The Daily Yonder Digital Startup Fills News Niche in Wheeling, West Virginia Can Ledenews.com produce local journalism that thrives in a small market? News entrepreneur Steve Novotney plans to find out.
Steve Novotney (Photo by John W. Miller)
Like many American boys in the 1970s and 1980s, Steve Novotney of Wheeling, West Virginia, had a paper route.
His bicycle, carting ink-stained sheets of print in bags strapped on the handlebars, has vanished into hazy memory, but there’s still news to deliver.
In 2019, Novotney and business partner Erika Donaghy launched Ledenews.com, an online-only community news site for Wheeling and dozens of surrounding Rust Belt hamlets that dot the Ohio Valley.