About Mountain Reporter Network PlaceStoriesThe Mountain Reporter Network is a digital storytelling and community journalism project taking place in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, a rural region that has historically produced much of the coal mined in the U.S.
Appalachia is a beautiful, mountainous region with culturally rich and resourceful people with a strong heritage of self sufficiency. However, for over one-hundred years an absentee energy industry has extracted coal, gas and other minerals - the real wealth of the region -- leaving behind a heavy toll on the land and the people. Today mountaintop removal/valley fill mining, a radical form of strip mining, threatens total destruction of the mountains and those who live there.
Kayford Mtn, WV: A Mountaintop Removal Mine
The Mountain Reporter Network is developing a community-based media network whose members are sharing their stories of the joys and struggles of life in this region where too many pay the true costs of our dependence on coal.
MRN Projects include stories from Berea College students exploring culture, identity and community issues through Berea's Appalachian Studies courses. In the MRN Kentucky and MRN West Virginia Projects, activists document the human and environmental destruction brought on by mountaintop removal mining and tell the stories of local citizens fighting for community survival and a sustainable future. 
Hawks Nest, WV