I’ve spent several years investigating how West Virginia’s government was systematically captured by out-of-state interests. In that time, I’ve watched dozens of legitimate news stories break about the same ecosystem I’m documenting—and I’ve watched almost all of them miss the point entirely.
Not because the journalists were lazy. Not because they were biased. Not even because they lacked resources.
They missed it because they were trained to see narratives, and what they were looking at was a system.
This distinction might sound academic. It’s not. It’s the difference between journalism that changes things and journalism that fills airtime until the next scandal arrives.
The Scandal Model of Journalism
Here’s how most investigative journalism works:
* Something bad happens.
* Reporter documents the bad thing.
* Public is outraged.
* Someone resigns or gets indicted.
* Story ends. Reporter moves to next scandal.
This is the narrative model. It has protagonists (victims, whistleblowers), antagonists (corrupt officials, greedy executives), a climax (the exposé), and a resolution (accountability, or at least the appearance of it).
It’s satisfying. It wins awards. It feels like justice.
And it almost never changes anything structural.
The West Virginia Case Study
Let me give you a concrete example.
In 2018, West Virginia’s entire Supreme Court was impeached—the only time in American history that’s happened. Justice Allen Loughry was convicted on 10 federal counts. Justice Menis Ketchum pled guilty to wire fraud. The scandal involved $32,000 couches, $42,000 antique desks taken home, and $3.7 million in office renovations originally budgeted at $900,000.
The press feasted. And rightfully so—it was genuinely outrageous.
Here’s what the coverage looked like:
“WV Supreme Court Justice Convicted of Federal Crimes”“Impeachment Proceedings Begin for All Four Justices”“Loughry Sentenced to 24 Months in Prison”
Good stories. Important stories. Stories that held individuals accountable.
Now here’s what the coverage didn’t look like:
“Dark Money Network That Elected These Justices Continues Operating”“Same Donor Coalition Now Funding Their Replacements”“System That Produced Corruption Remains Structurally Unchanged”
The scandal was covered. The system was not.
Loughry went to prison. The Republican State Leadership Committee—which spent $2.6 million electing justices to that same court in 2016—kept spending. The Judicial Crisis Network kept funding. The same donor ecosystem that had captured the court before the scandal continued capturing it after.
The narrative ended. The system continued.
Why This Happens
Journalists aren’t stupid. So why do they keep covering scandals while ignoring systems?
1. Systems Don’t Have Villains
Narratives need antagonists. “Don Blankenship spent $3 million to buy a Supreme Court justice” is a story. It has a bad guy. You can put his face on the screen.
“A decentralized network of ideologically aligned nonprofits, funded through donor-advised funds that legally obscure the identity of contributors, coordinates spending across multiple election cycles to shift the composition of state judiciaries toward outcomes favorable to corporate defendants” is... not a story. It’s a dissertation.
The truth is that most systemic capture doesn’t have a villain. It has incentive structures. It has legal frameworks. It has coordination mechanisms. None of these things photograph well.
2. Systems Operate on Different Timescales
A scandal happens on a timeline that fits a news cycle. Someone does something bad → it gets exposed → consequences follow. Days to months.
A system operates on a timeline that fits an era. Legal doctrine shifts → funding networks form → personnel pipelines develop → policy outcomes emerge. Years to decades.
The Buckley v. Valeo decision that created the “money equals speech” doctrine was in 1976. The McCutcheon decision that removed aggregate contribution limits was in 2014. The AFP v. Bonta decision that constitutionally protected donor anonymity was in 2021.
That’s a 45-year arc. No news organization covers 45-year arcs. They cover what happened this week.
3. Systems Require Expertise the Newsroom Doesn’t Have
To understand how dark money flows through the political system, you need to understand:
* Campaign finance law (FEC regulations, state equivalents)
* Tax law (501(c)(3) vs 501(c)(4) vs 527 organizations)
* Corporate structure (donor-advised funds, fiscal sponsorship)
* Network analysis (identifying shared personnel, accountants, addresses)
* Court procedure (how judicial selection actually works)
How many reporters have that combination of expertise? How many newsrooms can afford to let someone spend three years developing it? The economic model of journalism selects against systems coverage. It’s expensive, it’s slow, and it doesn’t generate the clicks that scandal coverage does.
4. Systems Don’t Provide Closure
The narrative model promises resolution. The bad guy goes to jail. The corrupt official resigns. The company pays a fine. Story over.
Systems don’t offer that satisfaction. You can document a system perfectly, expose every mechanism, trace every dollar—and the system keeps operating. Because systems aren’t illegal. They’re designed.
The dark money network capturing West Virginia’s judiciary isn’t breaking laws. It’s using laws. Laws that were written, interpreted, and defended by people the network helped put in power.
There’s no climax to that story. There’s no resolution. There’s just... the machine, running.
What Systems Coverage Actually Looks Like
So what’s the alternative? How do you cover systems instead of scandals?
Map the Network, Not the Incident When I started investigating West Virginia’s judicial capture, I didn’t start with a scandal. I started with a question: Who decides who becomes a judge?
That question led me to the Judicial Vacancy Advisory Commission. Which led me to the people appointed to it. Which led me to the organizations they work for. Which led me to the donors funding those organizations. Which led me to the other organizations those donors fund. Which led me to the personnel moving between all of them.
By the time I was done, I had a map. Not a story about one bad actor—a map of an entire ecosystem.
Follow the Money Backward Scandal coverage follows money forward: Donor gives to candidate → candidate wins → candidate does favors for donor.
Systems coverage follows money backward: Outcome occurs → who benefited? → who funded the people who produced that outcome? → who funded them? → where did that money originally come from?
Think in Feedback Loops, Not Linear Causation Narratives are linear. A causes B causes C. Systems are circular. A causes B causes C causes more A.
The dark money system isn’t just influencing judicial selection. It’s capturing the mechanisms that would provide oversight of judicial selection. The same network that funds judicial campaigns also funds the think tanks that train judges, the media campaigns that defend judges, the advocacy groups that oppose judicial reform, and now—as of June 2025—the commissioners who screen judicial candidates.
Name the Legal Architecture One of the most important things systems coverage can do is name the laws that make the system possible. Not “dark money is corrupting our politics.” That’s a complaint.
This: “The combination of Buckley v. Valeo (1976), Citizens United v. FEC (2010), McCutcheon v. FEC (2014), and Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta (2021) created a constitutional framework in which unlimited money can be spent on elections with legally protected anonymity.”
That’s a diagnosis. It tells you what would have to change for the system to change.
The Citizen Investigator Model
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Traditional journalism may not be capable of covering systems effectively. The economic model doesn’t support it. The training doesn’t prepare for it. The format doesn’t accommodate it.
That’s why I’m experimenting with something different.
The Sold-Out State isn’t just an investigative series. It’s a training program. Every article includes puzzles that teach readers how to trace dark money themselves. How to read IRS Form 990s. How to cross-reference donor lists with litigation databases. How to identify the shared accountants that reveal network connections.
The theory is simple: If newsrooms can’t afford to have reporters spend three years mapping systems, maybe we can distribute that work across thousands of readers who each contribute pieces of the puzzle.
What We’re Actually Up Against
When you investigate a scandal, you find a crime. Crimes can be prosecuted. Criminals can be punished. There’s a path to justice, even if it’s imperfect.
When you investigate a system, you find a design. Designs aren’t crimes. The people who built the system—the lawyers who argued the cases, the donors who funded the campaigns, the operatives who coordinated the spending—they didn’t break laws. They wrote laws. They interpreted laws. They defended laws.
The West Virginia judicial capture I’ve documented isn’t illegal. It’s the system working exactly as it was designed to work. The design just happens to be: whoever has the most money gets to pick the referees.
That’s not a scandal. That’s an architecture. And architectures don’t go to prison.
The Real Question
So here’s what I keep asking myself:
If traditional journalism covers scandals while systems keep running—if the narrative model produces accountability for individuals while leaving structures intact—if the economic model of news selects against the slow, expensive, expertise-intensive work of mapping systems—
Then what’s the actual theory of change? How does systemic capture get reversed?
I don’t have a complete answer. But I have a hypothesis:
Systems change when enough people can see them.
Not see the scandals they produce—see the systems themselves. The legal architecture. The funding flows. The personnel pipelines. The feedback loops.
The machine runs in the dark. It relies on complexity, opacity, and the assumption that nobody has time to trace all the connections.
What if we made the connections visible? What if we mapped the network so thoroughly that it couldn’t operate in shadow anymore? What if we trained thousands of people to read the documents, trace the money, and identify the patterns?
I don’t know if it would work. But I know that covering scandals hasn’t worked. The scandals keep coming, and the system keeps running.
Maybe it’s time to try something different.
If this framework is useful to you, consider sharing it with someone who covers politics for a living. The narrative model isn’t going to break itself.
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