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The Roanoke Times has won five awards in a national features writing contest.

The annual American Association of Sunday and Features Editors announced Friday the winners in its Excellence-in-Feature-Writing Contest. The Roanoke Times earned honors in these categories:

MULTIMEDIA
1st place -- For the "Age of Uncertainty" series.
2nd place -- For its interactive guide to the opening of the new Taubman Museum of Art

GENERAL FEATURE
Honorable mention: Erinn Hutkin, for her story on Randolph College's first year as a co-ed campus.

FEATURE SPECIALTY REPORTING
1st place -- Beth Macy, for three stories in the "Age of Uncertainty" series.

A & E COMMENTARY
3rd place -- Ralph Berrier Jr., for three Riffs columns, including one about why women will love the new "Sex in the City" movie.

Also, a few months ago, The Roanoke Times was named one of 15 finalists in AASFE's annual Best Sections contest. We compete in Division I, which includes newspapers with circulations of up to 90,000.

Congratulations to all involved!
For more information, go to aasfe.org.

We honored Doug Doughty, one of the top college sports beat writers in the country, on Wednesday to mark his 35th anniversary at The Roanoke Times.

Stats guy that he is, Doughty has to be thrilled to rank at the top of the newsroom's full-time tenure list. We gathered to share our favorite Doughty stories and to watch this video produced by Jordan Fifer.

Hired in 1974 to cover hockey, Doughty has covered University of Virginia athletics since 1978. Over the years, though, he's written about nearly every sport around and many other offbeat topics, including ferrets (watch the video to learn more).

He's won too many state and national awards to list and this year marked the 17th time he's taken either first or second place in our newsroom's annual Landmark Awards sports writing contest.

Doughty noted in a recent online column that he still has the same phone number as the day he started but that his desk has moved three times.

Doughty also pointed out that our Virginia Tech beat writer Randy King was working part-time as a high school senior when he was hired. King joined the paper full-time seven years later after graduating from Radford University and working for the Lynchburg newspaper.

-- Michael Stowe

Steve Hemphill started as sports editor today. Hemphill came to The Roanoke Times as an assistant sports editor in 2004 after serving as sports editor at the Longmont Daily Times-Call in Colorado. He's a graduate of Colorado State University.

Hemphill replaces Jeff Gilbert, who is returning to his alma mater, Cedarville University, to teach journalism.