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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.

"How stupid can the Times be," read the subject line of the e-mail.

It captured the intensity of the reader’s complaint about a feature photo we published showing a 13-year-old Roanoke boy jumping off of a second-story stairway onto a trampoline.

"Why on earth would your newspaper put something out there that exhibits such dangerous behavior," the reader wrote. "Your paper should be promoting safety as much as possible, not encouraging foolish, dangerous behavior that can cause serious injury or worse."

Jumping onto a trampoline from one story up is a recipe for a trip the emergency room. I wouldn’t want either of my daughters trying it.

However, the decision on whether we acted irresponsibly in publishing the photo isn’t clear cut.

Read more »

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.

We began this month with a few changes to our  comics/puzzles pages lineup. One of them included dropping the Goren on Bridge column and replacing it with a new logic puzzle called Kakuro.  Our reasoning for the changes included the fact that the bridge column had received notably lackluster feedback on a reader panel we conducted earlier this year. We've also seen growing interest in mind-challenging puzzles such as Kakuro and Sudoko.

When we made the change, we left the door open and said we'd evaluate reader feedback over the next six months. But we've already heard enough: Since June 1, we've received more than 300 calls, e-mails and letters. We've even been hand-delivered a few petitions passed around at bridge clubs and nursing homes. (Actual subscription cancellations number less than a dozen.)

The bridge fans have spoken, and they'll be happy to hear the column is coming back. We expect that to happen with next week's editions, with the column moving to its new home in the classifieds section.

If you're reading this and know of a disappointed bridge fan, please spread the word.

And if you like Kakuro, let us know as well.

This afternoon our newsroom said goodbye to a co-worker, friend, industry leader and truly original human being -- multimedia editor Seth Gitner. He's leaving for a teaching position at Syracuse University, where he'll train the next generation of multimedia journalists. Fans of our late great TimesCast will remember Seth for his "point-o-meter." Internally, we'll remember him for a variety of colorful stories, such as when his duck tape approach to getting the TimesCast on the air resulted in a blown fuse that took out a portion of our advertising department. We had a time. We wish you and your family well, Seth.

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

We published a story today by reporter Mason Adams based on information from three Roanoke City Council members who requested anonymity. Adams story broke the news that City Council will meet Monday to discuss ending City Manager Darlene Burcham's tenure.

We strive to avoid using unnamed sources in our stories because we know readers can't fully assess the value of the information we are providing without fully knowing the sources. Sometimes, though -- when we believe we can't get the information from on-the-record sources and we think it's important for our readers to know -- we will allow it. We always strive to have the information confirmed by more than just one person. And any use of an unnamed sources has to be approved by one of the top two newsroom editors.

Do you think this was a good use of unnamed sources?

You can read more about how we make these decisions in our news standards and policies.