Editor & Publisher posted a story this week listing the "top 25 newspapers with the largest increases in print and online audience based on designated market areas."
The Roanoke Times ranked in the Top 10 with a 6.3 percent increase. Check out the details here.
We've added a couple of new reporters to our staff and changed some beat assignments in the past month.
Rex Bowman joined the paper to cover Botetourt and Bedford counties. Bowman, a Floyd native who lives in Roanoke, spent 12 years covering Southwest Virginia for the Richmond Times-Dispatch before coming to our newsroom.
He's also worked at The Washington Times, The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, The Argus in Fremont, Calif. and the Easton Star Democrat in Maryland.
Lerone Graham was promoted to full-time status as our weekend police reporter. Graham, who graduated from Norfolk State University in 2008, was hired last year as a one-year intern in our New River Bureau.
Neil Harvey has taken over coverage of Salem. He came to The Roanoke Times in 2001 and has worked in news and features. Most recently, he covered weekday night police.
Tonia Moxley is now covering Virginia Tech and Radford University and serve as the newsroom's point person on broader higher education stories. Her five years of experience covering Blacksburg and her wide network of sources in the New River Valley make her a good fit for that position.
Moxley first joined the company in 2002 as an assistant online editor with roanoke.com. She worked as an editorial assistant in the bureau from 2002-2004 before taking on the Blacksburg beat.
Click here for a complete newsroom staff list.
The Roanoke Times' Extra section last week was named one of the top features sections in the country in its circulation category by the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. According to AASFE, " the contest honors regularly scheduled feature sections that present lifestyle and arts and entertainment coverage with authority, utility, energy and wit."
Congrats go out to Kathy Lu and Stephanie Ogilvie, who edit the section, and the features reporting team: Ralph Berrier, Tad Dickens, Jennie Tal, Lindsey Nair and Kevin Kittredge.
Our sister publication, the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., is also a finalist in our division. The winners will be announced at AASFE's national convention in the fall.
A few weeks ago, I offered my perspective on the future of The Roanoke Times in light of the financial pressures on the newspaper industry. Here's another view on what's happening, from staff reporter Beth Macy writing in the latest edition of the American Journalism Review. Macy talks to several veteran journalists who say they love their business, and they're sticking around for the long haul:
Call me a Pollyanna; some of my favorite coworkers do. But there's a certain relief that came when I decided earlier this year to plant my entire body in the sand, Reporter's Notebook and all. I don't like the presses shutting down in Denver and Seattle. I hate the fact that thousands of American journalists have lost their jobs to buyouts and layoffs already this year, and many others have made the preemptive move of getting out before they're forced out.
But more than 40,000 newspaper journalists are still cranking away, and I'm grateful to be among them, having vowed to ride out the tsunami until they pry the company-owned laptop from my cold, ink-stained hands.
-- Carole Tarrant
It's hard to believe, but we're nearing the end of our comics poll. And, to be honest, lots of us here are looking forward to it!
That's because we were not prepared for the avalanche of ballots that people filled out, cut out and mailed out to us. This picture gives you some idea of the work we had ahead of us.
Fortunately -- thanks to volunteers from the advertising and sales and service departments as well as folks in the newsroom -- we're getting close to draining the pile.
And we've been having fun learning about our readers. For instance, we discovered one lady who's been a faithful daily subscriber for 50 years -- through the mail!
And some of the comments have been great. We did start to recognize a few common threads, such as: "Please bring back FBOFW"; "Comics are the best part of the paper/the first thing I read every day/the one bright spot in a world of bad news"; "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to vote"; and "I like comic strips that are funny, not dumb or weird."
A big thanks to all who took the time to tell us what they think. The online poll closes Sunday. We can't wait to find out the results!
The next installment of "JobQuest," the public television show on the job market in Western Virginia, will be Tuesday, April 14 at 7 p.m. It's produced by Blue Ridge PBS, with help from The Roanoke Times and several other media organizations and governmental and business groups.
One of the guests on the next show will be Chris Winston, editor of our New River Valley bureau. He'll talk about the job market in New River.
Here's a release from Blue Ridge PBS that talks about some of what the show has accomplished:
It's the start of week 2 of our comics ballot and we already have more than 3,000 votes online!
Not to mention the 8 bins - yes, 8! - of paper ballots that we're getting ready to tally. Everyone in the newsroom has been blown away by the response, so thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think!
Speaking of that, bet you're curious about the results so far. Well, I can't get into details, but let's just say that based on the online votes so far, strips about family relationships are topping the heap. Not quite so for the strip whose name rhymes with "gorp."
If you haven't voted yet, click on the logo for a link to the ballot. Poll closes April 12!
We're day three into our comics poll and we are gratefully overwhelmed!
More than 2,000 votes have been cast online since the polls opened Sunday. And just this morning, several of us in the newsroom were huddled around three bins FULL of mailed-in comics ballots, marveling at stacks. It's true ... comics fans aren't shy!
Some other fun facts about the poll responses so far:
- We've heard from people ages 10 to 91.
- Some comments we've received include: "Get rid of them!"; "One of the best features of the paper, like dessert!"; "Does _*anybody*_really read Prince Valiant?"; "PLEASE bring back FOR BETTER OR WORSE !!!!"; and "They get my day started and breakfast would not be the same without them."
Thanks, folks. We love hearing from you. Keep it coming!
As the editor of the Extra section, one of the things I've learned is that people are passionate about their comics.
I'm not one of those people (I'm more of a fair-weather fan, reading "Funky Winkerbean" through Lisa's passing, but have not read it since). So I was amazed at the number of people who responded when we tested "Pearls Before Swine" recently and also when we dropped "For Better For
Worse."
For good or for bad (and trust me, we got a lot of bad when we dropped FBFW), it meant a lot to me that so many readers cared that much about their comics that they would write and call.
Now, we're giving them a chance to tell us loud and clear how they feel about our daily comics, plus four test strips, including the new/old "For Better For Worse." On Sunday, we begin the voting process at roanoke.com/entertainment.
Also that day, we'll be running a paper ballot in The Roanoke Times' Extra section.
We'll be collecting online votes for three weeks. After it closes, we'll add up the numbers and use the result as a divining rod to decide where to go next with our comics.
In the meantime, you can also send comments to comics@roanoke.com.
We're expecting a good response. I'm sure our comics fans won't disappoint.
There are at least two ways to look at all the lay-offs that have been announced at companies around Western Virginia lately. One is to add up the numbers and see the sobering result. The other is, well, to look at them -- plot the lay-offs on a map and see where they are and what patterns or trends emerge that way about which communities are the hardest hit.
That's what our data delivery editor, Matt Chittum, has done on The Datasphere, our online center for all kinds of data about Western Virginia. Here's his map and a blog post explaining it.
Matt also was invited to talk about it on WVTF-FM last week. Here's his interview with the Roanoke public radio station, if you'd like to take a listen:
