The person wrote:
The seemingly silent gutting of talent at The Roanoke Times is starting to show the effects of what happens when you throw years and years of experience out the window just to put a few more coins in your pocket.
I agree with this person. Over the years I have watched the daily paper decline further and further into an abyss that seems to be of its own making. The talented writers have left and the few remaining writers with ability are apparently noosed to the point of being unable to write the stories that need to be written.
Anyone with access to the Internet who reads the headlines knows that some stories take days to make it into the Roanoke Times. Maybe they figure no one reads online and print editions? I read both, and increasingly the stuff in the print edition is moot.
Which might be okay if the paper's online edition was doing great things, but it isn't. I don't like the paper's online edition at all. I have always found it difficult to navigate, for one thing. For another, the news isn't any better there.
By better I don't mean "sappy" or "cheerful." I mean, news. Roanoke has crime (every city does) but to read the daily paper you wouldn't know about it. They don't run a list of warrants or arrests or anything so that people have some idea of the many times guns go off.
Because I am married to a public servant, I know that guns go off much more than reported. And they aren't target shooting. Who knows how many DUIs there are on a weekend. Even just a total would be interesting.
The city has about 100,000 people, but from the dullness of the paper you'd think no one does anything worth writing about. Features are minimal. On the front page today there is a huge article about e-cycling. Okay, this is news, sort of, but front page? Maybe front page of the Virginia section.
I don't believe reporters beat the streets anymore. They work the phones. They attend meetings. But they don't get out and meet people. Here is an example: I was at a meeting recently with another reporter from a rival paper and during a break, I worked the room. Everybody in that place knew someone from the local weekly was there.
Nobody knew the other reporter was there, as that person never moved from his chair.
I'm not even a staff reporter, I'm a stringer writing on assignment. But I take it seriously when I'm representing a paper or magazine.
Newspapers whine about their decline, but I believe they've brought it on themselves. They've forgotten what the Fourth Estate is all about, and care only about profit in the shareholder's pocket. Newspaper reporters are supposed to hound the city council, uncover the muck, sift through the lies and untruths until the bare facts remain.
This doesn't happen anymore, and not only in Roanoke. This is going on in most large papers, and I think it will be to their detriment.
In the future, I think the newspapers that survive will be local papers with targeted local markets offering news about your community that you're not going to get elsewhere.
That's the trouble with the print edition of the Times these days; a lot of what you see is information you can find elsewhere.
Bring back the reporters, folks, and the originality. Show some courage, and report real news.