www.roanoke.com

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

ROANOKE, Va. (October 5, 2009) — Megan Schnabel has been named editor of the Blue Ridge Business Journal (BRBJ), effective October 19.

Schnabel currently is a metro team leader for The Roanoke Times, owner of the BRBJ, with responsibility for coverage of public safety issues, courts and public integrity reporting. She is a 1995 graduate of Northwestern University's journalism school and joined The Roanoke Times as an intern in 1994. She was a business reporter for seven years, covering economic development, workplace issues and technology.

In 2002, Megan was promoted to assistant editor for The Current, gaining experience with the production of a niche tabloid product. In 2004, she joined the metro desk, where as team leader she directed notable coverage of such high-profile stories as the Alfred Dowe expense expenditures, the Henry County sheriff investigation and the federal prosecution of white supremacist Bill White.

In addition, Megan has served as the paper's point person on public records issues and serves as a regional Freedom of Information Act coordinator for the Virginia Press Association. She is also a 2007 graduate of the Batten Leadership Institute program at Hollins University.

The Blue Ridge Business Journal is a free bi-weekly business publication for the Southwest Virginia region, with nearly 16,000 subscribers.

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.

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

Glenvar Cub Scout Pack 352 toured The Roanoke Times on Thursday evening.

While here, the Cub Scouts got a look at our press -- plus a sneak peek at Friday's print edition of So Salem, our community newspaper for Salem and western Roanoke County.

Here, editor Carole Tarrant talks to the Cub Scouts about how the newspaper is put together.  For more on the scouts' tour, see our Salem community news site.

Would your group like to tour The Roanoke Times? Let us know.

Pictures of the Year International today named our 2008 series "Age of Uncertainty" as the documentary project of the year.  This honor is especially sweet because, as I wrote earlier this year , the series was a labor of love for many of us involved. We are taking care of our own relatives and seeing the challenges that lie ahead for the Roanoke Valley and its aging population.

My thanks to reporter Beth Macy and photojournalist Josh Meltzer (now on a Fulbright fellowship in Mexico) for telling these stories so beautifully and passionately. Many thanks, too, to multimedia editor Seth Gitner, who had the vision to build the online site as a long-lasting, interactive community resource.

These three were backed by a dedicated team of journalists who collaborated so well in print and online: Grant Jedlinsky, Alec Rooney, Tracy Boyer, Belinda Harris, Matt Chittum, Meg Martin, Terri Macklin, Dan Beatty, Dan Casey, Brian Kelley, John Jackson, Rob Lunsford and Andrew Svec. And while we're talking POYi, here's a big congrats to photojournalist Kyle Green, who won second place in the sports action category for his operatic photo at a boxing match.

The Roanoke Times sports section earned honorable mention for Sunday sections in the Associated Press Sports Editors’ writing and section contests for newspapers with circulations between 40,000 and 100,000. Honorable mention places The Roanoke Times among the top-20 Sunday sections in the nation in that division.

From editor Carole Tarrant: 2008 was an opportunity for The Roanoke Times newsroom to define community journalism in a variety of ways. We can report in the finest watchdog tradition, as was the case with Laurence Hammack's coverage of the expense irregularities of ex-Roanoke City Councilman Alfred Dowe. We can also provide vibrant near-neighborhood-level coverage in print and online, as we do daily with our eight-month-old publications So Salem, The Botetourt View and SwoCo. This video, produced by multimedia editor Seth Gitner, captures the best in yet another memorable year. I hope you'll take a look and let us know what you think.