wheeling Free Press is challenging. For one, I’m just one person. A person who has to work a “real” job when I’m not working on stories for the publication. As of January of this year, I now have two jobs which I absolutely love, but which take up 40 hours of my week. I know a 40-hour workweek is normal in our country (when it really shouldn’t be), but writing stories takes time, and using my time outside of those 40 hours to write severely takes away from the other hours in my week which could, or sometimes should, be used to spend time with friends, go to events in my community, clean my house, do my laundry, cook dinner, or sleep.

Another reason I have taken the last six months off of writing, and connected to the first reason, is burnout. I had been regularly publishing multiple stories a week, with each story taking a few hours to research, attend meetings, fact-check, write, edit, publish, and advertise. Doing that over and over, combined with the need to work a “real” job to pay my bills, took its toll on me mentally and physically. That toll was originally planned for a month, then it was “I’ll start writing again in the new year,” and now it’s been expanded to “I’ll do what I want!”

The third, and maybe most important, reason why I stopped writing is a bit more personal. Last summer I sued the City of Wheeling. This is all public knowledge and easily accessible, but my legal team has requested I not write about it until the case moves forward (and if my attorney happens to be reading this, what’s the old saying? It’s easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission? Well, here I am asking for forgiveness). There are several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that I have filed with the city over the past few years that have either been rejected, not responded to, or completely ignored. Getting your FOIA rejected sucks, but it happens. That’s not specifically why I’m suing. It’s more so due to the FOIAs which were never responded to who wholly ignored – no notification of receipt, no documents, no rejections…nothing. We filed our suit and waited, and waited, and waited. (If you have any experience dealing with Wheeling City Solicitor, you’ll understand the waiting). When the city finally responded, rather than accepting or denying responsibility, the city chose to devolve into personal attacks against me. They claimed Wheeling Free Press was a “bastardization of the profession of a journalist,” accused me of filing a burdensome amount of FOIA requests, and said I was using city staff to write my stories. It was nasty and unnecessary, and quite frankly it hurt! It felt bad reading powerful people say such bad things about me. As a human, I am allowed to have emotions and be affected by the things that are said or done to me. So, I took my ball and went home!

But I’m coming back to play again…

Six months has been long enough, don’t you think? While I’ve been gone, countless numbers of people have asked for me to return. And, local governments and quasi-governments have continued their work without any semblance of a free press following their business. That ends now!

Slowly, step-by-step, I will begin attending meetings, filing FOIAs, investigating, writing, and, yes, publishing stories once again. It won’t be all at once, I can promise you that. I used to play the trumpet and considered myself fairly good at it when I did. I haven’t played in five or more years. I can’t just pick up my trumpet tomorrow and play Joseph Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat Major with the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra!!! Similarly, I can’t just pick up my audio recorder and publish story after story after story!

With all this being said, I am happy to be back and I look forward to writing again! I hope you’ll continue to support me as I do!

With much love and gratitude,

Justice Hudson

Editor of Wheeling Free Press