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How much has newspaper technology changed since 1957? For answers, look to a black-and-white documentary unearthed by WDBJ7 as part of their current series, "Headlines in Hard Times: How The Roanoke Times is weathering the storm." The two-parter, reported by veteran Joe Dashiell, concludes tonight at 6.

While gathering background, Dashiell came across the vintage 21-minute "Times-World at a Glance" documentary. In the newsroom today, we have gathered around to watch it and talk about how much has changed (you'll see more women on staff) and hasn't (newspaper production and delivery remains a labor-intensive process).

At the time the documentary was filmed, the two Roanoke newspapers -- Times and World-News -- covered 25 counties in western Virginia and nine in southern West Virginia, according to the M.W. Armistead III, then the president and publisher of Times-World Corp. Buses and trains were among the means we used to ship the papers as far as 200 miles away. 

In the film, Armistead boasts that the Times-World plant of 1957 is one of the most modern news-gathering facilities in the South. The grainy footage provides a tour of the print newsrooms, advertising and production facilities, all still located along downtown Roanoke's Campbell Avenue.

Halfway through, the focus shifts to WDBJ radio and television stations, which at the time were corporate siblings under the Times-World banner. That changed in 1969, when our current owners, Norfolk-based Landmark Media Enterprises LLC, bought the papers. Federal cross-ownership regulations required Landmark to sell the broadcast outlets.

We have more changes to announce at The Blue Ridge Business Journal, our bi-weekly business publication.
In the recent past, we’ve relied on freelance writers, and an editor who doubles as a reporter.
Now, all that’s changing.
A few weeks ago, we announced a new editor: Megan Schnabel, a veteran metro editor for The Roanoke Times and a former business reporter here, has taken over as the journal’s full-time editor.
She joined our long-time designer, Michele Crim, as we moved the journal’s operations into The Roanoke Times newsroom to work alongside the staff of the daily newspaper.
Now, we have more staff additions to announce:
* Annie Johnson is the journal’s reporter. She most recently has been a reporter for Congressional Quarterly in Washington, covering Capitol Hill. She knows her business stuff, too. Annie has a degree in economics from the former Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg (now just Randolph College.). She also previously worked as an intern on our business team for The Roanoke Times, and later worked here as an editorial assistant before going off to D.C. We’re thrilled to have her back.
* Michelle Skeen is the journal’s editorial assistant. She’s a graduate of Virginia Tech, and has interned for the daily newspaper in Waynesboro, the News-Virginian. Michelle will be spending a lot of her time working on the Business Journal’s website, which is presently undergoing a major renovation.
We’ll have more details on that coming soon. But if you’d like to follow business developments on Twitter, you can do that now. The Business Journal has its own Twitter following at “BRBusinessJ” and on Facebook, where can you find us simply as “Blue Ridge Business Journal.”

-- Dwayne Yancey, senior editor

If you're reaching this page after 11 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 7, because you typed "roanoke.com" into your browser hoping to find today's breaking news, the latest from the Fort Hood shootings or election results, we're sorry.

You've been redirected to this post because, between 11 and 11:30 p.m. tonight, we'll be taking a few of our databases offline to perform some routine maintenance and backups.

Thanks for your patience. We'll be back online as usual by 11:30.

Till then, our stories, multimedia and calendar will be unavailable, but you'll be able to browse our blogs -- where you can recap Election Day news and analysis, find a recipe for Brunswick stew or discuss the 100 things restaurant staffers should never do at Lindsey Nair's Fridge Magnet blog, find out about holiday promotions and new shops arriving in town on Jenny Kincaid Boone's Storefront blog and recap this week's Virginia Tech game on Randy King and Doug Doughty's Insiders blog.

In the meantime, if you've got questions or comments, feel free to comment here on our From the Newsroom blog or e-mail me at meg.martin@roanoke.com.

-- Meg Martin, online editor

About a half dozen readers have called or e-mailed the past couple of days to ask why we didn't run precinct charts detailing this week's election results in Wednesday's newspaper. We decided not to publish those charts this year for a few reasons:

• We felt like we could make better use of the space they require (nearly two full pages) with more stories and photos;
• The time it takes to compile the charts often causes us to miss our newsroom deadline. And if we miss our deadline that starts a chain reaction that ends with readers getting their papers late;
• The information is available on the state board of elections Web site.

Let me know if you missed having the charts in print. There's an election every year in Virginia and I know the question will come up again.